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How To Hire a Director of Marketing

Complete with job descriptions, skill profiles, and interview templates. Use this Director of Marketing hiring guide to help you make the right decisions, fast.

Director of Marketing Recruitment Guide

What does a Director of Marketing do?

A Director of Marketing will strategize, analyze, manage colleagues and clients, and guide the overall development of marketing campaigns. The scope of their responsibilities will vary depending on the size of the company. 

At smaller companies, marketing director is often a hands-on position where they may handle just about every aspect of marketing and communication.

At large companies, a marketing director might spend more time drafting marketing budgets, coordinating with the sales department, creating brand strategy, and signing off on the work of the marketing team.

Day to day tasks of a Director of Marketing

Skills assessment

Director of Marketing definition

A Director of Marketing oversees a company’s marketing strategy, including policies, goals and initiatives. This position is tasked with conducting marketing research and developing plans for specific products or services in a company. A Director of Marketing must be able to read and understand the marketplace and adjust plans accordingly. Depending on the company, he or she can be responsible for everything from analyzing markets to implementing sales strategies.

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HIRING PROCESS

Director of Marketing Hiring Process

Step 1: Understand the role
Step 2: Source Applicants
Step 3: Skills Assessment
Step 4: Interview
Step 5: Hire

Build the Ideal Candidate Profile​

To find the best person for the role, you need to understand what the role involves. You can complete this with the hiring manager to define the role, its contribution, and the skills needed.

Write A Job Description Based On Skills

Once you understand the requirements for the role, you’ll need to understand the skills for success. You can then write an effective job description to promote your role.

Selecting The Ideal Candidate

See which applicants have the right skills for the role. Send all your applicants a Vervoe skills assessment from the expert library, or customize one for your organization.

Interview Top Performers

Your skills assessment results will identify top performers. Focus your time on interviewing those that have met or exceeded your requirements. Assessment results will also help guide which skill areas to focus on in the interview.

Making An Offer

Once you assess your candidates against these skills, you’re ready to offer the top performer(s). You should base your offer on the value that the candidate would bring to your team and your business as a whole. It is also important to ensure your compensation and benefits packages are competitive in the industry and help you attract and retain the top talent.
Build the ideal candidate profile

Skills needed for a Director of Marketing

A director of marketing must be able to maintain and grow relationships with stakeholders, while having a sound understanding of marketing strategies across different platforms. An integral part of their role is managing a team to ensure optimum performance.

Pro Tip

Ensure you provide details about what it’s like to work for your company, and what your company values are so applicants know whether your company is the right fit for them.

WRITE A JOB DESCRIPTION BASED ON SKILLS

How to write a Director of Marketing job description

Once you’ve determined the skills required for the role, you can write the job description to advertise for your position. Here’s what to include in your Director of Marketing job description:

Job Title: What position are you hiring for?

Summary: What makes your company unique? What would it be like to work for you?

Responsibilities: An overview of the role’s day-to-day activities, and how the position contributes to the organization

Requirements: Skills a candidate must have to perform the job successfully

Benefits: Details of compensation, benefits, and any perks on offer

Pro Tip

In building your candidate profile, remember you’ve already identified what skills are needed to succeed in the role. Here’s where to list your “must-have” skills and maybe a couple of “nice-to-have” skills. For example, a Director of Marketing must be able to lead a team and delegate, but it would be nice to empathize with customer’s concerns and problems at a more hands-on level.

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SELECTING THE IDEAL CANDIDATE

Sample skill tests for a Director of Marketing

Create a free account today to access the full assessment and more from our library

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Question 1

Marketing Strategy

Question Type: Document

In the document, provide a high-level overview of the Marketing Strategy you would implement to grow our customer base if you were successful in this role. Feel free to make assumptions or create this strategy on the information you can find through our website.

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Question 2

Marketing

Question Type: Text

How do you offer highly personalized experiences at scale for your potential customers?

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Question 3

Stakeholder Management

Question Type: Text

While trying to execute a new campaign you find your team caught up in the middle of a disagreement between two other departments (sales and customer support). Both believe the other should be responsible for manually activating prospects in the system. In the meantime, your new campaign is generating leads that appear to be going nowhere. How do you respond to this situation and what steps would you take to ensure your team doesn’t feel discouraged?

INTERVIEW TOP PERFORMERS

How to interview a Director of Marketing

Once your Vervoe skills assessment has surfaced the most qualified people for your open role, you can focus on interviewing these candidates. The interview should focus on any skills that require development that were highlighted from the skills assessment.

Now you know that candidates can do the job, the interview becomes more of a relationship building exercise where you can get to know the candidate on a more personal level, understand their motivations, and how they would fit in with the team.

Making An Offer

How much does it cost to hire a Director of Marketing?

The US average for a Director of Marketing is $147,612 according to Salary.com while the reported average salary on PayScale.com amounts to $93,049. Twenty-five percent of Marketing Directors earn $172,341 or better. with 10 percent receiving less than $106,807.

Director of Marketing Salary United States

Director of Marketing salaries in the United States range from $106,827 to $194,856 (USD). Director of Marketing salaries in the U.S vary a lot depending on the industry and size of the company as that will dictate the volume of duties.

Source: Salary.com

Director of Marketing Salary United Kingdom

Director of Marketing salaries in the United Kingdom range from £63,000 – £170,000 (GBP). Director of Marketing salaries in the UK vary a lot depending on the industry and size of the company as that will dictate the volume of duties.

Source: JobTed.com

Director of Marketing Salary Australia

Director of Marketing salaries in Australia range from $86,000 – $199,000 (AUD). Director of Marketing salaries in Australia vary a lot depending on the industry and size of the company as that will dictate the volume of duties.

Source: Payscale.com