5 Ways to Support the Early-Career Marketer You Hired Before They Were Ready
“Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.”
- Rita Mae Brown
Ferrari, by Alain Lévesque (1956-)
Imagine you've always dreamed of owning a Ferrari, driving coastal roads like James Bond. Then you check your bank account and buy a five-year-old Camry that needs work just to get you to the grocery store. Not your dream, but your reality. That’s okay. But if you expect that Camry to perform like a Ferrari, you're going to be constantly disappointed. And if your reaction is to blame the car rather than acknowledge what you could afford, you're not being fair to the Camry.
Nonprofit arts organizations, especially in our current funding crisis, constantly have to balance what they want with what they can afford. In a perfect world, we’d be able to pay all of our staffs what they deserve for the work they do. If the whole staff is not a reality, strategically investing in senior roles that position us for financial stability, like marketing and development, would be ideal.
If you can only afford an early-career marketing coordinator and expect them to perform like a seasoned professional, you're expecting your Camry to be a Ferrari.
The early-career hire reflects what was possible. What happens next reflects your leadership. A strong leader offers as much support as possible to help them grow and succeed.
Here are five ways you can support your early-career marketing staff:
Be honest about the gap, and make it safe for them to be honest too
In my experience, early-career professionals are determined to handle whatever you throw their way, even when asking for guidance would serve them better. Be clear with your employee that you understand they are early in their career, and that you expect there to be a steep learning curve. Commit to either being there to support them or getting them the support they need to learn new things. Let them know that recognizing when you need help and asking for it is something you'll evaluate as a strength, not a weakness.
Define what success looks like
Remember, your early-career marketing leader can’t hit a moving target. Work with them to establish clear expectations, priorities, and goals. Check in regularly to see how they are doing relative to your expectations. Catching something before it becomes a problem will help you both feel like they aren’t failing. Blaming someone for what they don’t know how to do isn't a performance issue. It's a support issue.
Bring them into the room
Experience isn't just doing, it's witnessing. Regardless of their title, if you are putting them in charge of all of the department’s work, they are a department leader. Bringing them into senior level meetings, or even Board meetings when appropriate, shows them that you consider them a leader, and allows them to observe how various leaders across the organization collaborate, debate, and solve problems. Plus, your marketing team (or person) needs to understand the priorities and actions of all of the other departments in order to support them. A summary is never the same as being there, and in a busy organization, even the summary can get lost before it finds its way to the right person.
Every show needs rehearsal. So does someone growing into the job.
Directors don’t come in on the first day of rehearsal expecting their actors to be ready for opening night. It takes time, repetition, instruction, and collaboration. And most of all, it takes the ability to take risks and fail. Trying things that don’t work always leads to the magic. So, don’t expect a staff member with little experience to come in and have the secret sauce on day one. Getting good at any skill requires the opportunity to fail and learn from mistakes. If you expect perfection from the start, they'll play it safe every time, and safe is rarely effective.
Get them the support they need
The experience gap won't close on its own. And, contrary to what many believe, marketing is more than knowing how to post on Facebook. There are best practices, specific skills, ridiculous acronyms, and media reps from every garbage outlet waiting to prey on the vulnerability of fresh blood. If you have the right experience and the time to be their mentor, great. But, if you have that kind of time, you should probably focus on building earned and contributed revenue to a point where you are able to pay for senior level hires. Even a modest investment in professional development goes a long way: a good conference, a continuing education program, or online courses can all make a difference. There are free approaches as well, including peer networks, mentorship programs, or even something as simple as finding someone at another organization in marketing with relevant experience to be a resource.
Hiring a coach with specific experience with the skills your hire needs to develop is one of the best ways to tackle the urgent challenges at hand, accelerate the closing of the experience gap, and invest in the leaders who will take your important work into the future.
