Hiring for Marketing Graduates: Why this pre-hire recruitment process should be adopted

19 April 2024

Is your company looking to invest in marketing to promote its goods or services? Hiring skilled and passionate Marketing Graduates, whether through a graduate program or entry-level position, can significantly enhance your marketing strategy. In this short article, we share our recommended pre-employment assessment process and selection tools for hiring a Marketing Graduate to ensure you select best-fit top candidates for your marketing role and company.

Contents: 

1. What is a Marketing Graduate and what do they do?
2. What is the best assessment process to hire the right Marketing Graduates?
3. Concluding remarks

1. What is a Marketing Graduate and what do they do?

What is a Marketing Graduate?

A Marketing Graduate is an entry-level role, often part of a structured graduate scheme offered by an organization’s marketing department or by a specialist marketing agency. These aim to expose graduates to the different areas of marketing in order to broaden their knowledge and skills before specialization.

What areas could a Marketing Graduate specialize in?

As Marketing Graduates advance through their graduate programs or progress in their careers, they may choose to specialize in areas such as:

• Advertising
• Communications
• Branding
• Market research
• Digital marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Social Media marketing
• Content marketing
• Events organization
• Public relations
• Marketing analysis
• Web marketing

Due to the diversity within this industry, a career in marketing is highly sought-after amongst students and graduates. 

What would be the roles and responsibilities of a Marketing Graduate for my organization?

Marketing Graduates will primarily be expected to help members of the marketing team with the promotion of the organization’s brand, products or services, being careful to keep in mind the specific customer demand and target markets.

Common responsibilities for a Marketing Graduate include:

• Developing and implementing marketing strategies which meet company or client objectives
• Conducting market research and analyzing consumer behavior to identify market trends
• Planning and managing digital and social media marketing campaigns across various channels
• Contributing to overall brand development, positioning, design, and usage through consistent messaging
• Creating marketing materials, graphics, advertisements, and presentations
• Collection and analysis of campaign metrics and insights into target audience to make data-driven marketing decisions
• Relationship-building and effective communication with clients, colleagues, and other stakeholders
• Cross-functional collaboration with sales, finance, and product development teams for cohesive marketing efforts

What skills and competencies are important for a Marketing Graduate role?

There are several skills and competencies which are crucial for success in a Marketing Graduate role, and should, therefore, be considered when selecting candidates. In your Marketing Graduate recruitment process, we recommend assessing a blend of creative and transferable business skills such as:

• Written and verbal communication skills
• Creativity
• Attention to detail
• Project management skills
• Numerical skills
• Analytical skills
• Research skills
• Presentation skills
• Organizational skills
• Time-management
• Adaptability
• Digital marketing and social media marketing knowledge

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2. What is the best assessment process to hire the top Marketing Graduates?

When implementing a pre-employment assessment process for a Marketing Graduate role, it can be difficult to ensure that candidates are assessed against the relevant skills and competencies for marketing. 

That is why we have outlined step-by-step a systematic and robust recruitment assessment plan for you to easily follow. This will provide you with well-rounded comprehensive insight into your candidates so you can make informed hiring decisions.

1. Pre-employment Aptitude Tests

At the initial stage of your Marketing Graduate recruitment process, we recommend using selected online pre-employment aptitude tests in order to quickly and accurately sift through applicants and determine which have the necessary technical skills and knowledge for your marketing role. This type of insight is not easily provided from CVs or cover letters alone. 

What aptitude tests should I include at the initial sifting stage of hiring my Marketing Graduate?

For your Marketing Graduate role, you should consider the following skill-based pre-employment assessments: 

• A pre-employment verbal reasoning assessment: Marketing Graduates in the workplace will be required to conduct lengthy market research, write persuasively, and communicate strategically to convey their ideas and promote marketing messages to clients, colleagues, and target consumers. This means they will be working heavily with written information and collaborating as part of a team with people from all levels of seniority and functions. Therefore, assessing candidates’ verbal comprehension and communication skills through a verbal reasoning test is essential to determine whether they have the right technical skills for the role. 

• A pre-employment numerical reasoning test: Particularly within digital marketing, Marketing Graduates will be expected to handle and analyze large amounts of data to learn about campaign performance, the markets, and customer behavior and make fast data-based decisions. A numerical reasoning test is thus a great tool to measure candidates’ analytical skills and how they interpret and manage numerical data.

2. A Pre-employment Situational Judgement Test

At this initial assessment stage, or at the next stage, it is best practice to also ask candidates to take a pre-employment situational judgement test. In this type of assessment, candidates will need to rank the possible responses to different work-based scenarios. This will provide accurate insight into candidates’ core behavioral competencies and how they might actually behave in the role. 

Moreover, you can customize your Marketing Graduate situational judgement test so that the work-based scenarios and challenges are realistic to those found at your organization. You can also tailor the questions to only assess the specific set of competencies that are most relevant for a Marketing Graduate.

What competencies should I assess in my Marketing Graduate pre-hire situational judgement test?

The competencies which are most relevant for a Marketing Graduate role and should, therefore, be assessed are:

• Communication
• Teamwork
• Innovation
• Attention to detail
• Organizing and planning
• Adaptability
• Analyzing

3. A Pre-hire Video Interview

For the penultimate stage in your Marketing Graduate assessment process, we recommend presenting your shortlisted candidates with a one-way timed video interview. Here, candidates will be required to record their answers to a series of questions predetermined by you so that you can learn more about their skills, marketing experience, and ‘job fit’.

As a recruiter, what questions should I include in my Marketing Graduate video interview?

Your Marketing Graduate video interview could be competency-based, strength-based, technical and based around digital marketing or simply revolve around who the candidate is, what their past experiences are, and why they want to work for your company. 

As assessors, you can use your own hiring criteria to determine which candidates are best-fit for your role and company and should, therefore, proceed to the final assessment stage.

4. An Assessment Center

The final stage of your Marketing Graduate assessment process, particularly if you are hiring as part of a Marketing graduate scheme, should be inviting your top candidates to a virtual or in-person assessment center. The purpose of this final assessment is to enable a comprehensive understanding of your candidates and see the full range of their skills and competencies in action so you can make the most informed hiring decisions.

How should I set up an assessment center for my Marketing Graduate role?

During your Marketing Graduate assessment center, you should assess candidates through a series of exercises designed to test aptitudes, competencies, and strengths and evaluate how suitable each candidate is for your role and organization. These may include: 

• A group exercise, typically in the form of a case study discussion or problem-solving exercise, which assesses how well candidates interact and work in a team under pressure
• An in-tray exercise to test candidates’ ability to absorb information, prioritize tasks, and make complex decisions
• A presentation on an individual basis or as part of a group with Q&A
• A written task, for example in the form of an email, marketing campaign proposal or performance report
• A face-to-face interview with a panel of senior staff or one-to-one – this should mainly be competency-based and related to candidates’ knowledge of the role and company

As the assessors, using these exercises, you will be able to determine which candidates are best-fit for your marketing role, team, and company culture and finally select those to hire.

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3. Concluding remarks

By incorporating these specific assessments into your Marketing Graduate recruitment process, you will quickly build well-rounded reliable pictures of candidates and their range of skills and behavioral competencies. This valuable insight will enable you, as recruiters and hiring managers, to determine who are the best-fit top candidates to shortlist and, ultimately, hire to work for your company.