Nearly 40% of CMOs unsatisfied with Quality of New-Hire Talent Pool.

Chief Marketing Officers at top U.S. brands place the highest value on creative thinkers and leaders in their hiring practices, but 39% of the executives revealed they are somewhat to very unsatisfied with the availability of qualified employment candidates, according to new Epsilon research profiling the American CMO.

Asked how satisfied they are with the availability of qualified candidates for marketing positions, with qualified defined as “someone who is able to handle their responsibilities on day one,”
CMOs responded as follows:

– 33% somewhat unsatisfied,
– 6% very unsatisfied,
– 54% somewhat satisfied,
– 5% very satisfied,
– 1% don’t know.
  
The CMOs identified the following as the most important characteristics they look for in a new employee: creative thinker (70%), provides good leadership and inspiration (64%), ability to complete projects efficiently (63%), forward thinking and modern in approach to business (63%), and fiscally responsible (40%). Just 26% of respondents said they place high value on a candidate’s ability to find good balance between career and life outside of work.

“These survey results show a significant number of unsatisfied hiring decision-makers who are anxious to find candidates with marketing talent. The results suggest that while hiring may be slow in 2009, job seekers who combine creativity and leadership with data mining or digital  experience will have ample opportunities in corporate marketing or the agency side of the business,” said Epsilon Chief Marketing Officer Steve Cone. 

Epsilon is a leading marketing services firm providing comprehensive online and offline marketing services to some of the most-recognized brands in the world. Its late-October 2008 online survey was completed by top consumer and business-to-business marketing executives at 180 brands whose annual revenues range from $250 million to over $10 billion. 30% of respondents represent companies with $10 billion or more in annual revenues. GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media, of New York, conducted the survey.

In other key results from the research, CMOs set rather rigorous standards for the outside agencies they hire. Asked to evaluate the extent to which their agency of record exceeds their organization’s expectations in a variety of categories, the marketing executives gave the lowest marks to price (9%) and return on investment (12%). They gave higher scores for communication (27%), knowledge of my business (24%) and client service (23%).

When the bar was lowered slightly to “meets expectations,” the scores increased significantly to price (71%), ROI (67%), communication (60%), knowledge of my business (62%) and client service (64%).

“We’re fortunate to work with seven companies in the Fortune Top Ten and 46% of the Fortune 100, all of whom are dealing with today’s tough economic climate.  In times like these, the increasing pressure on marketing executives forces them to make tough decisions about resource allocation,” noted Cone. “We undertook this research in order to better understand the needs of the many CMOs we work with so that we can serve them better now and in the future.”

CMOs also were asked to identify the marketing effort they would NEVER outsource. Approximately 34% of respondents named strategy and planning services, the highest score. Other top scores were as follows: customer relationship management (31%), customer database warehouse (29%), email delivery system (22%) and data mining (18%).

To download report CLICK on link below:
http://www.epsilon.com/pr/cmo3>