In February, AdExchanger called the search for qualified, desirable talent in ad tech “at best a distraction, or at worst an exercise in futility,” underscoring what many are considering a drought in qualified talent in our industry. Does the ideal candidate exist? Probably. But will you find him or her when you need them most? And is it worth the skyrocketing cost of recruitment?
I often hear from college students about how college has (under)prepared them for a career in marketing, and it is clear that traditional marketing still rules the classroom. The college professors who are teaching these courses have been teaching for a generation, so they have missed out on the enormous technological shift that has taken place in the industry. As a result, digital and programmatic marketing is completely absent from the curriculum.
Companies, too, are failing to educate workers in these new technologies. Programmatic marketing is taking a growing bite out of marketing budgets (Forrester projects that the share of display ads purchased programmatically to have doubled its 2012 levels by 2019), yet employers are not equipping their teams with the tools and skills necessary to keep pace.
Even as recruiting fees for top positions are tending towards 20% of a top recruit’s salary, the average time to fill a position is now the longest it’s been since 2011. When MediaMath recognized the gap in education back in 2012, we established the New Marketing Institute, tasked with educating, engaging, and empowering the new generation of digital marketers. Rather than search for the diamond in the rough, we could develop qualified talent from within. After all, how often do you find the perfect candidate? Instead, why not look for the intangible skills that are most important to success—like adaptability, leadership, critical thinking—and use internal resources to teach them the industry knowledge and technical skills?
Inspired by this hypothesis, we launched the Marketing Engineer Program (MEP), an immersive training program to nurture aspiring talent into qualified, successful marketers. Through departmental rotations, campaign management experience, and hands-on coaching, participants develop the requisite technical and non-technical skills to jumpstart their careers. Relevant experience, so often hard to come by in our industry, was no longer “relevant” to us. Whether a recent college graduate or a career-changer, program participants could gain the experience necessary to transition into ad tech.
But what IS a Marketing Engineer? A Marketing Engineer is a new breed of digital marketer, one who understands the confluence of traditional marketing and technology. They’re master problem solvers, collaborators, and innovators; business students, engineers, and fashion designers. Most have little to no experience in digital marketing, but what they do share is an interest in learning how technology is changing the marketing landscape. For the creative types, MEP is an opportunity to think differently about how, when, and where we reach consumers, and the story we tell behind it; for the analytical, it is about finding trends in consumer behavior, and using that data to tell a different story. We believe Marketing Engineers will be the next generation of digital marketers, and our goal is to help them get there.
And it’s working. After just one year, two cohorts, and 20 participants, we’ve already begun to see the benefits. All 20 program graduates have found roles as analysts, specialists, and managers on teams at MediaMath like Account Management, Product, Yield, Analytics, and Programmatic Strategy & Optimization. The most recent cohort was also the first that placed Marketing Engineers outside of MediaMath, with two graduates joining MediaMath client Ziff Davis. These are roles that might otherwise require years of industry experience, so the fact that our clients were thrilled to take Marketing Engineer after just a few month of intensive training tells us that the Marketing Engineers are becoming recognized as a source of talent across the industry. The level of training that we provide has increased the number of applications we receive, allowed us to hire based on how an applicant fits on the team, fueled a talent pipeline for clients and partners, and established MediaMath as a leader in industry training.
If there is one thing we have learned throughout this process, it’s that there is, in fact, no dearth of talent. Talent is plentiful. What is lacking is education and training: education in how to leverage complementary skills and experience, and training to support those individuals who make the transition. The challenge is not finding the right role, it’s finding the right path to get there. Our goal at MediaMath, and with our Marketing Engineer Program, is to help people find their way into our field. For more details on how MEP is doing that, check out the MEP webpage.