Hiring Industry Team

Embrace the High-Level Individual Contributor: How to Hire for This Unconventional Role

I’m SparkToro’s VP Marketing and here’s how I spent a recent afternoon: I sifted through our Google Analytics dashboard. I was looking for our most popular pages and copying them into a spreadsheet so that we can keep track of what needs to be updated for the public launch of SparkToro V2. I included the title of the page, link,…
Hiring Marketing Startups

Maybe You Need a Fractional Marketing Director — Not a Fractional CMO

I recently blurted out during a webinar that company leaders should think beyond the role of fractional Chief Marketing Officer (fCMO) — and instead consider other fractional roles. Someone followed up to ask me about the downsides to fCMOs, and then I suddenly remembered my past experiences in working with a few of them. They were definitely pleasant, talented and…
Hiring Industry Psychology Team

You can’t hire ambitious people and then ask them to stop being ambitious.

Hiring managers, executives, CEOs—especially those in tech—are proud to say that we only consider applicants with an unrelenting drive for success and a track record of impressive accomplishments. These qualities often correlate with what we perceive (accurately or not) to be our own reasons for success, and we want to find people like us: individuals with intrinsic motivation, constantly striving…

SparkToro’s Mission, Vision, and Values: BELUX

Those skilled in the art of BS detection can tell you that 99% of company mission, vision, and values statements are meaningless. For corporate ideals to be more than just blatant-hypocrisy-in-poster-form, leadership has to build them into the company’s operating systems: how they hire/fire/promote, how they prioritize product investments, treat customers, make decisions around funding and acquisitions, and more. Even…

Why You Should Hire Agencies & Consultants (for everything you can)

In my first decade as a tech CEO, I consistently got advice about how building a great team was essential to building a great business. Agencies and consultants were never part of this conversation. It was always: hire full-time employees in areas where you need a competitive advantage; only hire agencies for functions you want to put on autopilot or…
Book Hiring Moz Personal

I’m Ending My Tenure on Moz’s Board & Welcoming Tara Reed and Asia Orangio

The short, short version: After stepping down as CEO in 2014 and leaving the company in 2018, as of a signature earlier today, I’m officially off Moz’s board of directors. The incredibly impressive CEO & founder of DemandMaven, Asia (Matos) Orangio accepted my offer to fill the chairperson seat. Simultaneously, I nominated Apps Without Code‘s extraordinary founder and CEO, Tara…
Data Hiring Marketing

Survey: 734 Marketing Professionals Share How They’re Hiring in the 2020 Recession

If you’re a marketing student about to graduate, a job-seeker considering the field of marketing, or someone who’s looking to advance in their marketing career, this report is for you. Marketing is an immense, growing, and well-paid field, and is one of the few where credentials and alma mater mean far less than quality of work and level of knowledge.…
Hiring Psychology Startups Team

Why Elon Musk’s “People as Vectors” Analogy Resonates

In his keynote at INBOUND last year, Dharmesh Shah (Hubspot’s cofounder) shared a personal story of meeting Elon Musk and their short but powerful conversation about aligning people on a team as you would vectors in an equation. Unlike many folks in the startup world, I’m not a die-hard Musk fan. I appreciate his creativity and accomplishments, but also find…