Marketing vacancies stay open: skills gap or unrealistic expectations?

Marketing teams are under pressure to deliver more than ever. They are expected to understand data, create content, manage campaigns, work with AI, optimise customer journeys, collaborate with sales and contribute to business strategy.

Yet many marketing vacancies remain open for weeks or even months.

The obvious explanation is a skills gap: there simply aren't enough people with the right marketing skills. But that is only part of the story. In many cases, companies are also making their own vacancies harder to fill through unrealistic job descriptions, overly narrow requirements and expectations that one person should cover an entire marketing department.

The result? The right talent may exist, but companies are filtering it out before the conversation even starts.

The marketing talent shortage is real, but so is the hiring problem

The boundaries between marketing, digital, sales, product and technology are becoming less clear.

This creates a genuine skills challenge. But it also creates a recruitment challenge: what exactly are you looking for?

A vacancy that asks for strategic thinking, campaign management, SEO, paid media, content creation, data analysis, CRM, AI expertise and five years of experience may sound ambitious.

It may also describe three different jobs.

Instead of asking whether the market lacks talent, companies should sometimes ask a different question: Are we looking for a person or an entire marketing team in one job description?

Job descriptions can scare away the talent you actually need

Job descriptions are often written as a wish list. Companies start with the responsibilities they would ideally like someone to handle, add every tool the current team uses, include several years of experience and finish with a long list of personal qualities.

The result can be a vacancy that looks impossible to fulfil.

This is particularly problematic in marketing because tools and platforms change constantly. Someone who is highly capable today may not have five years of experience with a platform that didn't exist five years ago.

A better approach is to distinguish between essential capabilities and learnable tools.

For example, a strong digital marketer may understand customer journeys, campaign optimisation, data interpretation and experimentation without having worked with every platform listed in the job description.

Tools can be learned. Curiosity, adaptability, critical thinking and the ability to connect marketing activity to business objectives are much harder to teach.

Five years of experience doesn't necessarily mean five years of expertise

Years of experience are easy to put into a job description because they create a simple filter. But they are a poor proxy for capability.

Someone with three years of experience in a fast-moving digital environment may have managed complex campaigns, worked across multiple channels, experimented with AI and collaborated with product, sales and technology teams.

Someone with eight years of experience may have spent most of that time doing essentially the same tasks.

The better question is not: “How many years have you done this?”
It is: “What problems have you solved, and how well can you solve the problems we have today?”

Experience still matters. But the relevance, depth and adaptability of that experience matter more than the number attached to it.

Attitude can matter more than tool knowledge

Marketing is one of the industries where yesterday's expertise can quickly become outdated.

AI is changing content production, search, campaign workflows and customer interactions. Data is becoming more accessible. Automation is reducing repetitive work. New channels and formats continue to emerge.

That makes adaptability a core marketing skill.

A candidate who is curious, proactive and comfortable learning may ultimately bring more value than someone who knows every tool but struggles to adapt when the environment changes.

This is why qualities such as these deserve more attention during recruitment: curiosity, critical thinking, communication, ownership, adaptability, collaboration and willingness to learn

The strongest marketing professionals are not necessarily the ones who know every platform. They are the ones who know how to learn, question and apply new tools effectively.

The “generalist” role that is secretly five specialist roles

One of the biggest warning signs in a marketing vacancy is the overloaded generalist role.

A company may advertise for a “Digital Marketing Manager” who is expected to:

• Develop the marketing strategy
• Manage paid media
• Run SEO
• Create content
• Manage social media
• Analyse performance
• Own CRM
• Build email campaigns
• Manage marketing automation
• Organise events
• Work with sales
• Report to management
• And, ideally, understand AI

That is not necessarily a generalist. It may be several specialist functions packaged into one job title.

Generalists are valuable precisely because they can connect different disciplines. But they still need realistic boundaries.

Before opening a vacancy, organisations should ask: What problem are we actually trying to solve?

If the answer involves several fundamentally different skill sets, hiring one person may not be the best solution.

Sometimes the answer is a specialist. Sometimes it’s a broader marketing profile. And sometimes the organisation needs a combination of internal employees, external experts or a hybrid team.

Freelancers vs payroll: why the choice shouldn't be ideological

Another common mistake is treating permanent employment and freelance talent as mutually exclusive strategies.

They solve different problems.

• A permanent hire can be the right choice when a company needs long-term ownership, cultural integration and continuity.
• A freelancer or interim specialist can make more sense when there is an urgent skills gap, a temporary workload increase or a specific project that requires expertise the existing team doesn't have.

The question should therefore not be: “Should we hire or use freelancers?”
It should be: “What capability do we need, for how long, and what is the best way to build it?”

This is particularly relevant when a vacancy has been open for months. Keeping a critical role vacant also has a cost: delayed projects, overloaded colleagues, missed opportunities and slower growth.

Sometimes bringing in expertise temporarily gives the organisation the breathing room it needs to make a better permanent hiring decision.

Stop hiring for the perfect candidate

There is another reason marketing vacancies stay open: companies are waiting for a candidate who ticks every box. But the perfect candidate rarely exists.

Modern marketing teams are built around complementary skills. One person may be excellent at strategy and stakeholder management. Another may specialise in performance marketing. Another may bring deep content or CRM expertise.

Instead of searching indefinitely for someone who can do everything, organisations can build teams around capability rather than job titles.

This is also where flexible team models can make a difference. EOLIS, for example, helps organisations strengthen their in-house digital, marketing and sales capabilities through individual experts, hybrid in-house teams and organisational design. The focus is on putting the right expertise in the right place at the right time, rather than forcing every need into a single permanent role.

Why work with EOLIS?

Finding the right marketing talent is not always about hiring another person. Sometimes, you need specific expertise, additional capacity or a different way of structuring your team. That is where EOLIS can help.

We work with organisations to strengthen their digital, marketing and sales capabilities, from adding experienced specialists to complement an existing team to building hybrid teams that combine in-house knowledge with external expertise.

Instead of searching indefinitely for the perfect profile, EOLIS helps you access the capabilities you need, when you need them.

Looking to strengthen your marketing team? Let’s talk about what your organisation needs.

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