How to hire a marketing leader: ask for the system, not the résumé
In 1987, AC Milan hired a coach who had never played professional football. Arrigo Sacchi used to sell shoes.
The Italian press mocked it. His answer: "I never realised that to be a jockey you had to be a horse first."
Two European Cups later, in 1989 and 1990, Milan was the best club in Europe. Sacchi had a system, not a résumé: a pressing, zonal team where eleven players moved as one unit.
Marketing hiring makes the horse mistake
The logo on the CV. The platform certificate. Ten years in your exact vertical.
None of that tells you how someone decides what to test, what to kill and what to scale. That is the system, and it is what you are actually hiring.
A candidate from a famous brand may have run a channel inside a machine someone else built. A candidate from a small company may have built the machine. The CV rarely shows which.
Questions that reveal the system
Ask for the system in the first call:
- "Walk me through the last campaign you killed. When did you decide, and on what number?" Listen for a rule written in advance, not a gut call.
- "How do you decide whether a problem is marketing or product?" Listen for an order of checks. See is it a marketing problem or a product problem?
- "How do you know a channel is incremental?" Listen for holdout tests, not dashboard ROAS.
- "What would you look at in your first two weeks here?" Listen for diagnosis before spend.
- "Tell me about a result you thought was a win and turned out not to be." Listen for honesty about false wins.
Use a small paid exercise
A short, paid exercise on a real (anonymized) dataset shows the system faster than any interview. Ask for the diagnosis and the first three moves, not a polished deck.
Bottom line
Check the system. Skip the résumé. Hire the jockey.
FAQ
What should I look for when hiring a head of growth?
How they make decisions: how they set kill rules, test incrementality, order their diagnosis and scale winners. Past logos and certificates say little about that.
Is industry experience required for a marketing leader?
It helps, but it matters less than a clear decision system. Someone with a strong method can learn a new vertical. Someone without one will repeat what worked somewhere else.
What interview questions reveal a strong growth marketer?
Ask about the last campaign they killed and why, how they tell marketing problems from product problems, how they test whether a channel is incremental, and what they would do in their first two weeks.
Should I give marketing candidates a test task?
A short, paid exercise on real or anonymized data is one of the best ways to see their system. Ask for a diagnosis and first moves rather than a polished presentation.