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Key Takeaways Hire for diagnostic ability, not resume prestige.
The strongest marketing leaders identify what a specific business needs and build the capabilities to deliver it.
When hiring a marketing leader, it’s easy to overvalue the things that look impressive during a search: a recognizable company on the resume, a massive budget, a big team and an impressive portfolio. Those things matter, but mostly they tell you about the environment a candidate worked in, not what they’re capable of building in yours.
What I actually want to know is what they did with what they had. Did they inherit a well-oiled marketing machine, or help build one? What problems did they diagnose, and what got better on their watch? Managing a $100 million budget is meaningful experience, but it doesn’t automatically tell me that someone can walk into a growth-stage company, find the real opportunities amid the noise and build a marketing strategy that turns those opportunities into growth.
I’m looking for diagnostic muscle: the ability to figure out what this particular business needs, then build the playbook to deliver it. Whenever I take on a new role, I try to answer one question within the first 30 days: What role does marketing need to play for this business to be successful? I don’t expect candidates to have that answer walking in. I want to see that they know how to find it. Experience should give someone principles, pattern recognition and a deep toolkit, not a script they run regardless of the business in front of them.
Marketing should help create value, Not just communicate it
Marketing shouldn’t enter the picture only after the business has decided what it wants to sell and how it wants to sell it. One of the distinctions I look for is whether a candidate sees their job primarily as communicating the company’s value proposition or whether they understand marketing’s role in helping shape it.
That means working upstream and bringing customer and market perspective into decisions that may not look like marketing decisions at all. If technology is an important source of differentiation, what can we build that customers will actually value? If the company competes on service, how should the user experience evolve? If it’s a product decision, how should unmet customer needs and competitive whitespace inform development? The best marketing leaders don’t simply receive the business and promote it. They help build a business worth promoting.
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