Useful thinking on marketing hiring. No SEO sludge.

Choose a recruiter who understands the regional marketing, digital, PR and agency market, can challenge the brief, give honest salary advice and reach people who are not simply applying to job adverts.

Contingency recruitment usually means paying when the recruiter fills the role. Retained search means committing to one search partner and paying for a structured search process, usually in stages.

Senior marketing recruitment fees often depend on salary, search difficulty, exclusivity, whether the work is retained and how much market mapping and assessment is needed. The fee should be agreed clearly before the search starts.

A Fractional marketing leader is an experienced senior marketer who joins a business for a defined period or number of days to provide leadership, direction and hands-on support against a specific business need.

Retained search makes sense when an agency hire is senior, confidential, difficult to reach or commercially important enough to justify a properly mapped and managed search.

Often because the business starts with a job title instead of the problem it needs the person to solve. An unclear brief, unrealistic salary, weak assessment or slow interview process can then make the problem worse.

Start with the business problem. What needs to grow, change, improve or stop? What should be different six or twelve months after the person joins? Then work backwards into the experience and capability required.

Agency hiring involves more than technical skill. Client handling, commercial awareness, pace, resilience and team fit can matter just as much, and the same job title can mean very different things from one agency to another.

Start with what the Marketing Director needs to achieve, the team and budget they'll inherit, the decisions they'll actually own and whether the business needs a builder, optimiser, strategist or hands-on operator.

When senior marketing leadership is needed now but a permanent appointment is too early, too slow or simply isn't the right model for the business.

Define what good looks like before interviewing. Assess evidence against that brief rather than relying on CV keywords or who gives the slickest interview.

It depends on much more than the job title. Scope, team size, budget, commercial responsibility, sector, location, hybrid expectations and business stage all affect the market. For a live role, David can give you a current view rather than pretending one generic salary table answers everything.

Essential Resourcing is a Manchester-based specialist marketing recruitment and leadership search business founded by David Walsh. It recruits across marketing, PR, communications, digital and agencies throughout the North West and wider UK.

Yes. Essential Resourcing supports PR recruitment in Manchester and the North West, especially senior agency, communications, client services and leadership roles where fit and judgement matter.

Yes. Digital recruitment includes performance marketing, paid media, eCommerce, CRM, analytics, digital leadership and related agency and client-side roles.

Yes. Retained or exclusive search is particularly useful for senior, confidential or difficult hires where proper market mapping, candidate engagement and a committed search process matter.