About
“I am a bit of a geek about process.”
I love seeing a search run with momentum, and reaching a point where hiring managers have a tough choice between several well-matched people who could all succeed in the role. That's always my focus for my clients.
Sarah · Founder, MRKTSEARCH
The story
When you see a way to improve outcomes it feels important to back that
There are so many competing important criteria in sales and marketing hires that normal recruitment processes are typically chaos.
No recruitment service can remove every element of risk. People are people, and hiring will always involve judgement.
A properly structured search gives businesses greater visibility of the market, clearer evidence behind the shortlist and more confidence in the decisions being made.
Know what good looks like in your market
My career in recruitment began with an international consultancy, where I recruited construction design professionals for local and international businesses.
Technical recruitment is demanding, but it benefits from relatively clear qualifications, identifiable disciplines and defined levels of experience.
When I moved into sales and marketing recruitment in 2008, I found something very different.
- 2008Moved into sales and marketing recruitment
- 2019Introduced to executive search
- 2022Accredited in executive search methodology
A common myth
“Sales is Sales”
A very common phrase for commercial recruiters to hear when speaking with applicants.
Sure, the objective is the same, and there are transferable essential traits, but sales and marketing functions vary significantly across industries.
Moving into this sector felt less like taking on one new specialism and more like taking on many at once.
Understanding the drivers in each market became important. It gave me the context to understand vacancies properly and give professionals an accurate picture of the opportunity in front of them.
A sales role in SaaS bears little resemblance to one in construction.
A marketing role in FMCG can require a completely different type of experience from one in professional services.
Search, not adverts
Is it a talent shortage if you've only searched the surface?
Many businesses talk about talent shortages, yet the recruitment process they use often reaches only the most visible part of the market: people actively applying, already known to recruiters or relatively easy to find.
For an important hire, that is quite a narrow place from which to make a decision.
I was introduced to executive search in 2019 and became accredited in executive search methodology in 2022. With a few sensible adjustments for speed, I could see no reason why the same principles should be reserved for C-suite and board appointments.
That became central to MRKTSEARCH.
Controlled capacity
Instead of managing a heavy volume of “maybe” vacancies, I deliberately control capacity so I can properly commit to the clients I work with. That means having the time to search the market thoroughly, show clients the work behind an assignment and give them much greater visibility over how the search is progressing.
How a search worksThe difference
Make better hiring decisions with less wasted time
“They must be able to do this job standing on their head.”
When it's a race to submit, hiring managers see all interpretations of requirements.
“Experience” is talked about so often that it can start to lose its meaning. In recruitment, a lot of its value is really tacit knowledge: things you learn over time from seeing hundreds of businesses, roles, people and hiring decisions play out. Recruiters are really mediators. Our job is to work out what information matters, get it from the people who have it and make sure it reaches the people who need it to make a decision.
That matters particularly in sales and marketing recruitment because there is so much ambiguity. Two people can have the same job title and offer completely different things. Two businesses can ask for the same role and actually need very different people. I've referenced examples of that throughout the industry overviews on this site, because the differences are often much more significant than they first appear.
After twenty years, you simply have more to draw on in those conversations.
The Business Pollinators™
Our bee stands for the pollinators in nature. In business, that job belongs to sales professionals and marketers. They carry what a company needs to grow.
Why experience counts
Across this site, I have written about 14 distinct industries, each with its own pressures, commercial context and hiring characteristics.
These observations come from first-hand experience of recruiting within those markets over many years.
That depth of context matters because recruiting a sales or marketing professional well is considerably more nuanced than matching a job title to a CV.
Hiring someone new should be an exciting moment for a business. Done well, it brings new capability, fresh thinking and the possibility of real progress. Importantly, A players want to play with A players. Hiring well once often has a magnetising effect.
A large part of the value of a specialist recruiter is being a reliable sounding board. Specialists see angles others may miss, challenge assumptions and work comfortably with probabilities rather than false certainty.
People change their minds. Businesses evolve. Markets shift. Technologies change what a role requires. The value of a rigorous search process is that it can absorb that movement without losing direction.
That does not guarantee perfection. It gives everyone a stronger opportunity to make the right decision.
What clients say
“MRKTSEARCH found our key sales hire within three weeks, after we had spent months trying to recruit ourselves. The quality of the shortlist was unlike anything we had received from other recruiters we’ve used, and the appointment has directly supported our growth.”
“Recruiting the right marketing people is a challenge in Northern Ireland but our experience of working with Sarah has been really successful. She has an in depth understanding of the nuances of different marketing roles, rather than a ‘one size fits all’ approach taken by many others. Sarah has delivered on-time and consistently against our briefs which adds greatly to the value of her service.”
“We have used MRKTSEARCH for eight appointments over four years. The process is thorough, well managed and requires very little chasing from us. They are now our first call when we have an important role to fill.”
In my words
Questions I'm often asked
What does a good recruiter actually add?
Context, more than anything.
A good recruiter can help somebody step outside their immediate situation and look at it from a wider perspective.
For a professional, that might mean helping them understand what their experience really adds up to, rather than reducing it to a job title or CV. For an employer, it might mean helping them understand how their business, opportunity or expectations sit within the wider market.
Sometimes it is simply about asking questions that people already know the answers to, but would not naturally stop and ask themselves. I think there is real value in having somebody who can help you zoom out, see the situation more clearly and then leave the decision with you.
What makes a good recruiter?
I don't think being warm or good with people, on its own, makes somebody a good recruiter.
For me, a good recruiter should be factual, genuinely interested and impartial. They should listen properly, avoid categorising people too quickly and resist the temptation to push somebody towards a particular outcome.
People should feel able to say what they actually think, even if they are unsure, have changed their mind or simply aren't interested.
There is a degree of restraint involved. The recruiter can challenge, question and add perspective, but the decision should remain with the person making it.
What do you think about AI and recruitment?
AI could be a really positive development for recruitment, if the human judgement behind it is sound.
Boiled down, recruitment is just about getting the demand for talent in front of the right supply of skills. AI can make the more obvious profiles in the market more visible.
Where I think we need to be a little careful is assuming that better visibility automatically means better judgement. Sales and marketing professionals, in particular, don't fit neatly into categories. Job titles can mean completely different things from one business to another. Those things often only come out through conversation.
Trust and empathy are big factors in engaging professionals across all sectors. I can't imagine a world where AI can replace these qualities.
I think AI will make recruitment better if sound human judgement drives how it works and when it isn't used to filter applicants unfairly. Identifying people, engaging with them and understanding them are very different.
If you're weighing up a hire or a move, I'm always happy to talk it through.
Sarah Stewart · Founder, MRKTSEARCH
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