Hiring an SEO or SEM Specialist

In my eyes, recruitment is often the most difficult thing a company does. It’s also something I’ve personally focused heavily on in recent years. I think I’ve reached a few insights.

Now, I’m not a recruitment expert, and I have no formal training in the subject. What I do have is that I’ve doubled the size of our company every year for the past few years—and I think that counts for something. So take this post for what it is: personal experience from someone in the trenches. The theoretical foundation may be a bit thin.

Recruitment is really hard. Anyone who’s been in the position and has even a moderately analytical mind quickly realizes how crucial it is to get it right. Combined with the fact that it’s nearly impossible to get it right every time, you end up in a bit of a catch-22. And when you have a very limited pool of potential candidates—as is the case in both SEO and SEM—it becomes even more complicated.

The Maltese Rotation

Here’s an example I don’t think anyone has really brought up—or even thought about—except for those directly involved: how gaming recruitment firms operate in Malta. When I first moved there, I was constantly approached by Pentasia, basically the only company recruiting for gaming operators at the time. The reason? I was somewhat unique. I didn’t work at a gaming company, and I had well-documented SEO experience in gaming.

Usually, what happened was that people working in the gaming industry were just rotated among companies by that same recruiter. Because they had recruited nearly everyone to every position, they knew everyone. They had great relationships with everyone—to the point where, if you had any level of seniority in your company, you’d be invited to parties on a monthly basis. There were very few candidates to choose from, and those who existed were constantly rotated, receiving raises at each move—while Pentasia (which took about half a year’s salary in commission) profited handsomely.

Gaming companies also suffer from another factor: they tend to attract people who are mainly driven by money. There’s not a lot of “make the world a better place” in a job ad for a gambling company. In the end, that means the only way to compete for top talent is with money. If you need to buy SEO expertise (SEM isn’t allowed in gaming), it can get very expensive.

The Swedish Cycle

A similar situation has occurred in Sweden. A number of well-known SEO and SEM specialists have rotated between whichever agency could offer the best deal at the moment. For a small agency with strong competence but less money, this was a tough spot. You were forced to bring in people off the street and train them. In my opinion, it takes about two years to train a solid SEO consultant—assuming the person has the right foundation and a genuine passion for the work. And if you don’t need to buy talent, you’re also not willing to pay what companies that do need it are paying. So, within a year to a year and a half, you lose them. It was constant training and turnover.

If, instead, you chose to be part of the great consultant merry-go-round—where SEO consultants bounced between companies—you’d have to pay more and might also end up with a less cohesive team. That wasn’t always the case; sometimes entire SEO teams would leave together and go elsewhere.

At Brath, we knew we didn’t want to be part of that. We wanted to recruit and keep the best people. At the same time, we wanted to increase the total number of skilled SEO consultants (we hadn’t started with SEM yet). We had three reasons for this: it’s good for us, it’s good for the industry, and it’s good for our staff—who get a real chance to grow instead of just hopping from job to job. That’s how we saw (and still see) it.

Our Approach

Determined to avoid the cycle, we made two big decisions. The first was that we needed to offer something better than salary. Salary is great, but it’s easy to beat—just offer more. If we could offer something our specialists couldn’t get anywhere else, we could build a much stronger team than anyone else. And no, I’m not (only) talking about the six-hour workday.

With Feeling

We chose to do something that already came naturally to us: we invested deeply in our people—emotionally. Maria (now CEO) and I spent serious time thinking about what employees truly need to feel good. Note the distinction: not what they say they need, but what they actually need. I won’t claim to know what everyone needs, but I’m convinced employees often ask for the wrong things. Let me give you an example.

Say your workplace offers free soda to all employees—something not uncommon in the ’90s. Over time, your occupational health provider notes rising obesity and declining health among the staff. You also notice performance drops, especially in the afternoons. Will your staff ask you to remove the soda? Highly unlikely.

We did introduce the six-hour workday. And while it might sound like everyone loves it, every single employee survey we run includes at least one person who says they’d rather work eight. Of course, we don’t stop anyone from working eight hours, and we do allow overtime (from the six-hour baseline), especially during busy periods. But there’s a psychological difference. Many of our employees—especially those with children—feel significantly better with the shorter day.

Another key realization: we can’t have people who don’t fit the company. A leadership style that works somewhere else might be a disaster here. A sour attitude could poison the entire team. Someone overly bureaucratic could stifle a culture built on agility and change. So we are extremely careful during our (rather long) recruitment process to ensure a good fit. This is incredibly hard to get right every time—but it’s our goal.

We’re Not Moving

The second decision we made: we’re staying in Örnsköldsvik. Yes, we have an office in Stockholm, and some real stars in both SEO and SEM there. But at our core, we’re a northern Swedish company. And in our (admittedly unscientific) internal research, northern companies seem better at retaining staff long-term. Maybe it’s the ingrained “Vi flytt int” (“We don’t move”) mentality north of the Dalälven river.

There are more reasons. For example, Örnsköldsvik isn’t exactly teeming with competing agencies to jump ship to. Stockholm is another story entirely. And I believe there’s a different mentality, too. It’s not uncommon to see people proudly wearing company-branded jackets or caps around town. Whether it’s a machine shop or the local paper, people are proud of where they work. That pride is something we want to nurture—and bring to Stockholm. In every employee survey we’ve conducted, we consistently score above 4.5 out of 5 on the statement: “I’m proud to work at Brath.”

Finally, I’d like to say this: we’ve spent a lot of time analyzing our recruitment process, and there’s always more to improve. But I believe you have to start by answering one question before worrying about details like where to post your job ads:

Why should I devote my heart and soul to working for you?
That’s the question you must answer first.