Recruiting and retaining a high-performing content team is difficult these days, regardless of how stable the economy might be.
Why is that? And what can you do to make hiring and retaining your team less challenging? We spoke with marketing leaders, consulted CMI’s research, and canvassed the media to find answers.
Flooded with applications, not necessarily quality candidates
Even in a steady marketplace — the U.S. hiring rate is around 3.3%, and the unemployment rate is at 4.1% — content leaders and job seekers agree a lot is broken in the complex recruitment process.
Sixty-eight percent of marketers in CMI’s 2025 Career Outlook for Content and Marketing research believe finding a job today is more challenging than five years ago.
One reason could be the sheer volume of applicants.
Todd Raphael, who has built and scaled content operations at AI talent platforms Eightfold AI and SkyHive, explains: “A single company can receive thousands and thousands of applications within hours. I know of companies shutting off the spigot within eight hours after posting a new position.”
That anecdotal evidence isn’t unique. Greenhouse, a recruiting platform, reported to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) that their clients experienced a 71% jump in applications this year.
Why the fever pitch in applications? Bots may be partially to blame.
Taking cues from employers that have long used AI tools to sort through applications, job seekers are using bots to craft resumes and answer questionnaires, making it easier for them to submit many more tailored job applications. (For example, Sonara is one of many available AI platforms that help applicants identify relevant jobs and apply to hundreds of open positions per month.)
This battle of the bots has made it more challenging to sort out capable candidates from those who have optimized their resumes for maximum HR attention. So, employers are including more hurdles and checkpoints in the recruiting process.
For example, they ask for video interviews as part of the initial screening process. In the above WSJ article, Alison Paris, who leads talent acquisition and workforce planning at national security and technology company Peraton, explains why: “They want to be able to look someone in the eye.”
All those steps may help you filter out less-qualified candidates, but the unwieldy process can also turn off top talent. “A single individual can go through months of interviews, assessments, and unpaid assignments,” Todd explains.
Jumping through all those hoops can also foster a negative impression of your business as an employer. It may prompt the chosen candidate to turn down the offer and share their experience with others.
Specialized skills are needed, and AI is a poor substitute
With tight budgets and the need for ever-more expansive skills, content leaders may focus on filling open roles with a unicorn hire — that one person who can do all things at a reasonable salary. However, marketers with broad skill sets often lack the requisite depth in areas that drive value for the business.
“If you want to grow and become an established marketing organization, you need specialized roles,” explains Chris Van Mossevelde, content director at SaaS platform Funnel. “If you’re looking for someone with deep technical or analytical skills — more of a specialist — those are much harder to recruit.”
And don’t expect to overcome that challenge by turning to AI tools. According to CMI research, just 3% of marketers say they replaced team members with AI tools.
Frankly, it’s not just a unicorn problem. There’s also the general challenge of finding candidates who are creative and understand that content needs to drive business goals, says Pearl Chen, content marketing director at e-commerce tech company Rokt.
Content marketers can bring experience from various professional backgrounds — such as editorial, social media or multimedia production. But Pearl says top candidates should have one thing in common: a clear understanding of the company’s objectives and how marketing will drive those forward.
Overcome hiring hurdles
So, what should you do to hire (and retain) a top-performing team in a complex world of too many applications and a seeming need to find candidates who get it and can get it all done?
Start by rethinking your needs and revising your recruiting process to address them. Here are some areas to consider:
- Get real about role descriptions. Do your job descriptions accurately characterize the role and scope of responsibilities? If you’re transparent about benefits and compensation (a requirement in several states), are your offerings realistic and commensurate with industry standards? Consult CMI’s Career and Salary Outlook for 2025 (registration required) for benchmark compensation statistics.
- Invest in talent communities. Are you throwing open the floodgates by posting positions on every job platform, or have you strategically tapped your networks and skills-based communities to source the best candidates for each opening?
- Educate your HR partners about content talent. If HR is involved in hiring, do they truly understand the roles and skill sets you need to fill? How can you help ensure they represent your needs effectively when trying to attract candidates?
- Map the content career ladder for your organization. Have you defined individual marketing roles and their career paths at your company? If you’re at a smaller company with fewer promotion opportunities, consider noting other ways employees can be rewarded and supported, such as training and mentoring opportunities. Think clearly about all your company’s growth experiences because that will be at the top of candidates’ minds.
- Track the candidates’ experience. Do your recruiting tools and automated processes create a positive experience or dehumanize the people you want to impress and hire?
You’ll likely spend most of your review time on the first (realistic job descriptions) and last (candidate experience) points.
Consider which capabilities will be most critical to your content program’s success. At Funnel, the marketing team recruited an SEO expert. “Not only [can he do] all the technical keyword research and performance monitoring, but he’s also a master at managing all the SEO-related tools in our tech stack,” says Chris.
If your budget doesn’t allow for all the necessary specialized roles, look for alternatives to fill crucial skill gaps. For example, Chris says his team brought in an analytics consultant to set up Google Tag Manager and trained team members on its use.
Outsourcing can serve as an excellent stopgap for highly technical team needs. But while some consultants may offer service contracts to perform the work, Chris finds that it’s typically easier to hold an in-house hire accountable for day-to-day performance.
Regarding the candidate tracking step, operations consultant Todd Raphael suggests viewing the hiring process through the eyes of rejected candidates. “After months of engaging people through a recruiting process — one that did not result in choosing that person — you need a way to keep [them] in your orbit and leave them with a good feeling,” he says. “Companies are scared to contact candidates who are not hired — but in doing so, they’re mistreating applicants and throwing millions of dollars down the drain.”
Team retention is also a hiring-related concern
As you reassess the hiring process, don’t overlook how you’ll support your existing team members. If you want to retain their talents (and minimize the need to hire), you must pay attention to their upskilling needs and ability to produce quality work.
In CMI’s research, marketers say they want training support for learning new technologies (49%), developing leadership skills (39%), and building their data/analytics skills (35%).
That doesn’t mean they’ll wait to receive training before tapping the benefits of new technologies. Most content teams treat AI as a de facto team member — a tool that helps enhance their efficiency and productivity. For example, CMI’s research finds that 61% use gen AI for brainstorming, and 52% use it to summarize content.
And they’re not stopping with those tasks. As one marketer shares in the CMI survey, “We are seeing more employees using ChatGPT (which my organization accepts) to produce low-quality content. It makes my job harder as I try to uplevel our content quality and performance.”
Rokt’s Pearl Chen says, “For a strong writer, gen AI makes them faster; but for less experienced writers, use of gen AI can still require oversight.”
To maintain a team of top-performing talent, marketing leaders should provide skills training and coaching opportunities that encourage employee growth. Yet, many don’t. Take AI technology, for example. Just 19% of marketers surveyed by CMI say their organizations provide any type of AI-related training, and more than half (58%) say their organization’s training program is not keeping pace with changes in marketing.
Advocating for ongoing career education and advancement empowers your team members to succeed in their roles. It can also distinguish your organization from others competing for their skills. That can make all the difference in building a content A-Team that can tackle any challenge on the marketing horizon.
