I have battled with this question from the very first day I decided to scale up my business.

When I started e-channel in 1999 I was armed with an entrepreneurial spirit and an associate diploma in mechanical engineering. In the early days search engine marketing was source code and Meta tags, and as odd as my background sounds it suited search engine optimisation (SEO) nicely. When Overture (now YSM) launched paid search - the landscape began to shift. Suddenly my skills were not enough and I knew it. My technical skills were still suited to SEO but I had to learn to deal with ad budgets, copywriting and data analysis. I enrolled in a Masters of Marketing at the University of South Australia and that was the turning point for me and e-channel. I learnt about the science of marketing and was instantly able to apply it to search. When Google came along with AdWords and took Overtures model to a whole new level I was ready to handle the technical and marketing aspects of search. The only problem was that my unique combinations of skill sets were not easy to find - So when I went about employing people I found the task of finding search engine marketing talent quite a challenge. I soon realised that I needed great software engineers and great marketers in my team to deal with the increasingly complex needs of my customers.

I now have a great team of search engine marketers and engineers around me. Here are some of the things I look for when recruiting a new team member. (more…)

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Tags: SEO SEM Jobs, SEO SEM skill Shortage
Posted in Search Industry | 2 Comments »