For every company type and size. For marketing leaders and non-marketing leaders who are hiring marketers.
How to Write Job Descriptions
that Attract Right-fit Marketers
How to hire marketers and who to hire and when are the two most common questions I get asked about by marketing leaders and non-marketing leaders.
The first thing I tell them:
hiring right-fit marketers begins with the job description.
In my experience, there is rarely A Right Way to do anything, but when it comes to hiring marketers, there kind of is One Way and most people aren’t doing it.
From the job description to screening and interviewing, you could be attracting right-fit marketers more efficiently and set them up to succeed for your business starting with the job rec.
I’ve hired hundreds of marketers in my career, reviewed well over 1,000 resumes, refined JDs for folks at companies big and small in a wide range of industries, with big budgets or practically no budget and just about every type of marketing function, including some I don’t have experience with.
Tl;dr: I know what works and why.
SO! I’m sharing everything I know about writing job descriptions for marketing roles that will attract the best candidates for the marketing outcomes and challenges you need help with.
And since there’s more to hiring than just the JD, I collab’d with a marketing friend of mine, Christine Orchard, Head of Marketing at Arc.dev to create a whole hiring guide for marketing leaders and non-marketing folks like founders, CEOs, HR departments and even recruiters, find the best match for them.
Most marketing job descriptions are too prescriptive and contain more activities than a single role can logically execute—or that are necessary to achieve the outcomes the company wants. They’re also simultaneously vague from over-deployment of jargon and interpretable terms that have different meanings depending how and where they are used.
Quality content. Successful strategy. Growth. Key responsibilities.
None of those phrases contain the criteria the company uses to determine if content is “quality” or your strategy is “successful.” And can someone please explain to me what “key” anything is in business? (For the ‘splainers out there, this is a rhetorical question.)
The solution is simple:
Stop telling marketing candidates what you want them to do and start describing the impact you want them to have on the business.
What do you want to accomplish?
Instead of presenting a litany of tasks and generic experience requirements (in 2024, does this role really require a college education?) think from first principles:
From a business standpoint, why do you need this role to grow your company? How do the tasks you're asking them to complete contribute to that growth?
For example, instead of listing "manage XYZ social platforms" as a role requirement, think about what you want the marketer to accomplish from managing those platforms and write that instead.
It could be as foundational as:
Evaluate our existing social channels to understand if they contribute to your objective, other business objectives and/or are necessary to maintaining market share against our competitors. Determine whether the ROI is impacting the right objective and is contributing enough to warrant our current investment. Make data informed recommendations for improvements in our social strategy, including any platforms that we’d benefit from cutting or adding.
You don’t need to understand marketing on a deep level to write this. All you need is to understand your customers, your product, your business and goals.
If you don't know, then be transparent in the job description. For example:
We want to grow revenue by x% in 2025. Our sales process works and converts at [some above average rate for your industry]. The challenge we’re facing: our current marketing activities don’t bring in the volume of qualified leads to hit our growth objectives this year.
Social media, specifically THESE PLATFORMS, have been reliable places for us to build affinity in our industry and specifically among our ICP, because that’s where they are discussing solutions like ours, asking for referrals and we’ve been authentically contributing in a helpful way for a while. We’ve figured out how to motivate a considerable % of these folks to consideration stage activities, too.
We're looking for someone to create a strategy to increase the contribution our social engagement makes to consideration stage lead volume so we can hit our 2025 revenue goals.
If you REALLY don’t know, just say something like this:
We want to grow revenue by x% in 2025 and we don’t know which social channels we should invest in, whether we should invest in them at all given our customers and growth goal, and how to measure (in some way) their approximate ROI.
We need a marketer who can figure all this out and tell us what to do to hit our quarterly revenue targets in 2025.
We’re open to stopping things that aren’t working. We’re open to starting new things so long as they start contributing to our growth goals this year, because for some reason that’s necessary. This is how you will be evaluated, so you’re a good candidate if you have ideas for what to do already and can share them in the interview.
Apply this principle to all marketing role levels from junior to senior level hires (seems obvious, but I’ve seen a ton of JDs for Director and VP of marketing roles that still include the grocery list of activities).
Remember, being prescriptive about what you want the marketing role to do—especially if you don't know marketing—sets you up for the very experience you're trying to avoid: hiring a marketer who is activity focused not outcome driven.
Say what you mean, plainly
It’s more effective to clearly describe an opportunity you want to explore or performance improvement you want to your marketing hire make than itemizing the tools and activities you want them to “own” or “manage”.
For example: what does it mean to “own” or “manage” social media? What is the outcome you want them to achieve from spending time in these areas?
When you are too specific about the “how” in your JD, you focus candidates’ attention on what already exists versus setting them up to contribute net new ideas that could be more impactful than simply executing with channels you want to them develop or own/manage.
If you already have channels that work and you need a dedicated marketing resource to run them and expand their impact, then it’s appropriate to specify. But more often than not, companies look for a marketer to “own social media” as part of their role merely because those channels are dormant and not because they are places where, say, decision-makers in their community has discussions related to their product.
Describe how you will recognize success from this role
Imagine you’re writing this new hire’s review. What quantity of impact you want them to deliver at what stage of the journey? Or if you’re hiring for a brand-related marketing role, what signals or actions indicate success to you (like newsletter open rates, time on specific web pages, event attendance rate, brand mentions in specific communities, etc). Write them down in the same way you would for a quarterly evaluation or consideration for promotion.
For example, if you’re going to evaluate their performance in part on how many qualified leads come in via webinars, then you should include that in your JD:
Leads that come from our webinars convert at the second highest rate after Word-of-Mouth. We currently produce 2-3 webinars per quarter with our current resources and team. Given the significant contribution webinars have to revenue growth, we’re hiring MARKETING ROLE to further develop this channel to contribute x% more in quarterly consideration stage leads.
Writing a Better Job Description
Example: Marketing Overview
This is an overview from a job description I found on LinkedIn. I’ve included the key responsibilities as context for my evaluation.
This overview isn’t terrible:
First sentence contains context for the company’s growth strategy, which establishes the foundational business case for this role.
Second sentence is specific about the role’s ownership areas: events & partnerships.
Basically I interpret the overview to mean that the company found a working channel for pipeline growth (or at least have strong hypothesis that it will work) and are looking for someone to manage it and expand on it to increase the volume of pipeline these channels contribute.
The problem is, it doesn’t actually communicate that.
We’re looking for a seasoned Marketer…
What does “seasoned” mean? 3-5 years working in marketing? 5-10 years? Also, what kind of seasoned marketer? A content marketer that meets the company’s definition of “seasoned” could fit, but only if they’re also experienced in event/partner strategy, and even then, have they run events specifically for mid/bottom funnel pipeline? I’m making an assumption that by “pipeline growth” they mean mid-low funnel pipeline based on what I think I understand from the JD, but I could be wrong.
…that will own and execute our events strategy
To what end? I assume based on the physical proximity of this phrase to the first sentence that they want the person to own and execute event strategy to grow pipeline, but it’s unclear whether that means the role would be DRI and thus be accountable to pipeline growth metrics or if their ownership remains in execution and planning for a boss who is accountable to those metrics directly.
…and build meaningful relationships with key organizations in the legal space.
What criteria defines “key” organizations to the company? What does a “meaningful relationship” to the company? Basically: what does success look like in accomplishing these two things?
This may sound nitpicky, but it’s actually strategic specificity that will help the right marketers self-select into the role - or out of it, thus making your hiring process more efficient. Most companies would be better served getting fewer right fit applicants than wading through hundreds of applications to identify those applicants themselves.
Another way to write it
We’re making big investments into expanding our events and partnership channels as part of our growth strategy in 2025. Our 2 goals are:
increase sales pipeline from events at the awareness and consideration stages
develop strategic relationships with partners to increase market saturation through exposure to their audiences and additional funding to expand size and scope of our events
To achieve these goals, we are looking for a marketer with 3-5 years of experience developing and executing pipeline-generating events and building strategic partnerships to maximize ROI from each event.
Job Description Components
Most JDs are comprised of cookie-cutter role responsibilities, required skills, experience and qualifications. This is an outdated approach that frequently leads to hiring wrong-fit marketers, because:
Experience doesn’t necessarily = competence. 5-7 years of relevant marketing experience at an enterprise company doesn’t always translate well to a startup marketing role, because maybe they are used to having resources a startup can’t provide. And saying you hit a goal doesn’t mean you executed well - it could just mean you had a super competent team who worked around you.
Education is a poor indicator of a person’s ability to do a job. For example, hiring someone with a masters in business with a focus on marketing doesn’t reveal what types of marketing the candidate learned about, whether they were skilled at it (no, grades and test scores are not helpful criteria). I’ve worked with marketers who were Harvard grads with superb writing and analytical skills who failed at their marketing job, because they lacked the business acumen and operational abilities to use their creative talents to drive business outcomes. I’ve also worked with folks who are self-taught marketers (like me) whose creative, strategic and operational abilities led to business outcomes beyond expectations
Writing samples are notoriously unhelpful, because it’s impossible to know how much editing went into a published piece.
References provided by candidates rarely provide useful information and HR can’t really ask them that many questions anyway.
This is why the structure of the interview process and questions you ask are so crucial. I’ve included a bunch of questions below that have helped me identify a candidate's strength and weaknesses.
I also strongly recommend that you include a project in your hiring process if you are hiring for a marketer who will be producing content. There’s a cohort of marketing candidates who will balk at it, but don’t worry about it. Good candidates will be happy for the opportunity to stand out with a project, as long as the scope is super focused and won’t be of business value on its own.
[READER NOTE: I have project ideas and examples to share but at the point of publication, I didn’t have time to add them. Stay tuned or just contact me if you need help with your project ASAP.]
Principles for writing a better marketing job description
Be specific about impact
We talked about this above, but here’s a shortlist to guide you:
Define the outcomes you want from this role
Describe how success will be measured and if you don’t know how to measure success, say that instead and make deciding on success metrics part of the role.
If you must, include additional projects you need them to manage or support that may not be directly related to outcomes. BUT, you only get 2 maybe 3 max depending on scope of each activity (see kitchen sink problem below). The more you add, the more obvious it is that your strategy skills aren’t that strong and/or that you work for leaders who don’t listen to you.
Leave the kitchen sink at home
Focus on 3-5 core responsibilities and make sure 90% of them contribute to the outcomes you’ve assigned this role.
List actually necessary skills (like, must have done DTC marketing for TYPE of product or have managed marketing budgets of $1M or more).
Distinguish between must-haves and nice-to-haves. You’d be surprised how many qualified people self select out of a role merely because they have 3-5 years experience in an area vs 5-7 when really it’s more important that they have x skill and the years of experience is kind of made up.
Be forthcoming and detailed about challenges
Describe real obstacles they'll face
Note resource constraints
Explain organizational context
Show growth potential (where applicable)
Not all roles have a linear growth path and that’s fine. But if it exists, make sure you don’t just mention that growth is possible, paint a picture of what the path looks like at your company and how you support folks who want to grow.
Outline career progression possibilities
Describe learning opportunities
Include mentorship/training available
Here’s a shortlist of interview questions you can use out-of-the-box, but if you want more examples, I’ve included a long unorganized list of questions I’ve used in the past below.
Strategic Thinking
Walk me through how you developed and executed [specific campaign] at your previous company
What's your view on [current marketing trend] and its impact on our industry? Are there opportunities from this trend you think we should leverage?
How would you approach [specific challenge] in our business?
Execution & Results
Tell me about a time you missed your goals. What happened and what did you learn?
How do you measure success in [specific marketing activity]?
What's your process for prioritizing marketing initiatives?
Leadership & Collaboration
How do you get stakeholder buy-in for your marketing plans?
Tell me about a time you had to influence without authority
How do you manage up and across teams?
How to evaluate marketers during the interview
Just a shortlist for now. I have more to add on this later.
Communication
Can they explain complex concepts simply?
Do they avoid jargon or explain it when used?
Are they good listeners who ask thoughtful questions?
Outcomes
Do they talk about specific outcomes?
Can they connect activities to business impact?
Do they show evidence of data-driven decisions?
Strategic Thinking
Do they understand broader business context?
Can they explain the "why" behind their work?
Do they show systems thinking?
Red Flags
Vague Answers
Using buzzwords without substance
Unable to provide specific examples
Focusing on activities over outcomes
Poor Stakeholder Management
Blaming others for failures
Showing resistance to feedback
Lacking empathy for other functions
Limited Growth Mindset
Resistant to change
Unable to admit mistakes
Not showing curiosity
Even more interview questions
I remember interviewing with the CEO of a company I really wanted to work for. He was the last person I interviewed with after over a week of interviews and delivering a project. I was prepared - or so I thought. Nothing could have prepared me for how he kicked off the interview:
Do you have any questions for me?
Yep, it was a gotcha question. No one ever asks candidates if they have questions until the middle or end. If throwing me off was his goal, he did so handily and with incredible efficiency and speed.
While I didn’t impress initially, I recovered when we got into the meat of the interview. And while I was impressed by the tactic, I’m not sure if he learned anything useful from it. I had done a ton of research on the CEO before the interview and had already impressed the team with my marketing prowess.
The mistake I made was spending too much time preparing to impress him with my knowledge, ideas and research instead of demonstrating those things by asking smart questions that spark discussion.
I’m not sure if I recommend his approach, it’s just an interesting tactic that I still think about.
My approach is to ask non-leading questions:
Good: what marketing activities do you think are the most effective for our company type / industry?
Not good: do you think x marketing activity is effective for y outcome?
And to make candidates feel relaxed - show them I’m rooting for them. That way when I ask them tough questions, they are less intimidated and show their true selves more.
You don’t need to make candidates feel uncomfortable to learn about or challenge them.
Anyway, here’s a bunch of interview questions I’ve used in the past.
What do you think about the state of content marketing today? Efficacy of efforts, which channels are showing dividends etc
Something you did that flopped and what you did about it
How did you get stakeholder buy-in at COMPANY?
Where do you see opportunities in the job to be done?
What challenges have you encountered getting approval for your marketing plans and/or strategy and/or campaigns, ideas, etc?
How will you show incremental progress to keep x stakeholders invested?
What do you wish I had asked you?
What do you think I should have asked you about?
What does “Smart” content strategy consist of? (picking apart a person’s resume and asking them to clarify generic terms)
Walk me through a successful campaign you ran at COMPANY.
What was the goal?
In what ways did you measure success?
Help me understand how you managed marketing at your previous company:
What team did you build?
What channels were best for you?
How did you get stakeholders on board?
In what ways did you report on results to stakeholders, your team, company?
What do you think we are doing wrong based on what you can see of our current marketing activities?
Where do you see opportunities in this job? What opportunities do you see in marketing at COMPANY?
Initial marketing ideas
Role itself and/or existing team activities and/or improvements
Why do you want this job?