How to Identify, Hire and Retain Great Junior Marketers w. Brittany Smith

James Lawrence: Today I am joined by Britney Smith. Brit, welcome to the pod. 

Brittany Smith: Thank you. Excellent to be here.

James Lawrence: It is excellent to have you here. So Brit is currently a Senior Account Manager at Rocket but more relevant to this conversation, she's the head of the Rocket Academy. The Rocket Academy is Rocket's intern and grad program, where we identify a mentor and train junior marketers with the skills and knowledge they need to become successful career marketers. Prior to Rocket, Brit was account manager at The Crew, which is a boutique brand communications agency specialising in the hospitality industry. So Brit, welcome to the pod. I think just as a starting point, what is the Rocket Academy and how did it come about? 

Brittany Smith: So the Rocket Academy as you said earlier, is our graduate program essentially. And that kicked off back in May 2021, when we onboarded our first few graduates and interns at the time. And I guess it came about from discussions within the agency where we were having challenges hiring midway or more senior marketers, and some of those hires were falling through, and we were trying to figure out a way to build up our own talent pool and make sure that we were guaranteed in the future for great staff and that they would be part of Rocket, and they would have what we required in terms of skill sets. So it can be a bit tricky when you do have mid levels coming in and they already have previous experience and they want to do things a certain way. So we thought we'd pilot a program or the leadership team did. And then I got offered to drive that initiative. And so it was a really interesting process at the beginning, because we were also testing a new recruitment process, which was group interviews, versus doing one on one interviews. And it was a great way to get a big group of graduates and uni students in the one room, see how they interacted with each other, and just do a variety of different, I guess, small exercises. Then one on one speed interviews to pick a handful of people to join the program. 

James Lawrence: I think today, what has worked, what hasn't worked? I think we're 18 months in now and we've had initiatives over the years, probably less structured in terms of hiring grads. And so I think there are some really good insights for listeners to the pod.  And I guess we're kind of lucky in the sense that we kicked the program off prior to the real crunch in talent in Australia. So it wasn't a knee jerk reaction to that. And we've kind of fortunately had good people coming through the agency before that crunch kind of hit earlier this year. What didn't work initially because we did have some kind of fits and starts I guess?

Brittany Smith: So the program itself definitely evolved pretty quickly. So our initial hires, we were hiring people part time, we were hiring graduates so people finishing uni and then also uni students. And the program was actually designed to have all those graduates just floating within the company to help us fill capacity issues within teams. So what that meant is every day I would start my workday and ask different teams if they needed a hand in something and then delegate. That work wasn't very efficient, wasn't a great use of my time. And it also meant that the grads or interns were fairly scattered. They weren't necessarily learning specific skills, they were just floating within those teams. And so that didn't work. And we worked out pretty quickly that we needed people to be in specific roles, training in that area of the business. And then the grad programs role in their career would be to help bridge that gap between uni and full time work. So after about three months, we pretty much overhauled the structure of the program. And since then we've been running it as you come in for a specific role within a specific team, and then you get support through the academy.

James Lawrence: Because I think, we're not the first business to have a grad program or a kind of a student program. Kind of the big end of town where there are lots of big companies that offer students while they're doing their degrees, part time work, and it didn't work for us. Do you feel that's just a reality of where a smaller business, like we've kind of got 40 to 50 people in the team at any one time, and is it the part time thing? A failure for us just because we need people in a different way to bigger companies. Like what's you're feeling there? 

Brittany Smith: I think it's a tricky one because we do have 1 or 2 people who were part time and ended up staying with us for about a year and then finishing up their uni degrees and then moving into full time. So I think if they have capacity, it can work. But ideally you just want someone who's yeah, for us as a smaller business, it's worked much better having people full time, fully committed to upskilling in that specific role. And I think as well, like rotation grad programs are so common in really big businesses. But again, in a small to medium business, you don't necessarily have the resources to train someone in one area and then move them on 3 to 6 months later. So again, hiring people for specific roles has really been what's worked for us.

James Lawrence: I think that's right. And the part time kind of converts into full time. Yeah, I could be wrong on this, but I think they were in specific roles. And those roles themselves have one manager, one set of tasks, and it could be kind of done in a part time capacity. I think for us, we found that with the part time work, all the overheads are still there in terms of the mentoring and the training and the staff meetings and the one on ones, and its kind of hard to get full value for eithe the individual or the agency. 

Brittany Smith: And I think we only took on those people in a part time capacity because their manager agreed that they were definitely worth the investment, and that they were going to guarantee as much as you can guarantee to stay on and become full time so you could see the fruits of your investment there.

James Lawrence: I definitely agree with that. A learning for us was full time going into a role. So either you're going into a client services role or you're going into a paid search role or paid social role. And I think we've, as with most businesses, it doesn't mean that you're in three years time going to be doing the same thing. We've definitely had grads that have moved from one team to the other. For whatever reason, I think to add to why we did it, I think at the moment people listen to this pod. Obviously there's a shortage of great marketing talent. So it makes sense that when there's a pod titled, you know, how to identify, hire and retain great talent, you listen. It's not for us. It was very much not about cheap labour, like it was very much about how do we identify and attract really high quality candidates that will then come through the agency in the next one, two, three, four years. And you touched on it, which is often in the industry. You can kind of get middleweights that have floated around a bit, done the year on year at different places, or just don't do things the way we want you to do them. So I think being able to bring young, smart people through and shape them and mentor them in a way that you want has kind of untold benefits. 

Brittany Smith: Definitely. And I think providing them with ongoing training and opportunities means they're going to stay interested, engaged and want to continue on in the business as well. But for us, it's definitely been, we've already seen the benefits of that 18 months into the program, with how capable those first grads are and where they're at in their roles now. So it's really exciting. 

James Lawrence: Yeah. That's it. I think maybe that jumps a few questions ahead. But what is expectations heading here? It would be interesting to get your perspective. Like what's realistic in terms of how long to hire people? How long are they in a role where they're probably not as productive as you'd really expect of a full time worker? 

Brittany Smith: We see the first 3 to 6 months, as most businesses do, with any role, but particularly with our juniors. The first 3 to 6 months is such a critical time for seeing if they are as capable as they seem to be in the interview process, getting them up to scratch professionally so that they know how to send an email, they know how to talk with the team, but also getting them fully across their role and making sure that they're a happy in that role and be capable of doing that role. So there is so many unknowns, but when you've got the right structures in place, you can guarantee success. So there has been instances where the role hasn't been the right fit for someone, but there has been resourcing needs in other parts of the agency. So they've been transitioned over there. And that is the benefit of bringing in the juniors, because that fluidity in what they're wanting to do as part of their career. A lot of the time they're not coming in, going, I want to be an SEO specialist. They just want to work for a great business and learn from experts or people around them. So yeah, if you can provide that environment for them normally, or at least what we've found, they're pretty happy to jump in and do what's needed. 

James Lawrence: I think that's right. It feels that you're probably more involved on the day to day with the members of the team. But that and as you touched on with most roles, that first three months, you are learning the ropes in many ways. And I think when we have middleweights come in, they do hit the ground probably a little bit faster. It's kind of skilling up on. How we do things that are a bit different to what they have been doing. But generally, if it's a specialist role, they're kind of adding value straight away, within a couple of weeks, but definitely feel first 3 to 6 months. It is a lot of upskilling by that 12 month mark. We've found that we have really high quality candidates, staff members…

Brittany Smith: I was going to add to that as well. Like we generally will put them in the grad program for that full year. And normally by the end of that year, they are ready to move into a role that's less junior. So the expectation or the timeline there is you're going to do all this training, you're going to upskill in your role in the business, etcetera. And then hopefully at that one year mark, you're in a position to get promoted essentially. 

James Lawrence: That's right. I think doing some reading before the pilot felt that that 1 to 2 years per person for a formal development program is kind of about right for grads, and it's kind of what we see. But I think that's very different to when can you expect a grad to add value? I think definitely by that six month mark, we're getting awesome value out of the team. I'm probably biased, but I think we do a really good job of identifying great talent. I think we've learnt so much. Let's maybe talk a little bit about the approach that we take to moving a pretty large group of candidates through to a smaller number of offers.

Brittany Smith: So we obviously put up ads to start job ads and then get those people through and the way that we filter them, rather than a more traditional way of just reviewing of the resume and then looking at just setting up those one on one phone interviews to initially filter people through, is we use the predictive index and cognitive tests to get our first batch. Then we go through review resumes. And generally we try and look for people who have had some some kind of feeling or experience within marketing. So whether that is in their degree, whether that's in a family business, whether they've started some kind of small business on the side just so it's not completely cold. But there are instances where there's brilliant people and you can just bring them in and train them. 

Brittany Smith: So we look at their resumes and then we select a group of people based on the Cog tests and the predictive index and their resumes to come in and do a group interview. It's normally about 20 people. And in that session we'll do a few different group exercises. We'll do one on one interviews and then we'll do an actual task as well. And that is with 3 to 4 people from Rocket. So there was like a five grad to one Rocket ratio just so we're observing them. And then from there, we provide all of our feedback and select a handful of grads that we're wanting to take on. But even when we're hiring just for one role, we've found that that group process works really well in the instance of juniors, because you're not always looking at hard skills when you're hiring them. So there's so many factors at play to work out who is going to be the best hire for you.

James Lawrence: And I think just to put some numbers around that, you probably correct me because I'm probably wrong, but it feels that we'll put a job out up, we'll put it in LinkedIn. It might be in Seek or wherever, it might be different University Noticeboards and whatever else, we might get a couple of hundred applications. I could be wrong. I think that's kind of a number. We then threw the Cog test, and this is when it becomes probably more specific to the role. If it's a role in client services versus if it's a production or specialist role. We're not looking for people that smash it or have super high numbers, but just a range that we think is appropriate for the role in question. Predictive index is some software that helps us align personality traits with the role. So there's no right or wrong answer, but there's certain roles that have certain features. Or if someone is a brilliant candidate, and they might be a little bit on a certain end of a spectrum in terms of personality, it just means that they might require a different approach to training, or we just know that they're going to have certain characteristics if they are successful. So yeah, probably a couple of hundred candidates down to, as you said, 15 to 25. And then from that maybe it's 3 or 4 hires, depending on, I guess, what the needs of the agency are. 

Brittany Smith: There has been instances where somebody wasn't suited for a particular role and they didn't get that one. But then another part of the business was looking to hire someone. And because of the predictive index and the code test and all of the interviews that were done, we're able to say, actually they would be really suited in that kind of role, so able to put their resume forward. And so we do have a pool or access to some really great graduates, and obviously some of them are going to get snapped up pretty quickly over time. So you may not be able to lean on that pool six months later. But definitely once you've done that group interview process, you do have access to some pretty great talent.

James Lawrence: That's it. I think it's we've got a great agency of people, but I reckon we've had to work really hard to get those staff in a sense of what we've talked about historically with a lot of mid weights probably coming in, talking the talk, maybe not working out, moving on pretty quickly, etcetera, but definitely feel that being able to move a big group of people down to say 20 to no cog test, no personality test aligns with the role. What you might be losing in terms of experience and maturity, and not having some of the skills that you learn in the workplace, but having just great candidates, I think overweighs the benefit of hiring someone that might not be such a high-quality candidate but has done the job before.

Brittany Smith: I remember from the first group interview, a few of us stepped away from that and were just completely blown away by the talent that had come in, and we were like, oh my god, we're going to be out of jobs in a few years time. They're going to take over. But we were completely blown away. And I think people do underestimate those core skills of just being a great person, having a great attitude, and what that can mean for jumping in and doing a role versus hiring someone who's got heaps of experience. But whether that actually plays out how you want it to…

James Lawrence: We had to remind ourselves, you never want to be the smartest person in the room. And it's not a problem I've ever had. So after the first round, it kind of ties in. We had Alisha Lykos from Red Wolf, who's a kind of talent optimisation consultant and business on one of the earlier pods, and she spoke about the head, the heart and the briefcase, which is kind of when they're looking at putting people into organisations. It's those three things, and the head is the brain. The heart is kind of the willingness to do the job and the desire and the drive and all those things and the briefcase are kind of the actual skills to do the job. And the head and the heart can't be trained, but the briefcase can. And I think that's what we're finding, you know, as we're 18 months in now, we've got people - full time employees in Rocket, they've graduated from the program, and they're just absolute weapons that they didn't have the briefcase to start with. But, you know, 3 to 6 months in, you're getting a lot of that knowledge. And by the kind of year to 18 month mark, you're flying hundred percent.

Brittany Smith: It's just been so amazing to see. And I think on top of that, it's rewarding for the agency as well because you've got these young kids who are coming through and then a year ends, 18 months in, they're so proud of how far they've come as well. And they're so stoked that Rocket has supported them, trained them and so on. And so they're really committed to staying with us, which kind of ties into the retention pays such a big challenge for businesses at the moment with all the poaching that is going on. But I think for us, just making sure we're providing the most supportive, best environment possible means that we're going to retain the talent. 

James Lawrence: Yeah, let's talk about that. First of all, we've touched on it a little bit, but, what can juniors bring to the team? 

Brittany Smith: So a big thing for us that we've found they bring to our team, is just a level of enthusiasm that is probably unmatched with somebody who's a mid weight or a senior. And the fact that they're coming in with little to no experience means that they are not hindered by past experiences. And so you're coming in, it's like a blank slate, essentially. And they are so willing to learn and eager to grow and develop and be part of the business. And so what they bring to the table is just this utter willingness to work hard, learn what they can, and be the best they can. And I think that does come back to obviously hiring people with the right attitude. But, you know, if you do that and then you provide the structure for them to grow and develop, it's just such a winning combination. 

James Lawrence: Yeah. I think something I find really interesting and, you know, it's not to say that you have to be of a certain age group to apply for a grad role and whatever else. But like I said, in our instance, probably all of the grads that have come in have been between probably 19 and 23 or something like that. In my notes preparing for this is perspective. Like I find that the agency - been around for a while - we've got people in their 40s and 50s and we've kind of got a big group of people in their 30s, and the agency probably will start to, because I think we do a reasonable job of retention, skew a little bit older. And we had Katy Richardson from UNiDAYS on two weeks ago on the pod and she was talking about marketing to Gen Z, and she was saying that having members of that cohort in your marketing team help you do a better job of marketing. And I think there's something to that, like good marketers should be able to market anything. But the reality is, you do also want to have diversity in probably in all workplaces, but definitely on marketing teams. And I've found that it's just added this new dynamic or perspective to the agency where we've kind of now filled in a part of society, really, that we probably weren't very well represented in, just from an actual perspective viewpoint. 

Brittany Smith: Definitely. And I think the thing is, you know, they are coming in with fresh ideas. They're being exposed to different ads that we're getting exposed to just because of general interest. So having them working on campaigns or clients and coming up with ideas is so powerful.

James Lawrence: And I kind of had the second point there, hunger, which probably was the first thing. Kicked off with which it's like not to say that, you know, us older members of the company don't have that hunger anymore, but I think coming in fresh, it's your first or second professional job. You want to hit the ground running, right? And you want to succeed, and you want to get promoted and you want to strive and develop. The reality of it is, is that there is a talent shortage in Australia at the moment, and I think it is harder to get people that have already got the industry experience. But by being able to go to a group of people that's bigger, by being able to do some filtering based on testing prior, that will lend itself to the role. I think you just get potentially really high quality candidates coming out the back end of it. 

Brittany Smith: And I think to add to that, for us at Rocket, I've noticed such a shift in our culture as well since we hired the juniors. So we had a brilliant culture before, but it's just really brought this extra vibrancy to the office and our team outings and everything we do, because we do have that whole new age bracket essentially working in the agency. So yeah, it's nice, especially coming out of Covid and everyone working from home. It's just nice to come into the office and have such a big mix of people, but particularly our juniors who are in a little bit more than more senior people. Good vibes in the office essentially.

James Lawrence: I think we've talked a lot about all the good stuff. What are some of the learnings, things that could have done better, things to watch out for, things that aren't as good as they seem, lessons that we can potentially help others to kind of avoid?

Brittany Smith: I think the biggest thing for me when I was preparing as well for today's chat, was I was reflecting on the challenges we've had in some of the professional development areas. So things that are second nature to people who are maybe 25 plus who've been working professionally for a while versus people who haven't even worked in a professional environment at all. I always thought that bridging that gap would be easier than it is. And so the biggest challenge that stands out to me is the fact that you've got a whole generation of uni students who've been working or attending uni virtually, and now they're coming into a workplace, they maybe have interviewed virtually as well. And so they've really missed out on interacting with other humans, doing group assignments in person or, you know, interviewing in person. All those things make such a big difference to how somebody then comes into a business and is ready to present internally. So what are they wearing to work? How are they emailing and so on. And that's just such a tricky thing to train, especially when juniors are maybe not as comfortable or used to getting feedback. So how do you make that feedback not personal? And it's just, this is objectively how we do things here. So it's been a big challenge for sure.

James Lawrence: It's easy to underestimate the lack of knowledge in doing the things that we've learnt how to do over the years. And so I think if you were talking about it before we started recording, if you think that hiring really good, capable talent and dropping them into your business and just waiting six months and you're going to have superstars, it's just not how it works. You have to invest heavily in terms of mentoring and training and one on ones and development plans. And I think that feedback thing, right is so critical because obviously some of the grads will have worked professionally before and have gone through those feedback process before and others just simply haven't. 

Brittany Smith: Definitely. Having the resources in place to make sure you are giving that feedback and working on their development plan, and you’ve got to work so closely with them every single day. And I think it I never want anyone to underestimate how much work does have to go into building them up to be that kind of self like, functioning, fully functioning employee who's able to just run their own day to day, interact and deliver their work and so on. 

James Lawrence: What other challenges have we found? 

Brittany Smith: Other challenges have been probably getting juniors comfortable coming into the office, which probably lends itself to the Covid situation as well. Everyone's been so comfortable at home, so setting that expectation from the beginning that you need to be in the office and it's because you're in a training phase and you need to be learning off the team and getting exposure to, even if you're sitting in the office, James, and having a sales phone call with someone overhearing that conversation, I think we all underestimate how much just overhearing things, how much you learn from that. So I think setting that expectation from the beginning, I think it really definitely took some of the graduates back a little bit when they were like, oh, okay, you're expecting us to come in four days a week. I thought I was going to be working from home most of the time because we're a digital marketing agency. Getting them comfortable with feedback. Probably looks more into the first part again, but yeah, making sure that they know why you're giving feedback and understand the benefits of it and that we're all on the same team, we want you to succeed. So feedback is a massive one. And lastly, the biggest challenge we've had is just making sure that juniors ask us questions because I think they come into it either they think they know everything, which is great. But on the other end of the spectrum, they might be really scared of asking a question because it might seem silly, or they want to show you that they know what they're doing and that they can do the job. So really training them to say, okay, you need to ask me questions because it's a way of avoiding mistakes that might be more detrimental. But also this is so that you can learn and grow. So creating that environment of learning, growing, asking questions. We're all here for you. 

James Lawrence: That's excellent. It's kind of excellent advice for any employee but particularly grads. I think just set that expectation early that a this is why you're in the office four days a week. We're going to give you feedback all the time. And it's not because we're picking on you, it's because we want you to get better. And the feedback will be constructive but also positive. And then third, smart people ask questions. No one knows everything. Just coming back to the hybrid policy, for listeners, we probably talked about it on some some other episodes, but not all. We've made the decision to be permanently hybrid. We feel that total remote doesn't work for the type of agency work that Rocket wants to do, but we also identify and agree that there's so many benefits of work from home and a more flexible approach. And as part of that policy, different roles are in the office for more or less days each week. And then depending on tenure in the business you're in more or less. So there's a small number of roles in the business where it's completely optional to come in, except for, I think it's once a quarter for planning days and things like the Christmas party. 

James Lawrence: Then for certain roles, if you're in a specialist position and you've been doing it for four years, I think you're in 1 or 2 days a week. But then for the grads, one of the things that Rocket and I think most businesses around the world struggled with during kind of lockdowns was the ability to train people remotely. It's just not the same. And so for all of the academy members, up until a certain point, they're in the office four days a week. And we're kind of unapologetic about that, which is if we truly want to get the best out of you, and if you want to grow through your career, the best way to do it is to be in here learning from each other and from us. And so I think that's kind of pretty important. It's a good thing you've mentioned there, Britt, in terms of resources and training, just maybe talk to that for, for for a minute or so. 

Brittany Smith: So we've found that training - I mean you have your classic certifications and so on. But I think in the instance of our agency, we've found that doing those certifications and online based training doesn't necessarily get the best out of, or doesn't put the grads in the position we want them to be. And so all of our training, or at least 95% of it, is focused on one on one with your direct manager, one on one with me as the head of the academy, but then also specific mentoring and training with specialists within the business, so that we know that every graduate is at the same level of base knowledge of what Rocket sells and all of the areas that we specialise in. So I think just leaning on the specialists within your business and leaning on other team members means that you're able to do the training that your business requires and get that graduate up and running to the level you want, rather than outsourcing it to some online training.

James Lawrence: I think that's exactly right in terms of, I guess, that training element. We've touched on feedback, like what is the best way to give feedback, do you feel? 

Brittany Smith: I found that the best and most effective way to give feedback to juniors is instantly. So that means if I pick on something in a meeting, I'll just send them a message and say, hey, do you want to chat for two minutes when that meeting's done and give them the feedback? If I see an email that's done really well, I'll reply to it and reinforce that behavior. Or if I see something that could have been done differently, I'll send them an email and let them know. But that instantaneous feedback is so critical because if you let it build up over time, then they're not going to be able to improve and it might be too far gone. But also on the flip side, if you see repeated behavior, it means that you've got an opportunity to have a bigger conversation and get to the core of it. 

James Lawrence: I think we've probably took me too many years than it should have to understand this. But you're doing a disservice to the staff member by not giving them feedback. You think that by kind of sugarcoating stuff and skipping over stuff and maybe hoping the behavioral change that you're kind of trying to be nice and all you're doing is making sure that they're moving more slowly through their development than they otherwise would, which takes time. 

Brittany Smith: Having those top conversations where you either have to let someone go or you have to put them on, you know, some kind of performance management plan. But yeah, definitely instant feedback is the way to go. 

James Lawrence: And I think I could have touched on it earlier on in the pod. But I think the thing that's been really interesting with the Academy for us is that it's really hard to get talent in Australia at the moment. I think if you'd asked me two years ago, when we're thinking of doing this, what will work, what won't work, I think I would have thought that we would hire a lot of people, and a small number would kind of still be with us after 18 months. But the retention in the academy, ]people that have actually got through probation is higher in the academy than it is more generally with general hires at Rocket. So I think it's fascinating that it's almost a misconception, I think, that young people are chopping and changing jobs for a small salary increase and are disloyal and don't want to stick it out. I think from our experience so far, we're getting great retention in the academy, which is making sure we're very discerning with who we offer roles to, then giving them great training, development, growth, a good culture helps. It's something I probably would have been quite concerned about at the time, but it hasn't come to fruition, which is positive. 

Brittany Smith: Definitely. It has been surprising again because it was originally a pilot. The retention of the program, and I know that I can speak about this with other team members around. How can we make sure we do retain them? But it hasn't been yeah, I think just naturally having those structures in place and investing heavily in resources to train them has meant that their success and we're retaining them.

James Lawrence: Excellent, Breit. Well, thanks for coming on. I think if anyone who's looking to hire is struggling to hire great marketers, and looking to how to identify a higher and then retain great young marketing talent, there's definitely lots of food for thought. I always ask this question, what's the one piece of marketing advice that you'd give to an in-house marketer? 

Brittany Smith: Mine would be if you're not already hiring juniors, definitely put it on your radar. And the higher uni graduates or people at uni or younger people without experience. But yeah, hiring juniors but just reaping the benefits of this program that we've started. And the other piece of advice would be, you know, if you do already have juniors in your business, know that anything that's probably second nature to you is probably not to them. So don't underestimate the simple things that you have to train and do that early on so that the expectations set and you're not having to go back 6 or 12 months into it and try and correct behaviors. 

James Lawrence: Excellent, Britt, thanks for coming on the pod.