My company needs a marketing manager.
I’m hijacking my Karen’s notes this week to ask for your help. No matter how much we do in terms of recruitment, the best hires often come from someone knowing someone else.
We’re firm on what we want (and don’t want) at PF, we have a fairly intensive hiring process, and there’s a very particular type of person who will absolutely LOVE this job.
So I’m going to tell you all about it, and if someone springs to mind after you’ve read it….actually, DON’T send them direct to me. Send them to our Careers page because we have a specific hiring process that involves the whole team.
(Please note the marketing manager does need to be in the UK. With bonus points if they’re in London, Edinburgh, or Manchester, although anywhere in UK is okay. We are also hiring for another role in USA/Canada, and that’s on the careers page too.)
Values are everything
If I’ve learned anything as a boss and a leader of a company, it’s this:
Values.
Are.
Everything.
Someone can have all the technical skills or the marketing degree or the nice things on their LinkedIn profile – and we definitely need someone who will blow us away with their marketing skills – but those aren’t enough on their own.
PF has four pillars on which we stand: Creativity, Integrity, Generosity, and Rest. (You can read about those and see a video from the PF team here).
Those are great foundations, and the company wouldn’t exist without them. But recently we’ve spent months working through our internal values, which are the way we live and work. How we do business as well as life. (I’ll share these 6 values below)
It’s not enough to simply work well: PF is a very close group of people, and we get to know each other and our clients beyond simply “the working hours”. We hang out, send them funny GIFs and memes, get and give gifts to each other, stay in each others’ homes even. In our last team retreat we shared some pretty deep stuff and there were some tears. (Even from me.)
So this person must be a fit with the values not just during ‘work time’ but in their personal life, too. They have to be the same person online and offline, at home and at work, at the computer and at the pub.
It’s an all-in thing. We don’t ask the person to give us their entire life: but we do ask them to be in, whole heart.
Here are the 6 internal values:
- Show transparency: Share the right things at the right time to build relationship
- Stay positive: Look for the blessing, look for the good, and always believe it’s there
- Have an opinion: and be able to say why
- Be gracious: in everything we say and do
- Collaborate: because it really is partnership (clients and team)
- Take responsibility: own up when it’s on you (there’s always something we can do better)
Here’s a sketch our graphic designer, Chryzia, did on our team retreat last week. (This is NOT one of my sketches!! Don’t you love her different style?)
Blow us away with marketing skills
We want someone better than us. Someone who says “hey have you tried this” and we all go whoaaaa, that’s really cool. I didn’t know that was possible or I hadn’t thought about doing that for PF in that way.
PF is a creative agency. That means we try to show by example how marketing is done: and although we don’t do it perfectly, we want to keep getting better. We want to blow our clients away: so we need to be blown away too.
The person who will love this job will love all of these things, some more than others which is okay:
- Social media (posting and live)
- Writing (blogs, emails, website content)
- Video (editing, sharing, integrating)
- Learning (teach me more all the time!)
- Getting stuff done on time (or being ahead of the game)
- Events (including coordination, social, video, follow up)
Those are just a few of the things that came to mind – more detail on the careers page.
Absolutely love working from home or remotely
It’s not enough to be able to work from home. This person has to absolutely love it.
Some people love working from home because they’re deep introverts and prefer not to be around people too much. That’s cool, we get that. (I feel like that about half the time.) But that’s not who this role is for.
Some people need and want an office because that’s where their motivation comes from, and they fade and get discouraged if they’re on their own too much. That’s also cool, and we respect that. But that’s not who this role is for either.
This is someone who doesn’t need the constant buzz of the office, because they can get that from their work, events, continual communication with the team and clients and prospects, and practicing #creativitypillar on a regular basis. (We encourage focused creative time which we can talk to them about when they apply.)
We see each other (and clients) pretty regularly at events and workshops, and this person will do a lot of that. We also get together at least twice a year for a team retreat, and we’ve recently made the decision that EVERY PF team member has to be at these retreats, no matter where they are in the world, because they’re so important.
So… that’s who we’re looking for. We’ve had a number of applications so far and we absolutely honour those who applied. It was even hard for us to say no to some of them, but we know the right person is still out there.
Send them on!! We can’t wait to meet them.
