Recruiting a brilliant digital marketer in Nigeria.

To remain relevant and competitive in today’s marketplace, virtually all businesses need some vibrant digital marketing resources to drive their digital presence initiatives.

The above statement tells how crucial a function digital marketing has become over the past few years. Though one of the newest professions around, digital marketing is one of the most evolving, and may now appear to be limitless in impact. Its impact is so much that people have asked if it’s bound to replace conventional marketing at some point. While that’s a difficult question to answer at the moment, looking at the astronomical rate digital technology has relentlessly continued to impact the world of business; one may be tempted to incline towards the affirmative.

At the worst, a business must have a strong digital marketing strategy to support and complement its traditional marketing initiatives. The way people shop and buy has changed a lot, and so have successful businesses adjusted their marketing channels to create a big room for digital marketing.

At the crux of every effective digital marketing function is a specialist, or a unit who is responsible for all activities relating to online promotion and selling the brand, products or services of an organisation - The Digital Marketer.

In this blog, we will consider:

- What digital marketers do
- Categorisation of duties of digital marketers and their KPIs
- What to look for in a good digital marketer
- How to recruit  a brilliant digital marketer in Nigeria
- What digital marketers do

Digital marketers drive brand awareness, generate leads for the business, and provide timely and reliable market analytics upon which a business can plan and make effective decisions on products/services, pricing and promotions. The domain of digital marketing channels includes the social media, the business’s website, search engines and emails.

The core responsibilities

Typical responsibilities of a digital marketer will include:

-Develop and implement effective digital marketing strategy for the organisation
-Optimize the business for search engine ranking based on the digital marketing strategy
-Research advertising trends and use the results to build/adjust the organisation's advertisement direction and placements
-Pre-empt competitors digital plans and pro-act to counteract them
-Research competitors marketing strategies and initiatives
-Create and deploy digital campaigns
-Publish digital marketing content online
-Implement email marketing campaigns
-Report on the growth and analytics of campaigns
-Conduct digital market research and customer surveys to inform campaigns
-Develop and maintain functionally effective social media presence for the business
-Analyse and report performances of all digital marketing campaigns
-Utilize strong analytical ability to evaluate end-to-end customer experience across multiple channels

Duties Categorisation and KPIs

Well before employing your digital marketer, it is wisdom to clearly set out the responsibilities and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These KPIs must cover all the 4 regions of the quadrant below.

Continue reading on on the link https://teoaris.com/2024/02/27/how-to-recruit-a-brilliant-digital-marketer-in-nigeria/

Consulting for SMEs in Nigeria requires - among other skills - peculiar understanding of the national and business terrain, and the tenacity to see things through.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play a crucial role in most economies of the world - particularly those of developing countries. According to World Bank figures, up to 70% of jobs are generated by SMEs in developing countries, while formal SMEs contribute up to 40% of national income (GDP) in those economies. These numbers are significantly higher when informal SMEs are included.

In Nigeria, the SME Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) puts SME’s contribution to the country’s GDP at nearly 50% while they account for over 80% of employment in the country.

However, as important as this sector is, its operations are mostly sub-optimal, compounded by poor access to funding, lack of required managerial acumen, lack of effective corporate governance, and many other factors.

This undesirable situation has over the years generated concerns for successive governments in Nigeria who have tried from one initiative to another to address the major challenges facing these crucial economic agents. Much as has been done, SMEs in Nigeria still suffer the unpleasant challenges that have bedeviled them over the years. Perhaps, it’s getting worse.

SMEs IN NIGERIA

The two major categorisations used in Nigeria are those of the Bank of Industry (BOI) and Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN).

BANK OF INDUSTRY’S (BOI) DEFINITION FOR MICRO, SMALL, AND MEDIUM-SIZE ENTERPRISES

Enterprise category / Indicator Micro Enterprise Small Enterprise Medium-size Enterprise

Number of Employees ≤ 10 11 ≤ 50 51 ≤ 200
Total Assets (₦) ≤ 5 million > 5 ≤ 100 million > 100 ≤ 500 million
Annual Turnover (₦) ≤ 20 million ≤ 100 million ≤ 500 million


SMEDAN National Policy on MSMEs Definitions
 

Enterprise category / Indicator Micro Enterprise Small Enterprise Medium-size enterprise

Number of Employees < 5 million 10 to 49 50 to 199
Total Assets (₦) < 5 million ≥ 5 < 50 million ≥ 50 < 500 million


In terms of ownership, SMEs in Nigeria are mostly run as sole-proprietorship. A recent survey by PwC puts SME ownership in Nigeria as follows:

SME Ownership Type (in Nigeria) Percentage

Sole Proprietor 73%
Private Limited Liability 14%
Partnership 6%
Faith Based Organisations 5%
Cooperative 1%
Other 1%


From that survey, PwC came up with the following key findings. Understanding these challenges is key to consulting for SMEs in Nigeria

- Obtaining finance, finding customers and infrastructure deficits are the most pressing problems of SMEs.
- Electricity is responsible for the highest cost to operations followed by rent and cost of capital
- Top economic issues are pressure to reduce prices, rising inflation and low demand for products and services.
- Local government levies are the most difficult taxes to comply with.
- MSMEs would prefer private equity over debt financing.


SME CHALLENGES CODIFIED[/color]

Understandably, consulting for SMEs in Nigeria requires an in-depth appreciation of the major challenges small and medium-sized businesses face. We have in this article organised the challenges affecting SMEs in Nigeria into 5 categories.

Finance

Obtaining finance, finding customers and infrastructure deficits are the most pressing problems of SMEs. SMEs are less likely to have access to bank loans than large businesses. They mostly rely on their internal reserves, personal savings and funds from family and friends to start or perpetuate their businesses. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) estimates that 65 million firms, or 40% of formal micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in developing countries, have an unmet financing need of $5.2 trillion every year.

Truth be told, many start as really micro businesses but the frustrating challenge of scaling without sufficient limited working capital usually impacts on quality of products/services, which may ultimately lead to unabated market share and ultimate mortality.

Heavy Operational Costs

Irregular power supply (in some instances outright non-availability) and the attendant need to run high-cost powers generators has for years remained  major threat to continuity in business for many SMEs. This problem is compounded by ever-increasing cost of petrol and diesel. Interestingly, most SMEs are not able to transfer the rising cost to consumers so as to recover their operating overheads. There’s always the real fear or reality of losing their customers to competing imported products. This takes a toll on profitability, and at some point they start to run losses and ultimately may close business.

Inability to Recruit the Right-Staff

Businesses need people to run. Good people at that. A major problem for SMEs in Nigeria is the challenge of attracting and retaining good staff. Ability to pay for good staff is restricted, and in many cases, even when they got the right staff, those personnel are soon lured by better pay into bigger competitor or a high-paying industry.

Technology and Infrastructural Challenges

Right technology and appropriate infrastructure require funds. Where the funds are not available – as highlighted above – SMEs are left stranded, frustrated and moribund. Application of the right technology enhances and SME’s competition, not just against foreign brands but also larger businesses. The quality of products of many SMEs in Nigeria has been hampered by the use of outdated technology; hence they are not able to effectively compete both in terms of quality and cost.

Corporate Governance Challenges

Poor corporate governance creates a lot of issues for SMEs in Nigeria. Some of those problems include:

- Leadership tussles and conflicts within management and business owners,
- Over-centralisation of decision-making
- Reckless leadership tendencies
- Weak internal controls
- Tax problems created by improper book-keeping
- Stunted growth

Not often cited as a major problem by SME business owners, but this is one factor that has ruined the good dreams and goals of many SME owners.
[color=#000099]
CONSULTING FOR SMEs IN NIGERIA

With the myriad of challenges highlighted above, it would seem that consulting for SMEs in Nigeria is full of problems. Yes, it may be quite challenging but this is where the right skills need to be applied while serving as advisors to SMEs.

Continue reading on https://teoaris.com/2024/02/07/peculiarities-of-consulting-for-smes-in-nigeria/

Our client is a leading supply chain company in Nigeria.

Due to restructuring, the company requires two (2) Customer Service Executives to strengthen their customer relationship management function.


CORE DUTY

The candidate will be responsible for supporting customers by providing helpful information, answering questions, and responding to complaints. You will be the front line of support for customers and prospects, ensuring that they are satisfied with the company’s services.

RESPONSIBILITIES

·         Maintaining a positive, empathetic and professional attitude towards customers at all times

·         Responding promptly to customer inquiries, resolving their issues, and escalating where required

·         Developing and maintaining an effective Customer Relationship Management System

·         Building sustainable relationships and trust with customers through open and interactive communication

·         Acknowledging and resolving customer complaints

·         A top-notch understanding of the company’s products, services and processes

·         Keeping records of customer interactions, transactions, comments and complaints

·         Providing feedback on the efficiency of the customer service process

·         Generating sales leads through customers’ enquiries

·         Identifying and assessing customers’ needs to achieve satisfaction

·         Providing accurate, valid and complete information on the Company’s products and services to customers and prospects

·         Handling customer complaints, providing appropriate solutions and alternatives within the time limits and follow up to ensure resolution

·         Keeping records of customer interactions, process customer accounts and file documents

·         Giving accurate updates on customers’ shipments and cargoes


Location: Lagos, Nigeria


Interested candidates should apply on https://teoaris.com/recruitment-agency-in-nigeria/

Teoaris Consulting is a professional business consulting firm in Lagos with deep competencies in Business Strategy, Recruitment, Tax Services and Executive Training. We are currently looking for Business Management Trainees to support our growth plans.

This position is best suited for candidates who want to acquire skills and experience in diverse business functions with a view to developing astute business management capabilities. The right candidates must be willing to – while acquiring strong competencies in many fields including, finance, marketing, operations and human resources management – support various business engagements of the firm.

In addition, they must have genuine interest in developing skills in Business Strategy, People Management, Digital Marketing and General Administration of businesses.


Responsibilities

- Support managers in implementing diverse consulting assignments
- Assist in conducting various economic, business and market research
- Participate in the company’s strategy development activities while learning on the job
- Provide administrative support
- Support in executing feasibility studies and developing business plans
- Develop marketing plans and strategies for organisations

Requirements and skills

- Bachelor’s degree or HND in Economics, Psychology, Marketing, Accounting or any other business-related discipline
- Not more than 3 years’ working experience (Serving NYSC members are encouraged)
- Ability to efficiently work with the computer, particularly using Microsoft Office tools
- Good verbal communication and writing skills
- Willingness to learn
- Good team spirit

Interested? Click on our job portal link to apply https://teoaris.com/recruitment-agency-in-nigeria/

How to build a SMART business – 7 things that matter

The decision to start a business could have a cerebral or visceral underpin – or better still, both.

Regardless of the inspiration for starting, for an enterprise to actualize the vision of the promoters and more importantly to survive new business early mortality “curse”, the business leaders/promoters must be deliberate about developing the business into a SMART one.

In this blog, we’ll take a look at:

• SMART goal-setting framework
• What a SMART business is
• How the concept of SMART business relates to SMART goal-setting framework
• How to adopt SMART business management
• 7 things that matter for a SMART business

A Look at SMART Goal-setting Framework

The concept of business SMARTness as propounded in this blog is borrowed from the popular SMART goal-setting framework. Setting SMART (an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) objectives is a good way to plan the steps required to meet long-term goals. It helps with clarification of goals, accountability and timing.

Before we go into the details of what a SMART business is and the key steps towards being one, let’s have a refreshing look at the SMART goal-setting framework.

As generally known within the SMART framework, for objectives to be effective, they must be:

Specific – Expectations, and the objectives to meet must be clearly defined, and responsibilities must be properly allocated. In other words, what needs to be done must be clearly articulated and communicated; having enough details but without ambiguity.

Measurable – The metrics for determining the accomplishment of the objective must be well defined, preferably in quantitative terms.

Attainable – Are the objectives achievable given the existing capabilities and capacity? The resources required to achieve the objective must be available and functional. Such resources would include tools, funds, time, manpower, technology, authority and others, as may be crucial to the accomplishment of the objective.

Relevant – The objectives must be relevant to the overall course of the entity. It must help to meet the purpose of the project, the team or the organisation.

Time-bound – The timeframes for the accomplishment of the objective must be well-articulated.
In general, the SMART framework sets businesses, teams and individuals up for success, helps to give a clear sense of direction and helps businesses organize better to reach their goals.

The Concept of SMART Business

Overall, a SMART business is that which has built efficient planning, monitoring and improvement mechanisms into all its activities and undertakings. Not only do they plan, monitor and improve, but the processes of executing each of these follow the SMART principles.
By so doing, they are constantly ahead of trends and competitors.

Characteristics of a SMART Business

A smart business is one that:

• Optimizes the use of its assets to achieve ambitious goals
• Knows how to generate, process, and use data generated by its activities; the business consumers (existing and potential); industry; and overall global trends
• Is proactive, yet knows how to adapt to market changes through internally built mechanisms for improvement
• Has a sustainable advantage over its competitors
• Is a digitally efficient business

Developing into a SMART business involves running the enterprise with the SMART framework. We believe this framework can – and should – be adapted as a global core in managing business enterprises, especially new businesses and SMEs.

By intelligently and diligently applying the elements of SMART framework in the day-to-day operational and strategic undertakings of an enterprise, a business gradually becomes smarter and makes an upward journey towards sustainably outperform its competitors.

How to integrate SMART into the business core – 7 things that matter

1. Business idea and Value Creation Matters

Being smart starts from the first day of formation or when the idea of creating the business was first mooted. Why was the business created? What was the idea behind creating the business? What’s the purpose? Many a business had their destiny nailed right from this formative stage.

Without doubt, every business enterprise is established for a particular purpose. In the conventional theory of the firm, the principal objective of a business firm is profit maximisation. Although this objective has been severely challenged by modern-day business management enthusiasts, the overarching need for business sustainability remains unchallenged.

Whether a business is established out of sustenance reasons; social factors; wealth building; or out of clock-building vision, what is important is that the purpose of the business should be tied to value-creation. A business that cannot sustainably provide value which can sustain it in operations has no business being in business.

It’s not enough to have beautiful vision and mission statements. What’s more important is the quality of value that the business intends to give today, and the improvements (or “disruptions”) that it will make to that value in the future - to sustain growth. This value must be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. The ways and mode of providing this value must be clear to the promoters and the leaders of the business. It is tied to the reason the business exists. Beyond commencement of business, business leaders must continually assess the value subject. For instance, business executives must constantly ask the question – is our value proposition still unique and relevant?

Click to continue reading https://teoaris.com/2024/03/13/how-to-develop-a-smart-business-7-things-that-matter/

How to develop a SMART business – 7 things that matter

The decision to start a business could have a cerebral or visceral underpin – or better still, both.

Regardless of the inspiration for starting, for an enterprise to actualize the vision of the promoters and more importantly to survive new business early mortality “curse”, the business leaders/promoters must be deliberate about developing the business into a SMART one.

In this blog, we’ll take a look at:

• SMART goal-setting framework
• What a SMART business is
• How the concept of SMART business relates to SMART goal-setting framework
• How to adopt SMART business management
• 7 things that matter for a SMART business

A Look at SMART Goal-setting Framework

The concept of business SMARTness as propounded in this blog is borrowed from the popular SMART goal-setting framework. Setting SMART (an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) objectives is a good way to plan the steps required to meet long-term goals. It helps with clarification of goals, accountability and timing.

Before we go into the details of what a SMART business is and the key steps towards being one, let’s have a refreshing look at the SMART goal-setting framework.

As generally known within the SMART framework, for objectives to be effective, they must be:

Specific – Expectations, and the objectives to meet must be clearly defined, and responsibilities must be properly allocated. In other words, what needs to be done must be clearly articulated and communicated; having enough details but without ambiguity.

Measurable – The metrics for determining the accomplishment of the objective must be well defined, preferably in quantitative terms.

Attainable – Are the objectives achievable given the existing capabilities and capacity? The resources required to achieve the objective must be available and functional. Such resources would include tools, funds, time, manpower, technology, authority and others, as may be crucial to the accomplishment of the objective.

Relevant – The objectives must be relevant to the overall course of the entity. It must help to meet the purpose of the project, the team or the organisation.

Time-bound – The timeframes for the accomplishment of the objective must be well-articulated.
In general, the SMART framework sets businesses, teams and individuals up for success, helps to give a clear sense of direction and helps businesses organize better to reach their goals.

The Concept of SMART Business

Overall, a SMART business is that which has built efficient planning, monitoring and improvement mechanisms into all its activities and undertakings. Not only do they plan, monitor and improve, but the processes of executing each of these follow the SMART principles.
By so doing, they are constantly ahead of trends and competitors.

Characteristics of a SMART Business

A smart business is one that:

• Optimizes the use of its assets to achieve ambitious goals
• Knows how to generate, process, and use data generated by its activities; the business consumers (existing and potential); industry; and overall global trends
• Is proactive, yet knows how to adapt to market changes through internally built mechanisms for improvement
• Has a sustainable advantage over its competitors
• Is a digitally efficient business

Developing into a SMART business involves running the enterprise with the SMART framework. We believe this framework can – and should – be adapted as a global core in managing business enterprises, especially new businesses and SMEs.

By intelligently and diligently applying the elements of SMART framework in the day-to-day operational and strategic undertakings of an enterprise, a business gradually becomes smarter and makes an upward journey towards sustainably outperform its competitors.

How to integrate SMART into the business core – 7 things that matter

1. Business idea and Value Creation Matters

Being smart starts from the first day of formation or when the idea of creating the business was first mooted. Why was the business created? What was the idea behind creating the business? What’s the purpose? Many a business had their destiny nailed right from this formative stage.

Without doubt, every business enterprise is established for a particular purpose. In the conventional theory of the firm, the principal objective of a business firm is profit maximisation. Although this objective has been severely challenged by modern-day business management enthusiasts, the overarching need for business sustainability remains unchallenged.

Whether a business is established out of sustenance reasons; social factors; wealth building; or out of clock-building vision, what is important is that the purpose of the business should be tied to value-creation. A business that cannot sustainably provide value which can sustain it in operations has no business being in business.

It’s not enough to have beautiful vision and mission statements. What’s more important is the quality of value that the business intends to give today, and the improvements (or “disruptions”) that it will make to that value in the future - to sustain growth. This value must be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. The ways and mode of providing this value must be clear to the promoters and the leaders of the business. It is tied to the reason the business exists. Beyond commencement of business, business leaders must continually assess the value subject. For instance, business executives must constantly ask the question – is our value proposition still unique and relevant?

Click to continue reading https://teoaris.com/2024/03/13/how-to-develop-a-smart-business-7-things-that-matter/

2024 TEOARIS CONSULTING EXECUTIVE NOTES

As we look forward to the next phase in the life of our firm, we are excited about the opportunities ahead of us but are also mindful of the challenges before us.

Our opportunities lie in how impactful we’ll be on the organisations we work with, and the series of businesses we’ll create by assisting them to grow and succeed more.

We’ll therefore challenge ourselves more on a daily basis to create perpetual streams of value that’ll help the client envision and activate possibilities they are yet to see. Equally, we’ll assist them to wade off potential obstacles to those possibilities.
In doing this, we’ll remain faithful to our vision and our core values. But in addition, we will – in the next phase of our exciting journey – increasingly focus on the 4 key elements that keep us strong.

Focus on the Client

The client keeps our business alive. The client is the reason we exist. Their satisfaction brings joy to us. Their dissatisfaction calls to question our integrity and existence.

Focus on Integrity

At the heart of all we do is the sanctity of our promise. We will keep to what we have committed to, even when it’s not so convenient. Where circumstances totally and clearly forbid us, we will swiftly ask for understanding with a perfect sense of humility.

Focus on Success

• Success of the client is a passion to us.
• Success of our firm is everyone’s business.
• Success of the job at hand is paramount to our continued existence.
• Personal success of our staff and colleagues is non-negotiable.

Focus on Beauty

• Beauty in our interactions with people.
• Beauty in the quality of our work.
• Beauty of our environment.
• Beauty in Business Consulting

Focus on Improvement

We deliberately and consciously quest for improvement in all we do. Even if our quest for improvement is tagged “inconsistency”, we consider it as a badge of honour.

We therefore look forward to increasingly celebrating our clients’ successes in beauty and with integrity, while we focus on improving continually.

We’ll also continue to celebrate the intrinsic value of our people; enthusing about the diversity of their gifts, talents and skills which bring success to our firm. On the contrary, the firm is resolute in abhorring all form of discrimination, arising from outward appearance, gender, race or culture.

We look forward to an exciting year and beyond.

Visit https://teoaris.com for more updates

Effective recruitment could be tough. Hence, getting it right requires a good balance of automation, human skills and a right balance of data-backed, and intuitive knowledge from experience.


Recruiting right is perhaps even harder in a country like Nigeria where there’s increasing shortage of professional hands in a number of roles; largely orchestrated by actual and proclivity to brain-drain in the country.

While this on its own may seem to be a bad problem; it could interestingly be a good one for some businesses. This is so because ability to attract and recruit better staff - out of the few available - may in practical terms give a business some strategic advantage over its competitors who are not able to recruit them. After all, in the recruitment landscape, many organisations grapple for the best of talents who could facilitate the timely achievement of their business objectives. Yet, only a few are able to get the best. And those who get the best are by that means better positioned to compete.

From posting job openings, sourcing candidates, scheduling interviews, up to conducting assessments and analyses, Teoaris employs variety of skills, tools and experience to recruit highly talented and versatile employees for our clients.

In our consulting experience, many questions/concerns are often raised on how a business can get its recruitment right. Some of those questions range from interesting to heart-rending.

- Why don’t we attract “quality” staff?
- We are so unlucky with staffing; the staff we get don’t always seem to be the right ones.
- Remuneration is always an issue for us when it comes to hiring right.
- Staff loyalty to organisation is rare these days; you just can’t find it.
- John is competent; he just can’t seem to be able to perform well.
- He performed brilliantly during the recruitment processes, but from day one we discovered we got the recruitment wrong.

Organisations are – now and then - awash with above worries and many more. These worries often arise from practical challenges to recruiting right. Some of these challenges, which include:

- Attracting the right candidates
- Engaging qualified candidates
- Fast and efficient hiring
- Placing objectivity above subjective factors
- Creating an efficient recruiting process
- Matching person to organisation or “culture-alignment”
- Matching remuneration with competence

There are real concerns and could be overwhelming. Furthermore, they often lead employers with recruiting the second-best-available rather than what they really desired.

So, how does Teoaris Consulting get hiring right? We simply dare to do it differently, and more efficiently!

How we do it


Our goal when recruiting for an organisation is not just limited to filling the position for the moment, we are passionate about building a talent pool that will improve the business of the organisation today and also give it a sustainable advantage for the future.

With that, we take a strategic approach to recruiting over the oft-shortsighted approach of filling the position now without putting into consideration what will happen in the next few months, two years or another five years. What does this mean? Except for short-term requirements, we only want to recruit staff that will contribute to and enhance our client’s business – today, in the short term, medium term and in the long run. Hence, our recruitment philosophy avoids the usual off-the-peg approach. Rather we take each recruitment as a project, and apply our rigorous procedures, applying unique skills, experience and technology to hire the best.

Applying the 3 cardinal elements of recruitment - Technology, Skills and Experience, is key in our recruitment processes


These three elements fit together. In other words, we implicitly apply the three in every recruitment engagement. These elements are applied in each of our recruitment processes (profiled below).


Why are you recruiting? Where it all starts from

As a professional principle, Teoaris does not start a recruitment process without having a good knowledge of the client's business, the recruitment objectives of the business and the corporate culture. For us, getting the right fit starts with how the role being filled fits into the overall business goals of the business. Hence, the knowledge of the business, its industry, its plans, and its structure is very important to us. Juxtaposing this knowledge with the job role and requirements enables our consultants to apply decades of business consulting experience to create a “candidate personae” that fits the role. This process takes some diligence in analysis but we are always pleased to undergo it as it sets the right foundation for hiring right.

To continue reading, go to https://teoaris.com/2024/03/04/aligning-technology-with-human-skills-for-efficient-recruitment/

Effective recruitment could be tough. Hence, getting it right requires a good balance of automation, human skills and a right balance of data-backed, and intuitive knowledge from experience.


Recruiting right is perhaps even harder in a country like Nigeria where there’s increasing shortage of professional hands in a number of roles; largely orchestrated by actual and proclivity to brain-drain in the country.

While this on its own may seem to be a bad problem; it could interestingly be a good one for some businesses. This is so because ability to attract and recruit better staff - out of the few available - may in practical terms give a business some strategic advantage over its competitors who are not able to recruit them. After all, in the recruitment landscape, many organisations grapple for the best of talents who could facilitate the timely achievement of their business objectives. Yet, only a few are able to get the best. And those who get the best are by that means better positioned to compete.

From posting job openings, sourcing candidates, scheduling interviews, up to conducting assessments and analyses, Teoaris employs variety of skills, tools and experience to recruit highly talented and versatile employees for our clients.

In our consulting experience, many questions/concerns are often raised on how a business can get its recruitment right. Some of those questions range from interesting to heart-rending.

- Why don’t we attract “quality” staff?
- We are so unlucky with staffing; the staff we get don’t always seem to be the right ones.
- Remuneration is always an issue for us when it comes to hiring right.
- Staff loyalty to organisation is rare these days; you just can’t find it.
- John is competent; he just can’t seem to be able to perform well.
- He performed brilliantly during the recruitment processes, but from day one we discovered we got the recruitment wrong.

Organisations are – now and then - awash with above worries and many more. These worries often arise from practical challenges to recruiting right. Some of these challenges, which include:

- Attracting the right candidates
- Engaging qualified candidates
- Fast and efficient hiring
- Placing objectivity above subjective factors
- Creating an efficient recruiting process
- Matching person to organisation or “culture-alignment”
- Matching remuneration with competence

There are real concerns and could be overwhelming. Furthermore, they often lead employers with recruiting the second-best-available rather than what they really desired.

So, how does Teoaris Consulting get hiring right? We simply dare to do it differently, and more efficiently!

How we do it


Our goal when recruiting for an organisation is not just limited to filling the position for the moment, we are passionate about building a talent pool that will improve the business of the organisation today and also give it a sustainable advantage for the future.

With that, we take a strategic approach to recruiting over the oft-shortsighted approach of filling the position now without putting into consideration what will happen in the next few months, two years or another five years. What does this mean? Except for short-term requirements, we only want to recruit staff that will contribute to and enhance our client’s business – today, in the short term, medium term and in the long run. Hence, our recruitment philosophy avoids the usual off-the-peg approach. Rather we take each recruitment as a project, and apply our rigorous procedures, applying unique skills, experience and technology to hire the best.

THREE CARDINAL ELEMENTS OF TEOARIS RECRUITMENT

Applying the 3 cardinal elements of recruitment - Technology, Skills and Experience, is key in our recruitment processes


These three elements fit together. In other words, we implicitly apply the three in every recruitment engagement. These elements are applied in each of our recruitment processes (profiled below).


Why are you recruiting? Where it all starts from

As a professional principle, Teoaris does not start a recruitment process without having a good knowledge of the client's business, the recruitment objectives of the business and the corporate culture. For us, getting the right fit starts with how the role being filled fits into the overall business goals of the business. Hence, the knowledge of the business, its industry, its plans, and its structure is very important to us. Juxtaposing this knowledge with the job role and requirements enables our consultants to apply decades of business consulting experience to create a “candidate personae” that fits the role. This process takes some diligence in analysis but we are always pleased to undergo it as it sets the right foundation for hiring right.

To continue reading, go to https://teoaris.com/2024/03/04/aligning-technology-with-human-skills-for-efficient-recruitment/

Effective recruitment could be tough. Hence, getting it right requires a good balance of automation, human skills and a right balance of data-backed, and intuitive knowledge from experience.

Recruiting right is perhaps even harder in a country like Nigeria where there’s increasing shortage of professional hands in a number of roles; largely orchestrated by actual and proclivity to brain-drain in the country.

While this on its own may seem to be a bad problem; it could interestingly be a good one for some businesses. This is so because ability to attract and recruit better staff - out of the few available - may in practical terms give a business some strategic advantage over its competitors who are not able to recruit them. After all, in the recruitment landscape, many organisations grapple for the best of talents who could facilitate the timely achievement of their business objectives. Yet, only a few are able to get the best. And those who get the best are by that means better positioned to compete.

From posting job openings, sourcing candidates, scheduling interviews, up to conducting assessments and analyses, Teoaris employs variety of skills, tools and experience to recruit highly talented and versatile employees for our clients.

In our consulting experience, many questions/concerns are often raised on how a business can get its recruitment right. Some of those questions range from interesting to heart-rending.

- Why don’t we attract “quality” staff?
- We are so unlucky with staffing; the staff we get don’t always seem to be the right ones.
- Remuneration is always an issue for us when it comes to hiring right.
- Staff loyalty to organisation is rare these days; you just can’t find it.
- John is competent; he just can’t seem to be able to perform well.
- He performed brilliantly during the recruitment processes, but from day one we discovered we got the recruitment wrong.

Organisations are – now and then - awash with above worries and many more. These worries often arise from practical challenges to recruiting right. Some of these challenges, which include:

- Attracting the right candidates
- Engaging qualified candidates
- Fast and efficient hiring
- Placing objectivity above subjective factors
- Creating an efficient recruiting process
- Matching person to organisation or “culture-alignment”
- Matching remuneration with competence

There are real concerns and could be overwhelming. Furthermore, they often lead employers with recruiting the second-best-available rather than what they really desired.

So, how does Teoaris Consulting get hiring right? We simply dare to do it differently, and more efficiently!

How we do it


Our goal when recruiting for an organisation is not just limited to filling the position for the moment, we are passionate about building a talent pool that will improve the business of the organisation today and also give it a sustainable advantage for the future.

With that, we take a strategic approach to recruiting over the oft-shortsighted approach of filling the position now without putting into consideration what will happen in the next few months, two years or another five years. What does this mean? Except for short-term requirements, we only want to recruit staff that will contribute to and enhance our client’s business – today, in the short term, medium term and in the long run. Hence, our recruitment philosophy avoids the usual off-the-peg approach. Rather we take each recruitment as a project, and apply our rigorous procedures, applying unique skills, experience and technology to hire the best.

          THREE CARDINAL ELEMENTS OF TEOARIS RECRUITMENT

Applying the 3 cardinal elements of recruitment - Technology, Skills and Experience, is key in our recruitment processes


These three elements fit together. In other words, we implicitly apply the three in every recruitment engagement. These elements are applied in each of our recruitment processes (profiled below).


Why are you recruiting? Where it all starts from

As a professional principle, Teoaris does not start a recruitment process without having a good knowledge of the client's business, the recruitment objectives of the business and the corporate culture. For us, getting the right fit starts with how the role being filled fits into the overall business goals of the business. Hence, the knowledge of the business, its industry, its plans, and its structure is very important to us. Juxtaposing this knowledge with the job role and requirements enables our consultants to apply decades of business consulting experience to create a “candidate personae” that fits the role. This process takes some diligence in analysis but we are always pleased to undergo it as it sets the right foundation for hiring right.

To continue reading, go to https://teoaris.com/2024/03/04/aligning-technology-with-human-skills-for-efficient-recruitment/

Crafting a stable course for business advancement and sustainability (Part 1)


 Introduction

Until recent past, the concept of building enduring business institutions did not seem ingrained in many Nigerian entrepreneurs. It was archetypal of most entrepreneurs to found and run their businesses –even the ones that later endured – first with sustenance considerations, and then, for pride and social mileage derived from being “successful” businessmen.

Was vision lacking? No! Just that the vision was somewhat limited to the immediate and the short-term. Truth be told, a vision so restricted rarely builds a lasting, clock-building business. A vision premised on gratification ego and personal accumulation of wealth hardly endures.

In their book – Built to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras encapsulate the clock-building concept of businesses in a very intelligent way. They differentiate between having a great idea upon which a business thrives at a moment, and building a company that can prosper far beyond the presence of any single leader, and through multiple product/service life cycles.

The authors further propound that searching for a single great idea on which to build success is time-telling while building an organization that can generate many great ideas over a long period of time is clock-building. Enduring greatness requires clock-building. They try to relegate the idea that having a great product and a great leader (or great leaders) is strategic advantage to any business.

For the purpose of this piece, we take strategic advantage in this context as giving the business an edge to thrive for - and endure - generations.

To thrive for – and endure – generations would mean that such a business has entrenched in their organisations and systems life-renewing mechanisms. Such mechanisms are analogous to finding answers to questions such as:

What type of enduring business do we want to build?[color=#000099][/color]

What systems should we construct that will give us the kind of business we envision?
What processes can we create that will give us good leaders after we’re dead and long gone?

Ultimately, such businesses defy the parameters imposed by traditional business life cycle.


The Traditional Business Life Cycle

Students and enthusiasts of business management are well familiar with the growth stages of a business, typically called The Business Life Cycle.

Business life cycle is the progression of a business in phases over time. All businesses would hypothetically pass through all the phases, but not all will or need to.

The cycle is typically divided into 5 phases.

Phase

Launch

·         New product/service is launched.

·         Sales low but growing


Growth

·         Sales growth

·         Positive cash flow


Shake-out

·         Sales continue to grow but at a slower rate

·         Cash flow increases


Maturity

·         Sales decrease slowly

·         Profit margin gets thinner

·         Business calls for growth renewal


Decline

·         Sales, profit, and cash flow all decline

·         Business loses their competitive advantage and finally exits the market.



Crafting a stable course that defies business decline

During maturity phase, strategic businesses perennially renew by rejuvenating themselves, improving processes, and investing in new technologies and emerging markets.

This perennial renewal, oiled by built-in processes and systems is what determines the ability of a business to – from time to time, and from generation to generation - reposition themselves in their industries and refresh their growth in the marketplace. They - time after time - question the fundamentals of their business model; reconsider many things, and reject, refine, reshape or rebuild.

Right from the start of the business, but more so as it nears its maturity stage, the systems and processes for continually generating great ideas must be integrated into the engine of the business. This is what we call clock-building machinery.

Clock-building and the business leader

But does it really it take a great leader to build a clock-building machinery? In our opinion, it does take one. Not a great leader in the one who gravitates towards ego and self gratification, but a clock-building leader who understands and imbibes the necessity of sacrifices in leadership. A leader who’s forward-thinking, process-oriented and gracious enough to create a system –starting from her – that makes leaders within the organisation (now and in the future) subject self to the collective beliefs and value system of the business. Humble leaders are great because they make their people feel great and empowered when they’re around them. And where you have multiples of leaders and people within an organisation who feel empowered and emotionally committed, issue of good succession becomes easier – from one generation to another.

More than the leader: Continuous organisational advancement requires dynamic strategies

Before we delve into the necessity for dynamic strategies, the following statistics are worthy of note.

- 74% of executives who don't believe that their company's transformative strategies will succeed (McKinsey)
- Only 2% of business leaders are confident that they will achieve 80–100% of their strategic objectives. (Bridges Business Consulting)
- 67% of well-formulated strategies failed due to poor execution. (Havard Business Review)

Click to continue reading https://teoaris.com/2024/02/29/crafting-a-stable-course-for-business-advancement-and-sustainability-part-1/

Introduction[b][/b]

Delegation is one of the most underrated leadership skills that entrepreneurs and leaders credit their success to. And as Richard Branson puts it, "If you really want to grow as an entrepreneur, you've got to learn to delegate."

Delegation is crucial to effective management. Busy managers would always have so much to do and constraints of time - in some cases requisite expertise -may be inadequate. Delegate well, the manager is able to achieve so much within the time and knowledge constraints she has. Where not done or inappropriately done, undesirable consequences follow.

Delegation is not about allocating uninteresting tasks to others, but it is about assigning a job out of the many we have, so they could be completed timely and efficiently. It’s about meeting goals. But perhaps equally important, it is about encouraging people to learn new skills and reach their potential – in the process helping the organisation to grow and the manager being more effective. Remember, it is an indication of greatness when a leader consciously, intentionally and happily enables his employees to achieve and become capable and more productive. As Max de Pree puts it, “The measure of leadership is not the quality of the head, but the tone of the body”.

The desire for certainty and control is deep-seated in most human beings. First, because it feels good to believe we are able to do things without being dependent on others – particularly those we feel are subordinate to us. Second, because we tend to feel highly accomplished when we are able to shape outcomes of events without help from others.

While being in control of “all” things may be a good thing, an efficient manager must be able draw a line, beyond which his propensity for control can make him inefficient and consequently miserable.

Thankfully, delegation is an art. It’s a skill that can be – and should be developed, if lacking.

Benefits of delegating[/color]

Benefits of delegation are numerous.

- Delegation encourages and inspires creativity
- Delegation builds trust within the team/organisation
- Delegation helps in developing people
- Delegation saves time and improves effectiveness
- Delegation motivates and builds morale
- Delegation can lead to better way of doing things
- Delegation frees up time for a manager to do real managerial work – planning, organising and coordinating
- It reduces stress on the leader


Why people find it difficult to delegate[color=#000099]

With these enormous benefits, why does delegation remain one of the more difficult processes in management and leadership to be effectively accomplished? The reasons vary from fear, to ignorance, to distrust and ego.


Impatience and distrust for the process

Some leaders think delegating can be time-consuming. After all, they can get the task done in a few minutes rather than wait for the staff to undergo the learning curve. It often seems quicker to get the job done rather than take time to explain how to do it to someone else and then correct their mistakes after. On the contrary, when done correctly, many leaders are pleasantly surprised by the quality and speed with which the staff has gotten the job done. Truth is, when people know you trust them well enough to delegate an important task, they put their heart into it and it boosts their motivation to get the job done.

Insecurity

Some managers could be insecure in their positions and abilities so much so that they feel constantly threatened by the competence of their subordinates. In these situations, they are apprehensive about delegating tasks to the subordinates for fear of the subordinate taking the shine off them. They feel threatened that by the confidence of an employee who’s quick on the delegated task and delivered efficiently – thinking the employee may take over the role from them or be seen as a more competent staff.

However, acknowledging the competence of a staff in certain regards is a mark of good leadership rather than a weakness. No one is a paragon of universal competence. We must therefore develop trust in the moment and realise that when we willingly give authority, most people are appreciative and tend to return with loyalty.


Being a control freak

Some people just want to be in charge and cannot let go. They constantly feel the need to make themselves indispensable. Such should realise that all leadership is temporary and transient as situations come to an end with time and circumstances.


Reluctance to delegate tasks considered too “weighty”


Some managers are guilty of “excessive empathy”. They are reluctant to delegate to their subordinates certain jobs they consider tedious and would rather do them, even when they are weighed down themselves. Empathy is a good leadership virtue, no doubt. However, when it borders on making a leader ineffective, the lines need be drawn.

Reluctance to give more work to “overworked” staff

Similar to the above point, some leaders would see adding an additional task to the workload of a staff who’s having so much on his table as “inconsiderate”. This may not usually be appropriate. A leader must regularly evaluate the strengths of her staff and determine if there’s a need to reshuffle workloads, and give some of the tasks on his table to some certain staff while re-allocating some they at that moment have to other staff.

Where to start from

Some do not just know when and how to delegate. So, they’d rather do the job themselves.

How to delegate effectively[color=#000099][/color]

Effective delegation requires some planning. To delegate well and achieve results without stress, you need to consider the following.

Planning

Yes, delegation needs to be clearly thought out.

What tasks should I delegate?
Who should I delegate to?
What deliverables do I desire?
Discuss tasks to be delegated and provide guidance

This is where many fail in the process of delegating. Tasks being delegated need to be clearly discussed with the staff. What is to be achieved, the purpose and when it’s desired. The manager also needs to provide guidance on how the task should be accomplished while – and very important – giving room for creativity.

Click to continue reading https://teoaris.com/2024/02/28/how-to-delegate-and-get-desired-results/

With the right employees in place, an organisation’s business challenges are half-way solved.

The statement above is even more apt in a country like Nigeria. With a large pool of skilled and talented people, it’s expected that getting the right personnel shouldn’t pose much serious challenge to businesses. While there may be no shortage of talent in Nigeria, identifying the right ones and retaining them continue to be recruiters’ nightmare. This challenge pervades recruitment for virtually all skilled roles in the country; including accounts & finance roles.

This blog highlights 10 factors to consider in the hiring process to recruit good accountants in Nigeria.

The need to recruit good accountants

Regardless of its size, every business organisation needs an accountant. For many start-ups, the owner or a surrogate may take the role of the accountant (book-keeper) together with other functions. But as the business grows, it’s crucial to engage the services a professional accountant.

Large organisations would employ scores of accountants performing different roles – mostly towards an ultimate goal. Aside from capturing financial transactions with a reasonable level of accuracy, the 21st century accountant is expected to be fully business-minded and must be able to directly or indirectly offer reasonable advice to business managers/owners on business survival, growth and sustainability. This responsibility typically involves several duties, such as:

Formulation of financial policy
Financial planning, budgeting & budgetary control
Formulation/Compliance with internal controls
Recording, categorization and presentation of financial reports.
Cost management & control
Financial analysis and reporting
Safeguard of business assets and investments

Such – and as widely acknowledged – the role of a competent accountant in the success of a business cannot be over-emphasized. The question then is what it really takes to recruit a good accountant either for just accounting responsibility or combined with a financial management role.

To start with, there appears to be quite a dearth of very competent candidates for finance and accounts position in the Nigerian job market. From our interactions with hundreds of candidates for various Finance and Accounts roles for clients in the last couple of years as Recruitment Consultants of repute in Nigeria, findings show that getting candidates who comprehensively meet essential competence requirements for various accounting and finance roles is not an easy task. This paucity of competencies calls for recruiters and employers to dig really deep if they desire to recruit very good candidates.

What to test for

Either as recruitment consultants, employers or recruitment agency, the following competencies are important evaluation criteria in the process of recruiting good accountants.

1. Test for sound understanding and practical application of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). This is the bedrock of accounting upon which capturing of transactions, reporting, planning and analysis rest. For a fact, a candidate that falls short in this gets you nowhere.

2. Particularly test for strong understanding of double entry principles. We find it shocking that many accountants – chartered and not – of varying years of experience, fall short on simple understanding of basic double entry principles. For instance, and as simple as it may seem, complete entries for a simple sales transaction is a nightmare to many candidates.. It’s shocking to hear some of them attribute this to automation – “after all accounting software does the double entry processing”. This simply can’t be logical.

Link to read more https://teoaris.com/2024/02/27/how-to-recruit-great-accountants-in-nigeria/

With the right employees in place, an organisation’s business challenges are half-way solved.

The statement above is even more apt in a country like Nigeria. With a large pool of skilled and talented people, it’s expected that getting the right personnel shouldn’t pose much serious challenge to businesses. While there may be no shortage of talent in Nigeria, identifying the right ones and retaining them continue to be recruiters’ nightmare. This challenge pervades recruitment for virtually all skilled roles in the country; including accounts & finance roles.

This blog highlights 10 factors to consider in the hiring process to recruit good accountants in Nigeria.
The need to recruit good accountants

Regardless of its size, every business organisation needs an accountant. For many start-ups, the owner or a surrogate may take the role of the accountant (book-keeper) together with other functions. But as the business grows, it’s crucial to engage the services a professional accountant.

Large organisations would employ scores of accountants performing different roles – mostly towards an ultimate goal. Aside from capturing financial transactions with a reasonable level of accuracy, the 21st century accountant is expected to be fully business-minded and must be able to directly or indirectly offer reasonable advice to business managers/owners on business survival, growth and sustainability. This responsibility typically involves several duties, such as:

Formulation of financial policy
Financial planning, budgeting & budgetary control
Formulation/Compliance with internal controls
Recording, categorization and presentation of financial reports.
Cost management & control
Financial analysis and reporting
Safeguard of business assets and investments

Such – and as widely acknowledged – the role of a competent accountant in the success of a business cannot be over-emphasized. The question then is what it really takes to recruit a good accountant either for just accounting responsibility or combined with a financial management role.

To start with, there appears to be quite a dearth of very competent candidates for finance and accounts position in the Nigerian job market. From our interactions with hundreds of candidates for various Finance and Accounts roles for clients in the last couple of years as Recruitment Consultants of repute in Nigeria, findings show that getting candidates who comprehensively meet essential competence requirements for various accounting and finance roles is not an easy task. This paucity of competencies calls for recruiters and employers to dig really deep if they desire to recruit very good candidates.
What to test for

Either as recruitment consultants, employers or recruitment agency, the following competencies are important evaluation criteria in the process to recruit good accountants.

1. Test for sound understanding and practical application of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). This is the bedrock of accounting upon which capturing of transactions, reporting, planning and analysis rest. For a fact, a candidate that falls short in this gets you nowhere.

2. Particularly test for strong understanding of double entry principles. We find it shocking that many accountants – chartered and not – of varying years of experience, fall short on simple understanding of basic double entry principles. For instance, and as simple as it may seem, complete entries for a simple sales transaction is a nightmare to many candidates.. It’s shocking to hear some of them attribute this to automation – “after all accounting software does the double entry processing”. This simply can’t be logical.

Link to read more https://teoaris.com/2024/02/27/how-to-recruit-great-accountants-in-nigeria/

If you don’t understand the details of your business, you’re going to fail – Jeff Bezoz

A few years back, I was sitting with a middle-aged entrepreneur in Lagos who had invested tremendous resources of money, time and efforts in his venture but was enormously frustrated that despite the amount of investment he had put into the business, nothing seemed to be working – “Nothing works in this country”, he lamented.

Paradoxically, he would refer to a competitor who apparently was way ahead in success and ask “But how do they do it?”

In my over two decades of business consulting experience, I’ve encountered scores of entrepreneurs as this. Regrettably lamentations do not stop a business from failing. Young, middle-aged or old; business failure is not a respecter of age. The dynamics of business is such that when you do not play by the intricate rules of effective management of business, the risk of failure becomes enhanced even from the outset. Dead on arrival? Possibly yes! But for many others, it’s dead on the way.

Research shows that 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more. The seed of failure of many of these businesses were sown from the first day of operations – some as early as when the business idea was conceived.

So, why do some businesses fail where others succeed? While from one business climate to another, from an economy to another, and even from sector to sector, there are myriad of reasons businesses fail, we have carefully selected the top 5 factors business owners and managers whether as small businesses or very large ones should take note of.
Why businesses fail

Poor planning

This could be both strategic and operational or a combination of the two.

At the strategic level, the following are worthy of note.

Misconceived business ideas
Lack of vision or weak vision
Inappropriate strategies or poor deployment

At the operational level, issues relating to poor financing and weak organisation sooner than later drive businesses out of existence, if not properly addressed. Other potential killers are:

Weak structures and processes
Incompetent management and
Bad corporate culture



Lack of effective corporate governance framework

Corporate governance is the system of rules, practices, and processes by which a firm is directed and controlled – Investopedia

Corporate governance essentially involves balancing the interests of a company’s many stakeholders – shareholders, senior management executives, customers, suppliers, financiers, the government, and the community. Sadly, many organisations, especially at the earlier years of existence struggle with striking this balance. And so, it’s not unusual to find situations where these businesses battle with issues on statutory compliance defaults, staff dissatisfaction and financial obligations defaults. These issues, which often than not become intractable, lead to the eventual collapse of many businesses.



Poor Financial Management

The language of business is money. Having adequacy of it and managing it well is what ultimately signals the success of a business. One the one hand, businesses should avoid the temptation of overtrading or premature scaling which ultimately lures them into a position of being highly geared in debts where they have access to funds, or reputation damage and loss of business where they don’t and they are not able to meet the demands of their customers. On the other, effective management of financial resources available is crucial to the success or failure of a business. Many businesses, particularly SMEs do not have competent financial managers who could guide them through tricky paths of effective financial planning and treasury management.



Leadership failure

Businesses fail because of poor leadership. The pinnacle of decision making in an organisation is the leadership. Decisions of who to hire, how to raise capital, pricing, which markets to operate and strategies to adopt invariably lie on the leadership of the business. When corporate leaders get this right, the business prospers but where they consistently get them wrong, the business is set on a path to demise.

I often argue that the first set of people to be trained in an organisation is the leaders. Effective leadership in business management evolves and leaders must constantly upgrade themselves to meet the needs of the current. Unfortunately many businesses have been ruined by the actions and inactions of the owners themselves or those put at the helm.



Lack of REAL Value Creation

The world wants value. Customers desire and pay for value. However, many businesses struggle to create or deliver real value to the market. Differentiation rules the world of business. Is your business distinct in your product, service delivery, customer service etc? There must be at least one thing that the customer passionately or sometimes emotionally holds onto in your service or product(s). Where this does not exist, sustainability becomes a challenge in this exponentially changing business world. Succinctly put, many businesses belonging to the “me-too” bandwagon enclave invariably get choked by competition. They wither and die.

The question then is, how do I create real value that'll be accepted by my target market? Visit www.teoaris.com



Business leaders should look at the pitfalls ahead through careful planning, take advantage of uncommon through deliberate visioning, constantly develop their leadership skills and hire the best human resources available to help in the survival and success of their business.

To read more, visit www.teoaris.com

If, and as it is commonly agreed, the effectiveness of a leader significantly premises on doing the right things, then, a primary assignment of a leader is not just to have ideas in form of a vision, but also and more important, to focus on galvanizing; assisting; encouraging and supporting people to input their best for the best-possible results.

In his book “Leadership is an Art”, Max De Pree, the charismatic former CEO of centurial and highly reputed American furniture manufacturing company - Herman Miller, tells the posthumous story of an employee (a millwright) who had worked in the company for several years.

On a condolence visit to the family, the late millwright’s wife sought to read aloud some poetry. She came back with a bound book and for several minutes read selected (out of a lot) pieces of super-beautiful poetry. When asked who the poet was, the deceased’s wife replied they were written by her late husband. Everyone was amazed. Even for a couple of decades after, many wondered if the millwright was actually a poet who did a millwright’s work or he was a millwright who wrote poetry.

Abandoning Self to the Strengths of Others

The above anecdote sets a crucial background for this little piece on the need for leaders to intrinsically endorse the concept of persons; embrace diversity of people’s gifts and talents; and entrench principles that’ll liberate people to do what is required of them in the most-possible congenial atmosphere.  If, and as it is commonly agreed, the effectiveness of a leader significantly premises on doing the right things, then, a primary assignment of a leader is not just to have ideas in form of a vision, but also and more important, to focus on galvanizing; assisting; encouraging and supporting people to input their best for the best-possible results. This involves abandoning oneself to the strengths of others.


In his article “What Makes an Effective Leader” (Harvard Business Review 2004), Peter Drucker, though acknowledged that many of the best business and nonprofit CEOs he had worked in his over 65-year consulting career, were not stereotypical leaders but “varied in terms of their personalities, attitudes, values, strengths, and weaknesses”, he nevertheless highlighted some non-negotiable practices that make effective leaders.

Effective leaders ask “What needs to be done?”
Effective leaders ask “What is right for the enterprise?”
Effective leaders take responsibility for communicating
Effective leaders think and act “we” rather than “I”

The above factors take some “self-abandoning”. But abandoning what?

True Leaders “Abandon” Self to Collective Purpose

True leaders abandon selves to the collective beliefs and value system. First, they continually review and challenge the corporate value system to see what works and what doesn’t. But more important, they subjugate their interests and desires to agreed collective philosophies. Business leaders should inexcusably be the number one corporate values champion. Regrettably, many leaders fail in this regard due to economic, social and status pressures.

True leaders abandon their interests and desires to creating/weaving healthy relationships within the enterprise. Beyond that, they provide enablers for their followers to create healthy relationships even outside the immediate organisation – at home – among friends –within the society. A tough task? Yes, it takes sacrifices. True leaders know (and act by design) that the role demands something (a lot) of them that’s beyond the dignity and paraphernalia of the office.


Click to continue reading https://teoaris.com/2024/02/28/sacrifice-of-leadership/

Recruiting a brilliant digital marketer in Nigeria.

To remain relevant and competitive in today’s marketplace, virtually all businesses need some vibrant digital marketing resources to drive their digital presence initiatives.

The above statement tells how crucial a function digital marketing has become over the past few years. Though one of the newest professions around, digital marketing is one of the most evolving, and may now appear to be limitless in impact. Its impact is so much that people have asked if it’s bound to replace conventional marketing at some point. While that’s a difficult question to answer at the moment, looking at the astronomical rate digital technology has unabashedly continued to impact the world of business; one may be tempted to incline towards the affirmative.

At the worst, a business must have a strong digital marketing strategy to support and complement its traditional marketing initiatives. The way people shop and buy has changed a lot, and so have successful businesses adjusted their marketing channels to create a big room for digital marketing.

At the crux of every effective digital marketing function is a specialist, or a unit who is responsible for all activities relating to online promotion and selling the brand, products or services of an organisation - The Digital Marketer.

In this article, we’ll consider:

- What digital marketers do
- Categorisation of duties of digital marketers and their KPIs
- What to look for in a good digital marketer
- How to recruit a brilliant digital marketer in Nigeria

What Digital Marketers Do


Digital marketers drive brand awareness, generate leads for the business, and provide timely and reliable market analytics upon which a business can plan and make effective decisions on products/services, pricing and promotions. The domain of digital marketing channels includes the social media, the business’s website, search engines and emails.

The core responsibilities

Typical responsibilities of a digital marketer will include:

• Develop and implement effective digital marketing strategy for the organisation
• Optimize the business for search engine ranking based on the digital marketing strategy
• Research advertising trends and use the results to build/adjust the organisations advertisement direction and placement.
• Pre-empt competitors digital plans and pro-act to counteract them
• Research competitors marketing strategies and initiatives
• Create and deploy digital campaigns
• Publish digital marketing content online
• Implement email marketing campaigns
• Report on the growth and analytics of campaigns
• Conduct digital market research and customer surveys to inform campaigns
• Develop and maintain functionally effective social media presence for the business.
• Analyse and report performances of all digital marketing campaigns
• Utilize strong analytical ability to evaluate end-to-end customer experience across multiple channels

Duties Categorisation and KPIs

Well before employing your digital marketer, it is wisdom to clearly set out the responsibilities and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These KPIs must cover all the 4 regions of the quadrant.

Click to continue reading https://teoaris.com/2024/02/27/how-to-recruit-a-brilliant-digital-marketer-in-nigeria/

Recruiting a brilliant digital marketer in Nigeria.

To remain relevant and competitive in today’s marketplace, virtually all businesses need some vibrant digital marketing resources to drive their digital presence initiatives.

The above statement tells how crucial a function digital marketing has become over the past few years. Though one of the newest professions around, digital marketing is one of the most evolving, and may now appear to be limitless in impact. Its impact is so much that people have asked if it’s bound to replace conventional marketing at some point. While that’s a difficult question to answer at the moment, looking at the astronomical rate digital technology has unabashedly continued to impact the world of business; one may be tempted to incline towards the affirmative.

At the worst, a business must have a strong digital marketing strategy to support and complement its traditional marketing initiatives. The way people shop and buy has changed a lot, and so have successful businesses adjusted their marketing channels to create a big room for digital marketing.

At the crux of every effective digital marketing function is a specialist, or a unit who is responsible for all activities relating to online promotion and selling the brand, products or services of an organisation - The Digital Marketer.

In this article, we’ll consider:

- What digital marketers do
- Categorisation of duties of digital marketers and their KPIs
- What to look for in a good digital marketer
- How to recruit a brilliant digital marketer in Nigeria

What Digital Marketers Do


Digital marketers drive brand awareness, generate leads for the business, and provide timely and reliable market analytics upon which a business can plan and make effective decisions on products/services, pricing and promotions. The domain of digital marketing channels includes the social media, the business’s website, search engines and emails.

The core responsibilities

Typical responsibilities of a digital marketer will include:

• Develop and implement effective digital marketing strategy for the organisation
• Optimize the business for search engine ranking based on the digital marketing strategy
• Research advertising trends and use the results to build/adjust the organisations advertisement direction and placement.
• Pre-empt competitors digital plans and pro-act to counteract them
• Research competitors marketing strategies and initiatives
• Create and deploy digital campaigns
• Publish digital marketing content online
• Implement email marketing campaigns
• Report on the growth and analytics of campaigns
• Conduct digital market research and customer surveys to inform campaigns
• Develop and maintain functionally effective social media presence for the business.
• Analyse and report performances of all digital marketing campaigns
• Utilize strong analytical ability to evaluate end-to-end customer experience across multiple channels

Duties Categorisation and KPIs

Well before employing your digital marketer, it is wisdom to clearly set out the responsibilities and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These KPIs must cover all the 4 regions of the quadrant.

Click to continue reading https://teoaris.com/2024/02/27/how-to-recruit-a-brilliant-digital-marketer-in-nigeria/

Business leaders are often concerned with how to grow their business and make them outperform the competition. While it mostly remain a tough question to answer for many, the smart ones find the answers, and by so doing, are able to perform better than the rest.

If – as it truly is – understanding what the customer wants, having effective channels for delivering what they want, and effective deployment of the key resources required for a business, are key elements for gaining competitive edge, then, having unique strategies that’ll put your business ahead of the competition is a world’s worth.

Truth be told, most businesses have strategies upon which they run their enterprise. However, running with un-researched, unarticulated, unstructured and uncoordinated plans is usually as bad as not having any. By stroke of luck, they may survive for a while, but are constantly prone to competitive vicissitudes sweeping them off – usually unexpectedly.

The practice of running an enterprise without well-articulated strategies typically stems from the avoidance of the rigours involved in developing good strategies. However, the benefits of having the right strategies far outweigh the sacrifices involved in the development process. After all, who goes into a battle without the right tactics, and expects to come out triumphant? The question then is what constitutes the right strategy in business?

What is business strategy?

Simply put, Business Strategy is a deliberately crafted plan of action that will develop a business’s competitive advantage, and compound it.

If you carefully consider the above definition, two elements are worthy of a second look. Those are: (i) Developing competitive advantage and (ii) Compounding that advantage.

The search for how to compound your competitive advantage is unarguably far more important than the competitive advantage you have at the moment. For instance, is you’re in business and you have some loyal customers at the moment, those customers are perhaps loyal to you because of the competitive advantage they consider you business to have over your competitors. To survive, grow and prosper however, your business must compound that advantage and expand beyond it – first to prevent the competition from taking of what you have already and second, to expand your market share. This is the realm of Business Strategy.

Click to continue reading https://teoaris.com/2024/02/27/business-strategy-an-indispensable-tool-for-business-excellence/

BUSINESS STRATEGY: AN INDISPENSABLE TOOL FOR BUSINESS EXCELLENCE

If – as it truly is – understanding what the customer wants, having effective channels for delivering what they want, and effective deployment of the key resources required for a business, are key elements for gaining competitive edge, then, having unique strategies that’ll put your business ahead of the competition is a world’s worth.

Truth be told, most businesses have strategies upon which they run their enterprise. However, running with un-researched, unarticulated, unstructured and uncoordinated plans is usually as bad as not having any. By stroke of luck, they may survive for a while, but are constantly prone to competitive vicissitudes sweeping them off – usually unexpectedly.

The practice of running an enterprise without well-articulated strategies typically stems from the avoidance of the rigours involved in developing good strategies. However, the benefits of having the right strategies far outweigh the sacrifices involved in the development process. After all, who goes into a battle without the right tactics, and expects to come out triumphant?


What is business strategy?

Simply put, Business Strategy is a deliberately crafted plan of action that will develop a business’s competitive advantage, and compound it.
If you carefully consider the above definition, two elements are worthy of a second look. Those are: (i) Developing competitive advantage and (ii) Compounding that advantage.

The search for how to compound your competitive advantage is unarguably far more important than the competitive advantage you have at the moment. For instance, is you’re in business and you have some loyal customers at the moment, those customers are perhaps loyal to you because of the competitive advantage they consider you business to have over your competitors. To survive, grow and prosper however, your business must compound that advantage and expand beyond it – first to prevent the competition from taking of what you have already and second, to expand your market share. This is the realm of Business Strategy.

But how do you create that competitive edge such that you are well above your competitors?

Click to continue reading, click https://teoaris.com/2024/02/27/business-strategy-an-indispensable-tool-for-business-excellence/?fbclid=IwAR2l4AHnhQLgEp4zRFRkVC2s9WI9M3mmOKQsL5I8lvFpjSXXdKMgBb5v5EY

To remain relevant and competitive in today’s marketplace, virtually all businesses need some vibrant digital marketing resources to drive their digital presence initiatives.

The above statement tells how crucial a function digital marketing has become over the past few years. Though one of the newest professions around, digital marketing is one of the most evolving, and may now appear to be limitless in impact. Its impact is so much that people have asked if it’s bound to replace conventional marketing at some point. While that’s a difficult question to answer at the moment, looking at the astronomical rate digital technology has unabashedly continued to impact the world of business; one may be tempted to incline towards the affirmative.

At the worst, a business must have a strong digital marketing strategy to support and complement its traditional marketing initiatives. The way people shop and buy has changed a lot, and so have successful businesses adjusted their marketing channels to create a big room for digital marketing.

At the crux of every effective digital marketing function is a specialist, or a unit who is responsible for all activities relating to online promotion and selling the brand, products or services of an organisation - The Digital Marketer.

In this article, we’ll consider:

- What digital marketers do
- Categorisation of duties of digital marketers and their KPIs
- What to look for in a good digital marketer
- How to recruit a brilliant digital marketer in Nigeria

What Digital Marketers Do

Digital marketers drive brand awareness, generate leads for the business, and provide timely and reliable market analytics upon which a business can plan and make effective decisions on products/services, pricing and promotions. The domain of digital marketing channels includes the social media, the business’s website, search engines and emails.

The core responsibilities

Typical responsibilities of a digital marketer will include:

• Develop and implement effective digital marketing strategy for the organisation
• Optimize the business for search engine ranking based on the digital marketing strategy
• Research advertising trends and use the results to build/adjust the organisations advertisement direction and placement.
• Pre-empt competitors digital plans and pro-act to counteract them
• Research competitors marketing strategies and initiatives
• Create and deploy digital campaigns
• Publish digital marketing content online
• Implement email marketing campaigns
• Report on the growth and analytics of campaigns
• Conduct digital market research and customer surveys to inform campaigns
• Develop and maintain functionally effective social media presence for the business.
• Analyse and report performances of all digital marketing campaigns
• Utilize strong analytical ability to evaluate end-to-end customer experience across multiple channels

Duties Categorisation and KPIs

Well before employing your digital marketer, it is wisdom to clearly set out the responsibilities and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These KPIs must cover all the 4 regions of the quadrant.



1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Management

Responsibility: Ensure the business, products or services rank highly on Search Engines Results Pages (SERPs), particularly Google.
Main KPI: Organic traffic to the website

2. Social Media Management

Manage social media by establishing a posting schedule for the company’s written and graphic content.
Main KPIs: Follows, Likes, Shares, Engagement and Leads from Social Media Channels

3. Content Marketing

Creation and posting of content relating to the business or other matters that may indirectly benefit the business.
Main KPIs: Blog Traffic, Campaign Traffic & Lead Generation

4. Email Marketing

Circulation of campaigns, newsletters and messages through emails.
Main KPIs: Email open rate, campaign click-through rate, lead-generation (conversion) rate

What to Look For in a Good Digital Marketer – The Skills Requirements

We have carefully selected below 7 skills a digital marketer must have in order to be effective and impactful. These skills range from general skills to industry-specific skills. And so, when engaging a digital marketer for potential employment, interviewers must distill the proficiency of the candidate in these competency areas in addition to personality tests (see below also) that may/should be conducted for the candidates.
Essentially, digital marketers should be assessed both on competency and personality traits.

Competency Assessment Areas

1. SEO Optimisation skills

Some of the skills you can acquire under SEO are as follows:
• Proficiency in SEO: Knowledge about technical and non-technical SEO
• Link building skills
• Ability to improve the on-page ranking

2. Social Media Marketing Skills

• Ability to develop effective social media strategies.
• Comprehensive knowledge about social media platforms and how to use them to fulfill your digital marketing objectives.
• Understanding of social media trends and new features and tools.
• Social media analytical skills. Ability to analyse data from social media platforms and use them to develop tactics.

3. Content Marketing Skills

• Ability to create high-quality, relevant, and SEO-friendly content. This skill will include effective use marketing through textual content, graphics and videos.
• Ability to research relevant keywords and smartness to cite them in the content.
• Ability to attract attention, generate interest, provoke desire and facilitate action in the content.
• Post-content engagement skills.

4. Creative Thinking and Problem Solving Skills
Developing strategies, creating good content and effectively engaging digital audience require a high level of creative thinking and problem-solving skills. A digital marketing must be able to think out of the box to predict or in some cases respond to the strategies and actions of the competitors. Also, unique content ideas that’ll give competitive edge come from creativity.

5. Effective Communication Skills

Interacting with digital audience requires a high level of communication skills. The digital marketer must ensure that the content and messages are delivered in concise and impactful manner. All content and communication materials must be aimed at attracting the interest of the audience and creating a desire for them to take positive action, within the shortest time.

6. Data Analytics Skills

The digital marketer must be skillful in the use of tools that can help him/her track various metrics such as engagement, likes, comments, website traffic and leads. These are important metrics for future planning and decision-making which can help them make effective decisions. With the advent of this data-driven mentality, we need to upgrade our digital marketing skills as well.

Some of the essential Data Analytics tools are as follows:

Google Analytics
Google Tag Manager
SQL


Recommended Personality Assessment Areas

Like, many other roles, the competence of the digital marketer may not be enough, more so now that the role digital marketers play in organisations have become so crucial. You therefore want to be sure that the potential employee aligns with the values of your organisation and he/she has the right disposition for the work and the role. The following qualities/skills are vital.

1. Integrity

Digital marketers will by virtue of their role have access to many information relating to the company, the products, the services and policies. The digital marketer should be someone who can be trusted and is circumspect, and at the same time must avoid deceptive practices, false representations and misleading claims.

2. Team-spirit

Digital marketers work with many other professionals including; visual artists, web developers, conventional marketers, customer service etc. They must therefore be good team players working for the good of the common goal.

3. Industry knowledge

Though for a smart individual – especially if a good team player - industry knowledge can be gained in a little time, when you want your digital marketer to hit the ground running, it’s important to have someone who’s got a fair knowledge of the industry and its dynamism. The experience and portfolio of the candidate may be a good reference for this.

4. Organisational skills
Must be organised and have excellent planning abilities. Digital marketing involves a lot of planning for adverts, campaigns and engagements.

5. Research Skills and Teach-ability

As digital marketing evolves, the tools, methods and platforms evolve too. It’s therefore important that digital marketers are research-oriented. He must be open to learning and unlearning based on what works now, and what will work in the future. They must be willing to learning from knowledgeable colleagues and veritable information from the internet.


Tips for Interviews of Digital Marketers

Below are few tips on what you may test for while recruiting a digital marketer. This list is by no means exhaustive but it is decent enough to give you a good start.

i. Test for cognitive skills - Ability to think out of the box. Critical thinking and problem solving abilities.
ii. Test for understanding of digital marketing field – Basic and advanced terms. How to develop and implement digital marketing strategies. Understanding of the peculiarities of various platforms open to digital marketing. Test for current trends in digital marketing.
iii. Test for digital advertising skills.
iv. Check portfolio – How have the candidates done with the brand they have managed before or currently managing?
v. Test for SEO skills. How grounded is the candidate in on-page and off-page SEO. Knowledge of keyword research and keyword use. Use of directories.
vi. Test content creation skills. Can the candidate develop full blogs? Knowledge of infographics and visual enthusiasm.
vii. Check for the candidate’s social media presence and engagements.
viii. Test for understanding on digital sales process. Test for understanding of sales funnel.
ix. Test for ability to engage audience. Test for how to use and leverage customer feedback.
x. Test personality. Test for preferred work environment, preferred management style and other behavioral matters.
Need more details?

An article of Teoaris Consulting.

Teoaris Consulting is a Recruitment and Business Consulting Firm in Consultant in Lagos, Nigeria. Visit [url]www.teoaris.com [/url]for more blogs.

Recruiting a brilliant digital marketer in Nigeria.

To remain relevant and competitive in today’s marketplace, virtually all businesses need some vibrant digital marketing resources to drive their digital presence initiatives.

The above statement tells how crucial a function digital marketing has become over the past few years. Though one of the newest professions around, digital marketing is one of the most evolving, and may now appear to be limitless in impact. Its impact is so much that people have asked if it’s bound to replace conventional marketing at some point. While that’s a difficult question to answer at the moment, looking at the astronomical rate digital technology has unabashedly continued to impact the world of business; one may be tempted to incline towards the affirmative.

At the worst, a business must have a strong digital marketing strategy to support and complement its traditional marketing initiatives. The way people shop and buy has changed a lot, and so have successful businesses adjusted their marketing channels to create a big room for digital marketing.

At the crux of every effective digital marketing function is a specialist, or a unit who is responsible for all activities relating to online promotion and selling the brand, products or services of an organisation - The Digital Marketer.

In this article, we’ll consider:

- What digital marketers do
- Categorisation of duties of digital marketers and their KPIs
- What to look for in a good digital marketer
- How to recruit a brilliant digital marketer in Nigeria

What Digital Marketers Do

Digital marketers drive brand awareness, generate leads for the business, and provide timely and reliable market analytics upon which a business can plan and make effective decisions on products/services, pricing and promotions. The domain of digital marketing channels includes the social media, the business’s website, search engines and emails.

The core responsibilities

Typical responsibilities of a digital marketer will include:

• Develop and implement effective digital marketing strategy for the organisation
• Optimize the business for search engine ranking based on the digital marketing strategy
• Research advertising trends and use the results to build/adjust the organisations advertisement direction and placement.
• Pre-empt competitors digital plans and pro-act to counteract them
• Research competitors marketing strategies and initiatives
• Create and deploy digital campaigns
• Publish digital marketing content online
• Implement email marketing campaigns
• Report on the growth and analytics of campaigns
• Conduct digital market research and customer surveys to inform campaigns
• Develop and maintain functionally effective social media presence for the business.
• Analyse and report performances of all digital marketing campaigns
• Utilize strong analytical ability to evaluate end-to-end customer experience across multiple channels

Duties Categorisation and KPIs

Well before employing your digital marketer, it is wisdom to clearly set out the responsibilities and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These KPIs must cover all the 4 regions of the quadrant.



1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Management

Responsibility: Ensure the business, products or services rank highly on Search Engines Results Pages (SERPs), particularly Google.
Main KPI: Organic traffic to the website

2. Social Media Management

Manage social media by establishing a posting schedule for the company’s written and graphic content.
Main KPIs: Follows, Likes, Shares, Engagement and Leads from Social Media Channels

3. Content Marketing

Creation and posting of content relating to the business or other matters that may indirectly benefit the business.
Main KPIs: Blog Traffic, Campaign Traffic & Lead Generation

4. Email Marketing

Circulation of campaigns, newsletters and messages through emails.
Main KPIs: Email open rate, campaign click-through rate, lead-generation (conversion) rate

What to Look For in a Good Digital Marketer – The Skills Requirements

We have carefully selected below 7 skills a digital marketer must have in order to be effective and impactful. These skills range from general skills to industry-specific skills. And so, when engaging a digital marketer for potential employment, interviewers must distill the proficiency of the candidate in these competency areas in addition to personality tests (see below also) that may/should be conducted for the candidates.
Essentially, digital marketers should be assessed both on competency and personality traits.

Competency Assessment Areas

1. SEO Optimisation skills

Some of the skills you can acquire under SEO are as follows:
• Proficiency in SEO: Knowledge about technical and non-technical SEO
• Link building skills
• Ability to improve the on-page ranking

2. Social Media Marketing Skills

• Ability to develop effective social media strategies.
• Comprehensive knowledge about social media platforms and how to use them to fulfill your digital marketing objectives.
• Understanding of social media trends and new features and tools.
• Social media analytical skills. Ability to analyse data from social media platforms and use them to develop tactics.

3. Content Marketing Skills

• Ability to create high-quality, relevant, and SEO-friendly content. This skill will include effective use marketing through textual content, graphics and videos.
• Ability to research relevant keywords and smartness to cite them in the content.
• Ability to attract attention, generate interest, provoke desire and facilitate action in the content.
• Post-content engagement skills.

4. Creative Thinking and Problem Solving Skills
Developing strategies, creating good content and effectively engaging digital audience require a high level of creative thinking and problem-solving skills. A digital marketing must be able to think out of the box to predict or in some cases respond to the strategies and actions of the competitors. Also, unique content ideas that’ll give competitive edge come from creativity.

5. Effective Communication Skills

Interacting with digital audience requires a high level of communication skills. The digital marketer must ensure that the content and messages are delivered in concise and impactful manner. All content and communication materials must be aimed at attracting the interest of the audience and creating a desire for them to take positive action, within the shortest time.

6. Data Analytics Skills

The digital marketer must be skillful in the use of tools that can help him/her track various metrics such as engagement, likes, comments, website traffic and leads. These are important metrics for future planning and decision-making which can help them make effective decisions. With the advent of this data-driven mentality, we need to upgrade our digital marketing skills as well.

Some of the essential Data Analytics tools are as follows:

Google Analytics
Google Tag Manager
SQL


Recommended Personality Assessment Areas

Like, many other roles, the competence of the digital marketer may not be enough, more so now that the role digital marketers play in organisations have become so crucial. You therefore want to be sure that the potential employee aligns with the values of your organisation and he/she has the right disposition for the work and the role. The following qualities/skills are vital.

1. Integrity

Digital marketers will by virtue of their role have access to many information relating to the company, the products, the services and policies. The digital marketer should be someone who can be trusted and is circumspect, and at the same time must avoid deceptive practices, false representations and misleading claims.

2. Team-spirit

Digital marketers work with many other professionals including; visual artists, web developers, conventional marketers, customer service etc. They must therefore be good team players working for the good of the common goal.

3. Industry knowledge

Though for a smart individual – especially if a good team player - industry knowledge can be gained in a little time, when you want your digital marketer to hit the ground running, it’s important to have someone who’s got a fair knowledge of the industry and its dynamism. The experience and portfolio of the candidate may be a good reference for this.

4. Organisational skills
Must be organised and have excellent planning abilities. Digital marketing involves a lot of planning for adverts, campaigns and engagements.

5. Research Skills and Teach-ability

As digital marketing evolves, the tools, methods and platforms evolve too. It’s therefore important that digital marketers are research-oriented. He must be open to learning and unlearning based on what works now, and what will work in the future. They must be willing to learning from knowledgeable colleagues and veritable information from the internet.


Tips for Interviews of Digital Marketers

Below are few tips on what you may test for while recruiting a digital marketer. This list is by no means exhaustive but it is decent enough to give you a good start.

i. Test for cognitive skills - Ability to think out of the box. Critical thinking and problem solving abilities.
ii. Test for understanding of digital marketing field – Basic and advanced terms. How to develop and implement digital marketing strategies. Understanding of the peculiarities of various platforms open to digital marketing. Test for current trends in digital marketing.
iii. Test for digital advertising skills.
iv. Check portfolio – How have the candidates done with the brand they have managed before or currently managing?
v. Test for SEO skills. How grounded is the candidate in on-page and off-page SEO. Knowledge of keyword research and keyword use. Use of directories.
vi. Test content creation skills. Can the candidate develop full blogs? Knowledge of infographics and visual enthusiasm.
vii. Check for the candidate’s social media presence and engagements.
viii. Test for understanding on digital sales process. Test for understanding of sales funnel.
ix. Test for ability to engage audience. Test for how to use and leverage customer feedback.
x. Test personality. Test for preferred work environment, preferred management style and other behavioral matters.
Need more details?

An article of Teoaris Consulting.

Teoaris Consulting is a Recruitment and Business Consulting Firm in Consultant in Lagos, Nigeria. Visit www.teoaris.com for more blogs.