A frequent problem a lot of creators, small businesses, and marketers have is trying to find talent. On top of an unfriendly hiring market, it’s hard to know where to look and what to look for. There are a lot of people who say they can do it but have no ability and will charge you a ton of money.
We’ve been very lucky with hiring at HEARD, so here’s the process where we’ve found success in finding great talent for our company.
#1 — Understand your strengths and limitations
Think through where your strengths are. You need to have some self-awareness around your personal abilities, contributions, and bandwidth to contribute to the marketing of your business or to your content creation.
Things like, are you more of a strategist? Do you have the ideas? Do you understand the platforms? Is the concept content going to be conceived in your brain but you need someone to help execute?
If you’re a strategist, look for an executor. You may know what the content should be or understand what your audience wants, but you may not be able to bring those ideas to fruition, so you need to find some people who can execute the ideas you know are a good fit.
If you’re visual, look for someone who’s more technical. You might be a really great visual designer but not a great writer. That’s when you need to prioritize finding writing talent. You help with the design standpoint and find some help with the writing.
#2 — Find generalists who can execute
Even though you are looking for something with a priority, you still want to find generals who can execute, especially early on.
It’s more important for the people you hire to be curious and willing to give a bunch of effort than it is for them to be experts or have a bunch of examples of where they’ve done work at an extremely high level.
There are several reasons for this.
- You’re still evolving. Early on, you’re probably still finding your message and audience fit. Whatever it is you start saying on day one is going to evolve over time and look very different in six months. You’re growing, you’re learning so your latest execution will look very different than how you began.
- The platforms you’re distributing on are constantly changing. If you find someone who only has one niche skill like graphic design or videography but then your needs or the platforms you’re posting on change, you end up with talent you can no longer effectively use.
- You need someone who is multidisciplinary to help you evolve with the platforms. In that regard, younger candidates tend to be better. Not necessarily the most experienced person in the industry, but younger employees tend to have the range of abilities you need to weather change in this digital age.
#3 — Find hobbyists
Find people who are doing the work you need to be done as a part of what they enjoy doing. This could just be fun TikToks, a personal podcast, or someone who has a really good Instagram feed.
Any of those would be a great help to hire for your content, even though it’s completely a hobby. They might not make any money through it, but they understand the platform, know how to create for it, and have built a successful channel doing so.
If they enjoy the work, they can always learn the flow and knowledge needed for your specific industry, so find people who can do the work themselves and are doing it on a hobby basis. Find a great example here.
Tactical things
#1 — Look for older students, look for teachers. We’ve had a lot of success with professors and teachers who have a job for nine months of the year but have a three-month, four-month break in the middle and even during their school year can kind of be flexible certain things.
#2 — Find people who are value-based along with your values. For us, this is people who work at churches, pastors, some missionaries, and writers for Christian publications who understand who we are as people and are willing to help and flex in order to help us accomplish our goals.
Those are just some of the places where we’ve found success. We’ve been very blessed to have people with a bunch of different skills who are also able to evolve as our needs and our customers change, so hopefully that will help you as you find some talent for your team.