Are you planning on hiring a new team of social media experts? It can be easy to go wrong. There are a lot of so called “gurus” that claim to offer exceptional social media marketing services, but they rarely deliver the services customers expect. If you hire the wrong marketing agency, you may find yourself forking over hundreds of dollars a month to a company that offers little in return.
You need to do your due diligence before hiring a social media expert, just like you would if you were hiring a lawyer, accountant or any other professional.
Here are 5 simple tips to help you maximize your hiring potential to hire the right team of experts to grow your brand through social media.
- Do a Competency Assessment, the Same Way that You Would With a Regular Employee
Opting into assessment testing for potential employees will help you streamline the hiring process. You can use assessments such as Hogan Assessments to isolate and target the best characteristics for available positions. This is a great system for finding the right in-house employees. Why not try using an assessment when looking for a social media marketer, too?
You need to know what you are looking for when hiring a social media professional. Jeff Bullas talks about some of the competencies that they need:
- Conceptual decision making
- Writing
- Interpersonal
- Planning and organizational
- Technical
Social media marketers need a wide variety of skill sets to thrive in this career.
Interviews and resumes can only scratch the surface of a candidate’s personality. A standardized-assessment lets you compare qualities without bias, and you’ll be able to qualify people based on more than their first-impressions. Testing makes the playing-field equal by safeguarding your business from individuals that may have non-beneficial traits.
Requiring an assessment test during the hiring process lets you express to the interviewee that it takes more than credentials to be a team-player. It could also help separate less-serious inquirers from dedicated job-seekers. You’ll get more reliable employees in the long-term. It’s not bad to save your hiring managers some frustration in the process as well. To learn more about pre-employment assessments, please visit https://www.berkeassessment.com/.
- Multiple Interviews
One web developer I spoke with tried hiring a social media marketer a few years ago. The marketer seemed promising in her initial pitch, but the web developer later said the arrangement was a “total disaster.” The fact is that she came across well in the first interview, but didn’t perform well later.
Many social media marketers are gifted grifters. You need to talk to them a few times to spot their lies.
Having multiple interviews can really help you weed-out those who aren’t serious about the positions you have available. It can be a huge waste of time to go through the entire process of on-boarding a new employee, and then have them decide to take another offer somewhere else. You need to know that the people you consider for employment are ready to move forward.
Try incorporating these simple multi-level interview procedures into your hiring process.
Have all applicants schedule a time to meet during a group interview. Present job responsibilities and standards to the group while collecting resumes. Ask for volunteers to interview first. These individuals are usually going to be your most dedicated applicants. Those who aren’t really interested won’t typically wait around for very long.
Those who are successfully screened in the initial interview should be rescheduled for a secondary interview a few days later. It may be a wise decision to include a higher-level manager in this final interview.
- Ask Consistent And Relevant Questions
You need to know what you are looking for in a social media expert. You need to know that they can grow your brand in a positive way. You need to know how they will do this.
It’s a good idea to stay consistent by asking the exact same questions to all applicants during your initial interview. The key to finding the right people is staying relevant.
Try to avoid hypothetical situations and rhetorical questions. That type of screening is best utilized through multiple-choice assessment tests. You could end up with very off-the-wall answers by being too vague. That doesn’t help you understand the person, and it doesn’t add value to the interview process.
Ask about previous accomplishments for past clients. You want to hear direct, actionable data showing how they helped a company grow their business by reaching people on social media. Avoid questions that allow the person to answer them by saying what you want to hear. Be personable. You want to get to the roots of their past performance, expectations, and character. Asking them what they would do in a hypothetical circumstance leads to useless and unverifiable information.
- Up-Sell Your Candidates
Great social media marketers are tough to find. If they really are talented, then you are going to want to make sure that you can get the most out of them. You can consider offering them more money for more results. You can even try offering them a performance based incentive. Up-selling is another option.
Up-selling is a term used to describe when a sales-person induces a potential customer to buy more costly products. The idea is for your business to be more valuable to the work-force than your competitors. If your company has slightly better starting rates, then you’ll get first-pick of the applicants in your area.
You can entice potential employees to work with you by offering shared-bonuses and specialized-certification promotions. This allows you to maintain highly-skilled workers, and it helps you screen out those who aren’t willing to stay long-term. An established company should be able to attract better employees by essentially being the better option out of the applicant’s choices.
Be the better option, and high-quality employees will come looking to work for you.
- Write Concise Job Descriptions
You should always be as clear as possible in every job-posting. It is commonplace in certain industries to leave out important details in online job offers.
The worst thing you can do in the hiring process is take applications from people who haven’t been clearly informed about the position. This is particularly common when hiring departments are forced to meet interview-quotas, and this is a good reason to avoid setting quotas.
Reaching a wider group of candidates doesn’t help you narrow down people who are actually suited for the job.
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