Brands wanting to handle more marketing internally find staffing challenges

When Bayer began searching for an analytics and programmatic lead for its team of internal strategists in mid-2017, Joshua Palau, VP of digital strategy and platforms at the pharma giant, reviewed 25 applicants, but only three qualified to advance to the interview stage. Hiring is proving to be a challenge for Bayer, as it seeks to take more marketing in-house and more than double its existing 10-person team by the end of the year. “We have a strong opinion on the types of people we want, and those are the people who understand how these marketplaces work,” said Palau. “It’s a combination of having people who not only have the right skill set but also client-side experience. Clients  especially ones as big and established as Bayer can be very different if you came from a startup or agency, so cultural fit becomes a bigger consideration sometimes.” Like Bayer, companies bringing more marketing resources in-house are struggling to find the talent they need, with a range of reasons why from making sure a person fits the culture to archaic human resources systems to finding talent outside of a few coastal cities.