If you’re organizing an event for a mid-size or large audience, you definitely need help. There are simply too many tasks and moving parts and pieces to keep everything straight by yourself. However, it can be challenging to find the right people to fill your open event management and event marketing jobs.
In fact, your challenges might start before you even begin recruiting for specific positions. You might not even know what kinds of event management and event marketing jobs you need to fill!
To help you put together a team that can drive successful results for your event, follow the 10 steps to fill your event management and event marketing jobs discussed below.
1. Identify the Skills You Need
You can’t define your event management and event marketing jobs if you don’t know what skills and experience you need from candidates. Think about what you need help with on a daily basis. What tasks do you spend time on that take you away from the tasks only you can perform? These are tasks that an employee could do for you. Create a list of the skills and experience you need before you do anything else!
2. Write Job Descriptions
Next, you need to write descriptions of the event management and event marketing jobs you want to fill. These job descriptions can be published on career search websites, given to employment agencies and recruiters, posted to your website, shared on online job boards, and more. Make sure they’re detailed and describe not just the tasks the employee will be doing on a daily basis but also specific skills, characteristics, and experience they should bring to the table.
3. Choose Where to Promote Your Open Event Management and Event Marketing Jobs
There are many job search websites online. The trick is finding sites to post your job openings where the type of candidates you want are searching already. For higher-level event management and event marketing jobs, sites like LinkedIn, Monster, and CareerBuilder can work well. For lower-level positions, sites like Craigslist and Indeed are useful.
You could also work with an employment agency or recruiter to source candidates for your open jobs. Interview each agency or recruiter you consider before you commit to working with them to confirm they have experience placing candidates in your industry and have access to the right candidates to fill your open roles.
4. Prepare Your Interview Questions
Interview questions for event management and event marketing jobs should include a variety of probing questions in four categories: experience and skill verification, operational and situational, role-specific, and cultural-fit.
Experience and skill verification questions are crafted to confirm that the information in a candidate’s resume is accurate (they really have done what they claim). Operational and situational questions are designed to put candidates in imaginary situations that they might find themselves in when working for you. The goal is to learn how they would react, solve problems, meet deadlines, boost efficiency, and so on.
Role-specific questions are used to ensure candidates are capable of performing all of the job duties you require. Even if they don’t have experience in a specific task, they might be trainable. Finally, cultural-fit questions help determine if a candidate’s personality, values, and motivations are a good match for your company’s environment and culture.
5. Review Resumes and Cover Letters
As resumes and cover letters start coming in, review all of them. Look for keywords related to the tasks and responsibilities that are most important to you. Search for quantifiable evidence of each candidate’s successes within their resumes.
Also, make sure you read between the lines. A resume only tells a very small part of a candidate’s story. For example, don’t immediately reject a resume for a candidate that has a large gap between jobs or doesn’t have a college degree (or another requirement you created for the position). By doing so, you just might reject the perfect employee before you get to know enough about them to accurately evaluate their potential.
6. Conduct Social Media Research
Narrow your list of candidates down, and then, conduct a social media search on each person. If their LinkedIn Profiles are public, verify the employment and education information included in their resumes. Read the articles they’ve published, content they’ve shared, and conversations they’ve been involved in publicly.
Importantly, review any testimonials that other LinkedIn users have provided about your candidates. You can also search for candidates’ public profiles on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites to further verify the claims in their resumes and cover letters.
7. Hold Interviews
Once you’ve narrowed down your list of candidates to a handful that you want to learn more about, hold an interview with each person. Ask the interview questions you prepared in #4 above, and get to know about their experience, skills, career interests, and goals. Find out why they’re interested in your open position and your company, and try to get an understanding of their work ethic.
8. Evaluate Your Results
When you’re done conducting interviews, it’s time to evaluate the results to determine if you want to offer your open event management and event marketing jobs to any of the candidates you’ve interviewed. Compare each candidate to the others being sure to look for the skills that are most important to you on a daily basis. What can you train someone to do and what must they know already? Remember, it’s often better to hire based on work ethic than experience.
9. Choose a Candidate or Expand Your Search
If your first round of resume submissions ends with the perfect candidates, that’s wonderful. However, don’t worry if you don’t find the right match for your open positions immediately. Often, you need to spend weeks or months promoting your open jobs before the right candidates come along. With that in mind, always start your search well before you’ll actually need your team to be working with you, and remember to factor in onboarding and training time for new hires!
10. Extend an Offer
The last step in filling your event management and event marketing jobs is to extend offers to the candidates you want to hire. Conduct some local salary research to ensure the salary you plan to offer is competitive. You can use sites like PayScale, Salary.com, and Glassdoor for salary research.
Next, create a formal offer letter including the start date, agreed upon salary, and any other logistical information needed. It’s a good idea to work with an attorney to create your offer letters. If a candidate accepts your offer, you can prepare their onboarding process. If a candidate declines your offer, you can offer the job to an alternate candidate or expand your search if no other candidates meet your requirements.
Your Next Steps
By following the 10 steps above, you’ll develop an effective and streamlined hiring process to fill your event management and event marketing jobs. This process works whether you’re hiring full-time employees or contractors and whether you’re filling short-term or long-term positions. Keep in mind, some jobs are more challenging to fill than others, so you might have to be patient. Don’t settle. Instead, try to wait for the perfect candidate (or as close to perfect as possible).
