Fantastic jobs, but we can't fill them - what are we doing wrong...?

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Stephen Pratley
Managing Director at Shine Marketing

17 February 2007 11:33am

The reason there is such a lack of good people around is that investment in training in online has been practically nil from most companies in the UK. I can't imagine Barcelona is any better. All the experienced people are self-taught which makes judging them before they start a job quite hard with no qualifications to set a yardstick. Only recently have I started see more candidates with things like e-commerce degrees and IDM Digital diplomas. They're really scarce, and very expensive people to hire.
We've already picked up some excellent staff through close ties with the local universtity and other local business organisations. We have to put a lot more effort into training, but we get better staff as a result, and are able to recruit locally particularly for marketing and account management roles. Recruiting locally also means to we also don't have to pay a stack of london wages that go straight into the pockets of British Rail, so we're all better off.
Our latest member of staff cost us 10p in Yahoo advertising, she was looking for a local agency to get some experience with and cold called us.
Having been through the pain of trying to recruit and retain 'ready-made' staff, I'm not sure it's always worth the effort when you can train your own.
Mercedes Clark-Smith
Head of the web team at TNA

17 February 2007 12:00pm

>And finally there is the ultimate deal-killer; cold hard cash. Most jobs I look at simply do not offer the rewards I expect; when I have a proven track record of getting sites to number one in Google for the keywords customers actually use and then delivering an ROI of three to four times what it costs to hire me, then I expect rewards comensurate with track record; you know?

I'd echo this. Whilst not blowing my own horn too much, I've got 10 years experience in managing sprawling websites, with both marketing and technical experience and business training. So I can talk to techies and comms people and I'm also a damn good manager of creatives.

Having just been Headhunted and offered a very good package, my current employer counter offered to match it. Both jobs are similar and the offers are pretty much at the top of what is on offer in the current market so to tempt me away an employer now has to offer me something better.

The jobs market is starting to feel like it did in the last dot com boom, so it's pay for quality (and lets face it that's been quite cheap since the crash - I know I've only just regained that salary level) or spend it on hiring in people you can train up.

No disrespect to agencies but it might also help if they read CV's before calling candidates. I am called 5-6 times a week for jobs either way below my level of experience or that are completely out of my field.
John Pyle
Web Developer at Southwind Web Services

18 February 2007 11:00am

The problem is that anyone who is really good at online marketing is working for themselves. Why work for someone else?
Emmanuel Marchand
Online Marketing Manager at Travelport Inc.

19 February 2007 08:41am

Hi James,

I know the offer you are advertising and the kind of person you are looking for ... and actually did come for an interview.
Yes online marketing recruitment is tough ... but I think oportunities -for recruiters- needs to be seized ... candidates are never too good, that's fair, but most have the potential.
The opportunity to grow is offered by the company to the employee, but ALSO (and mostly?) offered by the employee to the company ...
Online marketing remains "new" and qualified people with relevant experience are not as common as we'd wish ...

Good luck!
David Witcomb
PR & Marketing Manager at www.hellomagazine.com

19 February 2007 21:48pm

Hi James.

This might be my lucky day! I'm already based in Spain and have over five years experience in online marketing, for a very well-known publisher's online arm.

Please let me know if you're interested and we can talk.

David.
James Welsh
NTR Manager at VistaPrint

20 February 2007 08:28am

Hi David

Email address is - please say that you have come in off the E-consultancy forum as a point of reference.

Thanks,

James

On 21:48:29 19 February 2007 Disco wrote:

Hi James.

This might be my lucky day! I'm already based in Spain and have over five years experience in online marketing, for a very well-known publisher's online arm.

Please let me know if you're interested and we can talk.

David.
Sandra Lund
Programme Coordinator at MS Barcelona

31 March 2007 22:33pm

Hi James - We sure would like to help! We organize internship programmes for students with IT skills. These are unpaid positions, with the students ready, willing, and able to apply their skills and knowledge to IT-related projects. If you can utilize their assistance, please contact me! . Cheers, Sandra

On 14:08:21 14 February 2007 JamesWelsh wrote:

We are a multi-national e-commerce player who have just relocated our European marketing department from the USA, to Barcelona.

We have several UK positions open - managers for Marketing (overall site & revenue responsibility), Email marketing, Affiliate Marketing and Print media marketing (inserts, etc driving print response to short URLS.)

We have tested advertising our vacancies on E-consultancy plus all the usual avenues - Monster, recruitment agencies etc, with no great success.

We need quality people to come and perform within a world-class direct-response marketing department, in the sun, 4 blocks from the beach... How hard can that be?

If anyone can help, or suggest a specialist agency, I would love to hear about it...!