What we should know about SEO’s or any professional online marketer

Part I – The Recruitment Process

It’s not so easy speaking about professional SEOs nor professional online marketers as I am myself one of them. But I will do my best being objective and trying to be moderate with praises when others will see excellence and criticize them when others see just average.
In this first article, I will touch the most sensitive point when it comes to building an SEO team or Online Marketing department. Recruitment process.

A key element you should pay maximum attention is a lack of professional competencies – Is a common issue for almost all online (digital) marketing people. Tough enough?

Let me be clear. We all know that in many cases, very skilled people invented amazing things for mankind or being famous entrepreneurs and they had short or not a degree nor professional education in that specific area. But the case is only about professional people, a workforce having the status of the employee (except that you are looking for a superstar).

SEO’s are into that online marketing area of customer acquisition or lead generation. As any acquisition channel, we have to deal with a budget that eventually generates ROI. As a rule of thumb, since the organic traffic (all non-paid results in Search Engines are considered Organic results that generate organic traffic) are the most qualified but cheapest online acquisition channels, for any CMO and above CEO, a skilled professional SEO is a goldmine.

But as it happens (too often), the recruitment process is conducted by recruitment or HR people, that have only one job: to recruit someone within the budget. If (eventually) not working, no worries, we have a probation period, we continue to stay busy with the recruitment process.

Of course, not the recruiters will hire SEOs or professionals online marketers into a company. But don’t forget these two brilliant quotes that are acting as postulates.

“A players hire A players; B players hire C players, and C players hire D players. It doesn’t take long to get to Z players. This trickle-down effect causes bozo explosions in companies”. – Steve Jobs

“The character of a company is the sum of the characters of its people, so if you strive for a company of sterling character, that is the standard you must set for your employees. There is no room for knaves. And generally, in our experience, once a knave, always a knave”. – Eric Schmidt

Rules for recruitment, selecting and hiring a professional SEO or any other online professional marketer role. Adapt, retain and apply as many of the following criteria:

• Deep knowledge of their area covered by training (e-training), courses (continuous learning) and degrees awarded by trusted industry organizations lead by trusted and well-known faces in digital marketing.
• Search for professionals with hands-on experience even recruiting for strategic roles.
• Search for analytically smart professionals and experts in “doing”.
• Search for business smart people that see a direct line from technical expertise to product excellence to business success.
• Professionals that are curious, always questioning, never satisfied with their status quo.
• Hire professionals who are enthusiastic, self-motivated and passionate about SEO and online marketing. Don’t hire SEO’s who just want a job.

Not all the time we will find SEO’s or professional online marketers who possess these characteristics, but all must possess technical knowledge, business acumen, and creative energy in different percentages according to each role level, and seniority.

Hiring process of SEO’s or any other professional online marketers is very important and the decision of hiring should be the decision of your department or company hiring committee (Google concept).

Your company hiring committee will eventually look to hire the best of the best – according to your company culture and mission, role objective and level – but always based on data, not relationships or opinion.

We can attract the best SEOs and professional marketers with many factors beyond monthly wage: the great things they can do, highly skilled people they can work with, the responsibility and opportunities they’ll be given, the company culture and the inspiring company founders story and yes maybe free food and Friday beer.

But when those professional online marketers become employees and start performing, pay them appropriately. The bigger the impact, the bigger the compensation.

“…the lower-level employee who helps create a breakthrough product or feature should be very handsomely rewarded. Pay outrageously good people outrageously well, regardless of their title or tenure. What counts is their impact”. – Eric Schmidt

Inspired by Eric Schmidt

The article has been published also on Eugen Platon’s LinkedIn profile and can be found at “What we should know about SEO’s and professional online marketer”.