How to Hire an Exceptional Content Team

3 minute read

Upland Admin

When I hired the current content team at Kapost, I required one, non-negotiable skill before even considering their resumes: they had to be excellent writers. And I’m not alone! In the past, that’s been the most consistent must-have skill when hiring for content teams.

But good writing doesn’t cut it anymore. As content becomes increasingly crucial to delivering a positive customer experience, the strategy behind the content—and the people behind that content—have a growing need to understand the operations behind impactful content.

The Purpose of a Content Operations Team

Particularly as the success of revenue teams are dependent on data-driven decisions, the operations behind content are more essential than ever. These roles are meant to track and maximize the impact of content and messaging to better use content to meet business goals.

Check out this excerpt from our latest eBook, The Content Operations and Strategy Hiring Handbook:

As the Director of Content Operations at Kapost, rest assured that I’m fully bought into this thinking. But only a few years ago, content operations was hardly recognized as a concept separate from marketing operations—let alone requiring a dedicated role or team.

Fortunately, we’re learning. 2019 is bringing not only more content operations hiring, but a promising current state.

The Current State of Content Operations Hiring

According to a survey of 506 marketers, over half of marketers have dedicated content operations functions within their organization. Check out the breakdown:

The reason content operations are becoming vital to more and more organizations? Content is no longer confined to the marketing department. (Take it from someone who has largely worked in marketing departments.)

Sure, much of the content in your organization might originate from marketing, but what about communications? PR? The decks that sales and customer success create on the fly for a meeting marketing didn’t know about?

The content operations team is tasked with aligning content across the entire customer experience while driving the messaging that fuels impactful content throughout the entire funnel.

While our 2014 hiring survey found the majority of content hiring highly prioritized writing and editing skills, 2019 requires a wider variety of skills. Here they are, ranked in order of importance to hiring managers:

  • Writing/editing skills
  • A solid understanding of our sales and marketing structure
  • Graphic design/web development skills
  • Marketing experience
  • Ability to collaborate across departments/teams
  • Knowledge of content strategy and operations
  • Video production skills
  • SEO expertise

Diversifying our content operations teams’ skillsets is a crucial step in advancing the impact of content on the customer experience—but it’s not the final step.

The Hiring Handbook for Content Operations and Strategy

So, how do you go about building the dream team? It’s not easy—but it can be done! We’ve rounded up insight from over 500 marketers as well as the Content Operations Leadership Council, a collection of thought leaders pioneering best practices within content operations.

Download the full guide here.

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