How to attract T-Shaped Digital Marketing Talent
Chances are you’ve heard about T-shaped marketers by now. If not; it’s the kind of marketing profile all companies are looking for. The problem is: they’re scarce. They’re in demand. Their LinkedIn DM’s are overflowing with introduction requests from recruiters.
Now, how do you attract the attention of this sought-after profile? How can your company stand out and compete with other employers?
Let’s start with understanding what a T-Shaped marketer exactly is.
T-shaped marketers have a broad range of practical (digital) marketing skills and knowledge, as well as deep expertise in one or two specific areas.
The T-shape refers to the graph below.
Benefits of T-Shaped Marketers
The business world has never moved faster. Digitisation, technology innovations, regulatory changes, you name it. Marketing departments have to constantly keep up, adapt and innovate.
The T-shaped digital marketer’s broad knowledge is an indicator of their eagerness to learn new things. Additionally, they master a few skills as a true expert.
This makes them ideal candidates for cross-functional and integrated marketing teams. With a broad range of skills and knowledge, they can provide a holistic perspective. With a specific area of expertise, they provide valuable insights that can help drive the success of a campaign or project.
We found T-shaped digital marketers to be extraordinarily efficient in small to medium-sized teams (2 - 10 FTE).
For bigger teams, it might be helpful to explore the idea of getting full-focus experts aboard (e.g. functional team structure).
What do T-shaped marketers bring to your business?
- Increased efficiency: T-shaped marketers are able to work on a variety of projects and initiatives, increasing the efficiency and productivity of the department or business.
- Better decision-making: With a broad range of skills and knowledge, T-shaped marketers can provide a holistic perspective and make informed decisions. Besides their broad and specific knowledge, they’re good in building cross-department bridges within a company.
- Greater flexibility: T-shaped marketers can adapt quickly to changes or challenges. Their eagerness to learn new skills is handy when rules, technology or strategy evolve rapidly.
- Improved collaboration: T-shaped marketers are the perfect match for high-collaboration team structures like decentralised, integrated or cross-functional teams. Their broad skillset and knowledge enable efficient collaboration and better alignment of marketing with business goals.
- Increased innovation: Businesses benefit in many ways from new perspectives and ideas. The benefits mentioned earlier all add up to increased innovation in many business aspects (customer service, product development, alignment marketing and sales…)
How to attract T-Shaped Marketers
With a better understanding of the phenomena ‘T-shaped marketers’, these actionable tips will help to attract T-shaped talent for your business.
- Offer opportunities for career development: With their eagerness to learn and develop themselves, offering career development opportunities means a lot to them. Think about training programs, mentorship, or the opportunity to diversify their projects and activities.
- Foster a culture of learning: Offer resources such as training materials, subscriptions, or access to industry events. By doing so, you allow them to do what they love most: growth.
- Promote cross-functional collaboration: T-shaped marketers thrive in cross-functional and integrated teams, so promoting opportunities for collaboration can be tempting.
- Provide opportunities for specialisation: as these marketers are always looking to develop their specific area of expertise, offering opportunities to work on specific projects or initiatives can be attractive.
- Offer competitive compensation and benefits: as they are in high demand, a competitive compensation and benefits package is crucial to attract top talent.
- Highlight the impact of their work: T-shaped marketers want to be part of something meaningful, so highlighting how their work will make a difference and impact the company positively will appeal to them.
- Honest company values: alignment with companies that share similar values matters more than ever, so be open and transparent about it. Make sure the values of the company are aligned with your talent.
T-Shaped Factory: the most efficient way to attract T-shaped talent
NedWorks has recruited and trained dozens of T-shaped profiles for a wide variety of prime clients.
Get in touch to learn more, our team is happy to explain how this works in detail!
Caterina is Marketing Manager at Sisu Group where she focuses on content strategy.
Read more articles by Caterina.