What Actually Matters in a Modern Marketing Hire
Hiring marketers in 2025 shouldn’t feel like a gamble—but it still does for a lot of teams. Job titles are vague, portfolios are polished, and the default filter of “3–5 years of experience” hasn’t aged well.
You don’t need another person who can “do social” or “run content.” You need people who can think, adapt, and contribute to the whole business. The job has changed. Your hiring criteria should too.
Here’s what to actually look for in modern marketing talent, and what matters more than buzzwords or time served.
Why “3–5 Years of Experience” Doesn’t Mean Much Anymore
Most job descriptions still lean on the same boilerplate requirement: “3–5 years of experience in a similar role.”
But experience on paper rarely matches performance in practice. One marketer might spend three years building full-funnel strategies across departments. Another might spend three years copying and pasting press releases into LinkedIn. Same job title, wildly different impact.
Instead of filtering by years, ask:
- What have they actually owned, built, or improved?
- Can they connect their work to outcomes that matter?
- Do they understand the business, not just the marketing?
Tenure matters less than traction. If they’ve done sharp work that moved the needle, you’ll know in the first few minutes of the interview. If not, no number of years is going to make up for that gap.
Our Top 5 Marketing Must-Haves for 2025
The 2025 hiring market looks a lot different than it did a few years ago, and that’s a good thing. Teams aren’t chasing unicorns who can “do it all.” They’re looking for people who can think clearly, collaborate across functions, and bring structure to fast-moving work.
More marketing teams are getting serious about strategy. Silos are breaking down. Expectations are rising. And the best hires aren’t the ones who check every box on a job description, they’re the ones who know how to connect the dots.
#1. Strategic Thinkers Over Siloed Executors
Modern marketing teams don’t work in neat little boxes anymore. Brand touches product. Content touches sales. Ops supports everything.
So when you hire someone, they should understand how their work fits into the larger system.
Ask:
- Can they talk through how a campaign drove actual revenue, not just clicks?
- Have they worked cross-functionally, and can they describe what that looked like?
- Do they understand how content, CRM, and conversion points link up?
A great hire can spot bottlenecks, build relationships across teams, and explain how their work serves the business outside of the brief. You’re hiring a thinker, not a task rabbit.
#2. Clear, Confident Communicators
Good marketing is good communication. Period.
Your hire needs to be able to write well, speak clearly, and explain their thinking. Whether they’re sending a Slack update to sales, writing ad copy, or presenting to leadership, they should be able to tell a sharp story.
In interviews, look for people who:
- Can explain complex work simply
- Have a point of view without steamrolling others
- Use writing samples that show both clarity and intent
If their email follow-up feels like a pitch deck or their copy samples read like filler, keep looking. Communication isn’t the cherry on top. It’s the job.
#3. Data-Fluent but Not Data-Obsessed
Dashboards are only helpful if you know how to read them and when to ask better questions.
The best marketers don’t just know how to pull numbers. They know what the numbers mean, what to do next, and when data is misleading.
What to ask:
- How have they used data to adjust a strategy in real time?
- What metrics do they care about most, and why?
- Can they explain a time a number looked good, but something still wasn’t working?
The goal is to find someone who respects the data without being ruled by it. They should be curious and informed, not KPI-blinded.
#4. POVs with Flexibility
You want someone with a point of view, someone who can speak up in meetings, contribute to strategy, and push the work forward. But rigid “my way or the highway” thinking? That’s a no.
The sweet spot is a confident perspective with a willingness to evolve.
How to spot it:
- Ask them to critique a recent campaign (their own or someone else’s). Can they do it constructively?
- Throw a new variable into a past project. What would they change?
- Listen for nuance. Do they speak in absolutes, or do they acknowledge the gray areas?
Strong marketers know what they believe. Great marketers are willing to change their minds.
#5. Systems Thinkers Who Can Scale Processes
Good creative is great. Repeatable creative is better.
You don’t want a new hire who needs to reinvent the process for every project. You want someone who can take what works and make it scalable: templates, checklists, briefs, playbooks.
Look for people who:
- Document their own work
- Build templates for future projects
- Can train others on their systems
Ask them how they’d onboard a junior marketer. What process would they put in place for content QA? How do they track campaign performance across channels?
If they light up talking about Airtable views or Google Sheets checklists, you’re onto something.
Bonus: Be AI-Aware, But Human-First
Your new hire doesn’t need to be a prompt engineering expert but they do need to know how to use AI without sounding like one.
Ask them how they’re using tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity. Have they built any templates? Do they know how to spot hallucinated content? Can they use AI to accelerate creative work without letting it replace their own judgment?
The best marketers in 2025 will be fluent in AI as a tool, but confident enough in their voice to keep humanity in their work.
What to Look for in Portfolios and Interviews
Resumes can only tell you so much. To hire well, you need to look beyond job descriptions and into how someone actually works.
Don’t just ask what they built, ask how they built it. In portfolios, look for strategy breakdowns that explain the problem, the process, and the impact. The best candidates will show you not just the asset, but the thinking behind it.
Look for outcomes, not outputs. Did their work reduce support tickets? Increase demo requests? Change how sales approached follow-up? If there’s no “so what,” there’s no strategy.
How did they work with product, sales, or design? What did they own, and how did they enable others? Strong marketers don’t work in a vacuum, they make everyone else’s work better too.
In interviews, go past hypotheticals. Try these instead:
- “Walk me through a campaign you led: start to finish. What changed because of it?”
- “Tell me about a time a piece of content didn’t hit. What did you do next?”
- “Share an example of cross-functional collaboration. What worked? What didn’t?”
You’re not hiring for perfect answers. You’re hiring for how someone solves problems, adapts, and learns. If they can talk through both the wins and the pivots, you’re on the right track.
Want Help Finding Your Next Great Hire?
FMK helps supplement in-house teams with marketers who think strategically, communicate clearly, and build systems that scale. If you’re done settling for resumes that look good on paper but stall in the real world, let’s talk.