Your first marketing hire needs a primary problem to solve. Decide whether the immediate work is positioning, content, demand generation, product marketing, lifecycle communication, or another specific mandate. Then identify the support and decisions required to do that work.
A request to “own all marketing” is not a useful assessment plan.
Start with the business constraint
Ask what is missing today. Buyers may not understand the product, suitable prospects may not encounter it, sales may lack usable material, or existing users may need clearer guidance.
These problems can require different experience. Do not select a channel merely because it is visible or fashionable.
Write a mandate card
| Field | What to specify |
|---|---|
| Audience | The person whose understanding or behavior should change |
| Problem | The current obstacle |
| Work | The activities the hire will own |
| Inputs | Product access, customer context, design, budget, and collaborators |
| Decision rights | What the hire can test and who approves larger changes |
| Evidence | How the team will judge whether the work helps |
Keep the first mandate narrow enough to evaluate while acknowledging adjacent responsibilities.
Separate strategy from production capacity
Illustrative situation: A fictional technical startup needs clearer positioning and a small set of useful product explanations. A marketer may be able to define that work but still need design or engineering support to publish it.
If you also expect daily content production, events, paid campaigns, and sales operations, decide what takes priority and what can wait. Do not assume one hire can perform every specialty at once.
Interview through a past decision
Ask the candidate to describe an audience, the problem they identified, the approach they chose, and what they learned. Explore their personal contribution and the resources available.
A portfolio shows output. Follow-up questions should reveal why that output was chosen and how it was judged.
For a work sample, use a fictional product brief and ask for a small diagnosis or prioritization exercise. Do not request an executable campaign for your company.
Establish an early learning loop
Agree on what the hire will review, what they will test, and which decisions the evidence will support. Distinguish activity measures from business outcomes.
For example, publishing material is an activity; whether suitable prospects understand it is a different question. Avoid promising that one channel will create demand before you have relevant evidence.
Use the hiring priorities worksheet if several commercial roles are competing for budget, and the candidate opportunity brief to explain the mandate consistently.