CHICAGO — Event marketing teams are navigating an entirely new post-COVID talent acquisition landscape, with challenges including skyrocketing salaries and the demand for remote work.
In a June 23 webinar presented by the Society of Independent Show Organizers (SISO) Marketing Special Interest Group (SIG), a panel of recruiting experts from the show management industry’s leading business event companies—Danielle Antes, director of talent acquisition at Emerald; Heather Crovo, vice president of human resources at Clarion Events North America; and David Herd, head of talent acquisition at Clarion Events North America—shared the challenges and solutions for finding the right types of marketing talent to bring into their event management organizations.
Here are five trends currently shaping event marketing recruiting, as discussed during the SISO Marketing SIG webinar, “The Future of HR and Recruiting for the NEW Marketing Team.”
1. Event marketing teams need a new and more specific skill set than in the past.
“The two biggest changes we’re seeing at Emerald are the demand for digital skills and data literacy,” said Emerald’s Antes. “It’s no longer just about how to design and execute a marketing plan, but understanding what data is coming in and what you do with it from there. Those are demanding skills, and it’s leading us to look to other industries for marketers.”
Clarion Events’ Herd said: “A few years ago I wouldn’t have even known what a digital marketing analyst or a digital database manager was, and now these roles exist. We need to make sure we’re maximising the data we have and integrating it into our marketing.”
2. New employees demand to work remotely.
Remote hiring made up the vast majority of new hires in the first half of 2022. The benefits are mutual, panelists said. “Remote hiring has been a really great tool for us,” Antes said. “Being able to look at people in other parts of the country, not just cities like New York and Los Angeles, has been huge.”
Crovo of Clarion Events agrees. “If you can work with leadership to think about how to manage remote teams, you’ll have a much larger pool of candidates at your disposal, and potentially at a lower cost, than if you were just hiring people who can travel to a particular area.”
3. People are demanding higher wages across the board.
Event companies are realizing they need to raise salaries to attract talent with the new skills they need and to retain existing employees. “We’re hiring in a lot of other industries that have increased salaries and we need to adapt to those increases,” Antes said. “We’re also looking for these new, emerging, and extremely competitive skills, but if you haven’t updated your compensation accordingly, it’s going to be very difficult.”
4. There is a growing interest in intangible benefits.
Recruiters have found that many event management candidates, particularly Gen Z, are inquiring about intangible benefits, but they still have a salary cap at the low end. “It’s a candidate’s market right now across all industries,” Crovo said. “Remote work has leveled the playing field a little bit because you can reach candidates much more broadly, but it really depends on the candidate and the role you’re talking about. Different people want different things, and especially for the younger generation, salary is just as important as culture and work-life balance.”
One way to attract talent to the event management field is to highlight the benefits and meaning of working in events, as well as the impact those events can have. “At Clarion, we have 12 portfolios and 50 events, so once they understand what our events are, they’re excited,” Herd said. “Once you talk about the travel and how they can work with colleagues in different locations across the U.S., that really draws them in. We also have a large marketing team, so they know they’re coming to a growing company with different portfolios and a lot to learn.”
5. Business marketing is essential.
All participants realized they needed to tap into their internal marketers to attract marketers to the event management organization. “Over the last six months, we’ve been on a mission to promote Clarion as a brand in the marketplace and showcase what it’s like to work here: the different roles and benefits, and sharing event videos,” Crovo said. “We’re getting that out there and starting to build that brand more frequently and consistently, so that when we talk about jobs with candidates outside the industry who may not fully understand it, they have a lot more to see, touch and feel.”
Contact Danielle Antes at [email protected] ; Heather Crovo at [email protected] ; David Herd at [email protected]
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