How Can Marketers Meet Their Resource Needs?

Two decades or so ago when I was fresh out of Uni and look­ing for a job, I didn’t think about the future. All I cared about was whether the role I got could pay for my rent, food, bills and a cou­ple (ok, make that more than a cou­ple) of nights out on the lash. I wasn’t think­ing long term.

Fast for­ward to today, and fresh-faced won­ders hunt­ing their next career move might well look to the mar­ket­ing sec­tor for a career with plen­ty of pos­si­bil­i­ties for nights on the town—and the hang­overs to match.

Accord­ing to Cam­paign, merg­ers and acqui­si­tions in the media and mar­ket­ing sec­tor are being dri­ven by a mas­sive dig­i­tal skills gap in EMEA (specif­i­cal­ly the UK). Basi­cal­ly, com­pa­nies want to sur­vive, but as there are not enough fish in the sea to work in their ocean, they’re hav­ing to gob­ble up lots of small­er fish in order to get their hands on the meals that mat­ter. Despite ongo­ing polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic insta­bil­i­ty, com­pa­nies are des­per­ate to grow. Com­bine this with the new trend some brands are fol­low­ing for bring­ing their pro­gram­mat­ic ad buy­ing func­tions in-house, and what you have is a seller’s market.

You got the skil­lz? Then we got the jobz.

Pre­lim­i­nary data from research by Kingston Smith shows that 274 merg­ers were com­plet­ed in 2017. It was anoth­er record year, fol­low­ing the 285 deals closed in 2015, and 308 closed in 2016—and all because no one can find the right talent.

If we knew then what we know now, eh? Maybe then I wouldn’t have done that The­atre degree or gone into jour­nal­ism for a rel­a­tive­ly lost decade…

So how will mar­keters meet their resource needs? What are you doing to find (and keep) the staff that can tru­ly make a dif­fer­ence? Is tal­ent a major chal­lenge for growth in your sec­tor? What do you think the gov­ern­ment or sec­tor should be doing to help bat­tle this issue? Is mar­ket­ing no longer the sexy career option for grads? Or is it sim­ply a case of a com­pen­sa­tion gap with grads per­suad­ed to enter fields offer­ing more mon­ey, fun and friv­o­li­ty? Share your thoughts in the com­ments below.