Last year, a high-profile consulting company was excited to have landed an experienced former journalist for a top editor role leading a critical content initiative. Six months in, things changed rapidly.
The initiative was not meeting goals. “The job wasn’t at all what I had been told it was, and I wasn’t at all the right person for the job they wanted me to do.” This person was laid off, with a severance agreement that made them unable to talk on the record for this story.
It’s becoming a familiar pattern: Brands are hiring editorial talent that simply isn’t the right fit, leading to wasted time and money and fallout that is negative for all parties.
“There’s a disconnect of sorts happening right now as the supply of talent in the market grows exponentially,” said one talent acquisition specialist at a brand. “Brands are eager to snap people up, but then it’s a bad fit. And journalism to content is not an apples-to-apples comparison. You can’t just drop someone in.”
The crux of the issue is that brand content has its own set of rules. Marketers looking to develop content operations usually do so in service of a larger goal or priority. The content operation supports a wider business: It may be used to showcase executive thinking, or translate and present company perspectives. That means marketers should look for former journalists, reporters and editors who can understand that the job is intrinsically different. Brand content also usually is much more stringent about KPIs or goals: Editors or reporters working inside brands are often much more involved in ensuring what they do is connected with results, far more so than at a typical news organization.
At McKinsey Global Publishing, which has hired talent from top mainstream news organizations, director Raju Narisetti looks for people “who don’t fall in love with their byline.” “Publishing at McKinsey is in the service of our partnership,” he said on an episode of the Toolkits Podcast last year. “What [they’re] doing is making someone’s work better, more accessible or more interesting. There has to be a recognition that we’re doing this because it helps McKinsey.”
That was the main problem in the case of an advertising agency that hired a well-known trade journalist to run “content” for the company. The company and journalist parted ways within six months. “We simply hadn’t done the legwork in ensuring that we knew what type of content we wanted to make, what our expectations were from this person, and perhaps worst, we didn’t communicate that this was ultimately about our company, not about this person’s portfolio,” said the agency founder and CEO.
Start from the top
Marketing executives and recruiters say that when hiring for content roles, it’s best to start at the top. “I ask: What is their content strategy and what is the right kind of creator that would be appropriate for what they’re doing? What kind of content are we talking? Breaking news reporters by nature have been my choice for people who want speed and accuracy. That’s very different from a CPG brand trying to tell feature stories,” said Elizabeth Osder, an editorial recruiter who works with brands to staff internal newsrooms.
Once the content strategy – who it’s for, why it exists – has been determined, then job descriptions should be carefully considered. “Job descriptions for editorial roles can be extremely vague and obtuse,” said Chandra Turner, founder of the Talent Fairy. “Clearly share what kind of content this role will create, lead, or strategize, what platforms they’ll be working on, and who the target audience is.”
This enables hiring managers to then more carefully fit the staff to the role, and set candidates up with the right expectations going in.
Brands should also look for people who are comfortable with niche topics that may only attract niche audiences. No going viral here: only a few hundred people may read the content they produce. “It’s not about a byline when it comes to branded content. It’s about teamwork and growing a business together,” said Jennifer Leigh Parker, a travel journalist and former editor-in-chief at IPG-owned consulting firm Huge. “If the writer doesn’t ask how the business works, then it’s not a fit. If they don’t offer novel ways to attract your intended audience, move on.”
Brands should also be specific upfront on what success in the role looks like. That goes beyond “building an audience.” Instead, brand marketers should have clear objectives and goals in mind that are written into contracts, job agreements or offer letters. And those goals should not be short-term. “It can take years to build a platform that generates strong leads and meaningful exposure for a brand,” said Parker, who said that time horizons under two years are generally a red flag. For anyone hiring for content roles, that means being realistic about success – and communicating that clearly to candidates.
Then, said Osder, come the specific skills unique to brand content. “Many journalists are not used to KPIs or goals. And those who come from non-business journalism don’t understand sales. They can be introverted writers. But they may not be able to do this kind of more social, interactive job, especially if it’s leading a team.” That means brand marketers should look for skills that include understanding attribution, performance and metrics.
Another pitfall is to only hire journalists to fill writing-heavy positions. Instead, marketers are finding that they may find success in hiring certain types of former journalists in a variety of other roles: Crisis communications, internal or employee communications, social media, and so on. Andrew Nusca, formerly an editorial director at Activision and now an editorial director at Fortune, said that hiring managers at brands should think about roles in research or data as well. “They think this person is a good writer or a good editor. What they don’t think about is this person is the most inquisitive person on my team. This person is the most thorough researcher on my team. This person thinks about the target audience for their work constantly and how to get it to them, and so on.”
Brand marketers should consider the full totality of the skills a journalist brings to the table and not underestimate the importance of the prior work they have done. And perhaps most importantly, brands should try to optimize for credibility above all, particularly if they look to hire former journalists. “As the hiring company, you most certainly know your business better than a journalist who is coming in from the outside. Yet, how to tell the story of your business requires open and honest collaboration with your journalist — who has been trained to hone a healthy skepticism,” said Parker.