How to analyse a head of marketing Job Description?
Learn a life skill as you build your career.
You might wonder - why learn how to read a JD. Most JDs are written for the sake of it & there is no point reading it. WRONG - JDs are a goldmine of insights.
Insights that could help you crack a leadership role, negotiate better during offer rollout & helps you understand what would success mean for someone in that role in first 30-60-90 days. Trust me - spend next 2 mins & you will see it in action.
I’m going to analyse Job Description for Head of Marketing at BlissClub - a women athleisure brand.
Take few seconds to read it.
1. Role Overview
It says “you will be guiding our marketing team”. This means the marketing team exists, someone has established it. So one of the questions you need to ask in round 1 of interviews is what is this marketing team? Plus how it fits into overall org structure - before you start telling them what they should fix in marketing.
4th line says “communicating these plans to those involved…”. I’m smelling a lot of cross functional management with other functions & it came so early in the job description means its critical for this head of marketing to even survive.
Always remember - recruiters (HRs, Hiring managers) are humans too. They will write the most important stuff first while writing JDs. For example at the end of 2nd page (screenshot shown later in the article) we have manpower planning & operations - it shows how important it is to overall role.
2. Interview process
The first round is with CRO - Chief Revenue Officer. This means its a P0 role internally & should be closed yesterday. Very seldomly a leader will do round 1. This also means screening will be tighter. What this also means is if you get in you have a lot more offer negotiation power & can even ask for a early joining bonus if that’s something you want. See how small things can open so many between the lines.
3. Skills & Qualifications
It talks about leading a team. The early marketers - especially channel specialists have been hired. My hunch is they also have a brand manager by now - because it does not talk about building a brand kit or brand identity. See a head of marketing role otherwise would pick that first & that brand kit will define everything on how brand looks speaks & behave. Same logic applies to VP - product & chief of staff role roles.
It talks about market pricing. This means the company is going through a bunch of monetisation, pricing changes - you are going take these pricing change to the market. You will lead those GTMs in this role, period. Scapegoating a little bit.
4. Responsibilities
Pricing strategies mentioned 2nd time - plus maximise profits. This means improving gross margins. You might have to really understand assortment & focus categories. Blissclub wants to solve unit economics right away - I’m sure all leaders have this as a direct or a indirect OKRs in current quarters.
Why are they mentioning research & development. Very interesting. A brand that is selling its current SKU like hot cakes is trying to figure out new markets & customer personas. Is it a brief to find product market fit for new category launches. Have they made any horizontal hires in category management? Dig deep here.
I hope you got the direction.
If you go super in-depth these are the questions you can ask in your interview rounds & be a true though parter to that CRO/ CXO panel. So next time you apply for a role, make a real granular analysis of that JD & build an unfair advantage for yourself.
At GrowthX, we have over 70+ video lessons that cover everything that you need to package your personal brand, analyse job descriptions, solve your core skills, nail round 1 interviews, get through technical interviews & even support to negotiate job offers.
Plus, we extensively have a whole library of top GrowthX members from top product companies giving live mock interviews that you can learn from & hone your own interview approach. Learn more.
Upgrade to GrowthX Membership to get access to all of this as a membership exclusive perk. Apply to become a GrowthX member
Last week, Jaimit joined Lenskart.com as their Global Marketing head & CEO of Hustlr. He has been a GrowthX member since 2021 - learning & contributing in the community for the past 3 years.
Truly grateful for 100s of leaders inside the GrowthX® community who are shaping the social learning community for product, marketing, business leaders & first time founders.
Why are CXOs joining GrowthX? 💙
With over 500+ CXOs in our 3,000+ member community, the answer is simple - CXOs are trying to figure out what could their legacy mean this decade.
This includes sharing their own perspectives, unlearning the older methods to building products/ marketing with newer ways of growing digital products.
And most importantly, they get to work with high energy, ambitious members who are hungry to grow their companies. The online community especially is what they crave for to soundboard ideas, hire top talent & then meet them in real life.
The paid membership includes 15+ Learning programs - Learn more, Online & In-person community of 3,000+ leaders Learn more, Career growth modules - Learn more & a private founder circle - Learn more.
There is only one way to know if this is built for you -Here’s a solid answer & if you want to learn more about our member outcomes - here are a few stories.