(Editor’s note: We’re really happy to have another article by Tom “Bald Dog” Varjan on our site. With characteristic humor he lays out some of the things not to do when hiring a marketing manager. Good advice for any small business).

In the movie Aliens, as a ship of Colonial Marines approaches the colony infested with rampaging alien monsters, Officer Ripley asks Marine Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Gorman how many missions, a.k.a. drops, he’s done.

He says 38. Then he adds: All simulated.

Then Private Vasquez asks him how many combat drops he’s done.

He says he’s done two, including the current drop.

Sadly, this “lots of simulation without real expertise” plays out in small and medium-sized enterprises more often that owners care to admit.

And when it comes to recruiting marketing professionals to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) fall into the trap of hiring the proverbial Lieutenant Gorman: Lots of classroom simulation but no real-life marketing experience.

Lots of people select marketing as their post-secondary or post-graduate choices. Academia has been churning out legions of marketers to create and run marketing campaigns for a broad range of products and services.

And in this shuffle of madness, finding and recruiting the best marketers, SME owners make some costly mistakes.

So, from this terrifyingly terrific crowd of marketers, how in the name of the holy sausage can you find the right marketer one for your SME?

The problem is that many small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) believe they are the small replicas of big corporations and desperately try to mimic their hiring tactics, thinking that this helps them to become big corporations.

But SME’s can mimic big corporations’ tactics until the cows come home, but unless they know big corporations‘ strategies, aping tactics can’t help.

As Sun Tzu put it in The Art of War…

“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.”

It means, when they are founded, the first thing SME owners do is either set up in-house HR departments or hire HR agencies because their owners, aping corporate CEOs, don’t want to lower themselves to the menial task of “dealing with” people.

And this misconception leads to some of the following nine mistakes…

Hiring en masse is the equivalent of a bidding process: “Attention humans! We’re hiring a marketer.”

And who is better to deal with the hundreds of incoming resumes than in-house HR or an HR agency.

But HR people are not dumb. They know that if the new recruit doesn’t work out, HR gets blamed.

So, they make themselves blame-proof by requiring strong academic credentials, no matter how useless they are. Then when some new recruits flop HR people can defend themselves saying…

“You can’t blame me. He’s got a triple MBA and a quadruple Ph.D. It’s not my fault.”

Companies believe if they can mass-hire A-players, their future success is guaranteed. No it’s not.

It’s not because eagles that soar don’t flock. Turkeys flock, but they don’t soar.

A-players have to be sought out one by painstakingly one, courted and seduced into working at your company.

And no HR person or HR agency will ever do that. Well, maybe one in a million.

If you want to find and engage a good marketing person, then your recruitment process is more like seeking a long-term romantic partner and less like finding a one-night stand for a movie and a coupon dinner.

This point highly depends on the position. If you’re seeking a CMO, drop your standard from A-player to a B-player because A-player CMO materials are not seeking employment. They either already work or intend to work as marketing consultants.

They know their expertise is highly sought after and great clients are willing to pay such good money for it that no SME can ever match.

For the promise of guaranteed employment baby boomers put up with organisational mistreatment, but not the younger generation.

They know all the false corporate promises as they watched their parents agonise over what to do when they lost their guaranteed secure jobs.

The best bet is to work with a marketing consultant the way people work with their financial advisors. Meet them regularly to review progress and map out what to do in the next period between this and the next meeting. Have remote access to them in case you have questions, but don’t try to chain them to your company.

As a small-scale farmer, I know dogs can be kept on leashes. But not cats.

Well, talented people, including marketers, are like cats. They stay as long as they enjoy the treatment (money, respect, type of work) they receive.

In two independent studies, the Wellesley Group (2005) and Broderick & Co. (2008) found that the top two talent selection criteria for Global Fortune 1000 executives are “Subject matter expertise in our industry” and “hands-on experience in our industry”.

Case in point.

A few years ago, I worked with a software company that was selling software to larger medical clinics and smaller hospitals. I wrote the draft of the lead generation white paper, which we wanted to use to generate sales leads.

Then to save money, they suspended the project, let me go, and the in-house content writer (in Bangladesh) finalised the white paper. Then the marketing folks sent out the sales letter promoting the white paper.

There were lots of downloads for the white paper. But then the train of action broke. No response after the white paper.

Then, I reckon due to my extensive medical device experience and having worked with hundreds of doctors, nurses and other medical professionals, I got re-engaged and found the problem.

The in-house writer used the word “heart attack” in the document.

That is fine among laypeople, but doctors don’t use heart attack. They use myocardial infarction.

If your target market is construction firms, hire an ex-contractor; if it’s restaurants, hire an ex-restaurateur; if it’s funeral homes, hire an ex-grave-digger or embalmer.

There is a world of difference between corporate marketing and SME marketing.

Corporate marketing is about…

Result:  Company’s leaders: “Wow, we’re truly amazing, aren’t we?”

Entrepreneurial marketing is about…

Result:  Market: “Wow, this company is truly amazing.”

The reality is that there is a world of difference between the dynamic of a big corporation and the dynamic of an entrepreneurial SME.

A big corporation is like a cruise ship; slow and needs half of the ocean to turn.

An “entrepreneurial type” SME is like a military attack boat; fast and can turn on a dime.

So, hiring a “slow-moving” corporate marketer based on his corporate achievement is as lunatic as appointing a military speed boat captain to sail a cruise ship.

Some people erroneously believe that past performance is the best predictor of future performance, so they rely on references from people they don’t even know.

It would be a lot easier to say to the candidate: “I don’t trust you and don’t believe a word you say until and unless you let me talk to some total strangers.”

Well, past performance is not a predictor of future performance.

Past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour. Not 100% bullet-proof, but pretty good.

Different businesses require different behaviours to be successful.

Some cultures are quite collegial, so people cooperate well for the greater good. See Zappos.

Some other cultures, like car dealerships or real estate offices, are moral and ethical cesspools. People, encouraged by their managers, openly stab each other in the back, to get ahead.

You can even expect your co-workers to wire your car to get rid of you and grab your prospects and clients.

When you call for a reference, you find out how your candidate performed in that environment, and just because a fish can “perform” in a fish bowl, it will die in a toilet bowl.

During their days of employment, many SME owners went through big corporations’ obstacle course type hiring processes, and now they try to build similar obstacle courses for candidates.

But they should be careful.

Many marketers choose to work at SMEs because of the more human and inclusive environment. So, when SMEs’ HR departments try to push these candidates through these corporate hiring obstacle courses, the best candidates don their hats and run away faster than an outhouse rat.

They can go through the same process at a big corporation for five – or more – times the salary.

Many SME owners make the mistake of setting the salary of the new marketer based on what the company can justify in its current state.

Then when the candidate shows up, the owner drops the bomb…

“With your good marketing, I expect the company to go from $50 million annual revenue to $100 million. And we pay you a competitive annual salary of $45,000. I think you should jump for joy.”

Many SMEs scream that they can’t find good marketers.

Well, they are available, but not for peanuts.

While the world is flooded with marketing graduates, there is only a limited number of marketers who really understand their craft, and in today’s knowledge-based society, companies need good marketers more than the other way ‘round.

And when you say competitive salary, you actually say, average business seek an average marketer for average salary. But remember, average is where the best of the worst meets the worst of the best.

“Careful, careful with that business grad, Eugene…”

Paraphrasing the old Pink Floyd song, “ Careful with that axe, Eugene ”, be careful with these hot-shot business graduates.

Marketing was established by degree-less people and when it proved to be lucrative, academia hijacked it to make its money on teaching it.

According to the study “Academic Dishonesty in Graduate Business Programs: The Prevalence, Causes, and Proposed Actions”, 56%  of graduate business students admit to cheating to obtain their sheepskins.

In a 2005 Wetfeet study, students who pursued careers in management consulting, the lowest selection criterion to find their ideal firms was ethics (0.25%).

Also, In 2002, American Enterprise Magazine in Washington, D.C., examined the political / economic orientation of college professors in 20 colleges and universities.

At the Harvard Business School, 62% of professors admitted being Marxists, embracing socialism, big welfare state government, strong unions and extensive regulations, while condemning free markets, profits and entrepreneurship. It’s even worse at the Kennedy School of Government (86%) and Harvard Law School (96%).

So, what can you expect of graduates who’ve been through four or more years of Marxist indoctrination?

The value of a good marketer lies in understanding and applying strategy.

Sadly, as Janessa Lantz points out in her article, The Problem With Tech Marketing: Action-First vs. Strategy-First , strategy is a neglected in marketing.

Since my area of expertise is marketing complex, expensive and hard-to-explain IT solutions, I see this problem on a regular basis. Marketing is all tricks and techniques without an enveloping strategy. One of the reasons is that a marketing strategist can’t have a cool title like “Growth Hacker”, whatever that means.

I can even say that you can have the world’s best symphonic orchestra, but without a conductor the orchestra can’t make a sound except tuning their instruments.

Between 1969–1991, a fellow Hungarian, Sir Georg Solti was the Chicago Symphony’s musical director and between 1991 and 1997, he was its principal conductor.

The Chicago Symphony became a legend in the world of classical music.

Then Sir Georg died on 5 September 1997, and the legend has gradually crumbled away.

Select a marketer who has a good big picture view. Hire a proverbial orchestra conductor not a piccolo player.

A good conductor can always find the best piccolo player, but not the other way ‘round.

I know many points you’ve read here go against conventional HR wisdom and they may or may not apply to you.

But sometimes you have to break some well-established, but obsolete, HR laws  to find the best people for your business.

What we have to understand is that HR departments mass-hire large amounts of people who look good on paper and can demonstrate sufficient level of indentured servitude to “fit” into organisations.

Yes, HR experts can tell from the resumes if their senders are good or poor fits. Judge someone’s character based on a quick glance at a one-page document.

I reckon, this is one of the reasons for articles like, Why We Hate HR  by Keith H. Hammonds (Fast Company, Issue 97, August 2005).

So, if you want to recruit high-calibre experts with you can easily bypass HR.

All you need is two trusting assessments.

One is the Strengthsfinder  programme, developed by American psychologist, Dr. Donald Clifton , often regarded as the “father of Strengths-Based Psychology” and the “grandfather of Positive Psychology”.

It assesses people’s top five natural talents.

The other is Kathy Kolbe ’s Kolbe A test . Unlike other personality assessment programmes, the Kolbe A index indicates people’s likely behaviour and the kind of action they take under certain circumstances.

Armed with these two tests, you can look forward to some exciting conversations with highly talented people.

And no matter who you eventually hire, remember this military maxim that I heard many times during my military service: There are no bad teams only bad leaders.

Tom “Bald Dog” Varjan is a business development strategist and copywriter who helps small and medium sized high tech firms that sell complex, expensive and hard-to-explain, so-called “high-consideration” products and services to smart, savvy and sophisticated buyers in the B2B arena.

Leaning on his computer engineer background, industrial experience and buyer’s insights, he uses precise market positioning, engaging messaging and effective systematisation and automation to make that happen, so many of his former clients have achieved as high as $2.17 million revenue per employee, while having eliminated responding to RFPs and the dialling for dollars.

Website: www.varjan.com