A B2B SaaS company in a complex, specialised niche needed a senior marketing manager to take on and own the function which was fairly new to their business. The business had less than 70 people, with a leadership team that was notably academic in how they thought and operated, this is the kind of business that takes the quality of its hires seriously, and was not going to hand this one to chance.
On paper, “Marketing Manager” sounds like a role you could advertise. It is not that easy, or at least not this one. Because the person they actually needed had a very specific shape, and almost none of it would have shown up in response to a job ad.
Here is what the role actually required.
A cultural match first, which in this business meant someone who would hold their own among a sharp, academically minded leadership team. A B2B focus, not B2C. A background in SaaS or software product, because the mental model matters and there was no time to teach it. Given the company’s scaling stage and goals, a lead generation focus specifically, not brand or comms. Someone who had come from a smaller business without unlimited resources, where the marketing leader did much of the work themselves, so that this role would not feel like a step backwards into getting their hands dirty. Some exposure to the niche, enough of a foundation to build on quickly. Proven experience building omni-channel campaigns from start to finish, so they knew how to actually run marketing, not just direct it. HubSpot experience, because there was no time to teach the tool. And experience supporting a sales team with leads, which not all marketers have, because that shapes how they think and means they arrive understanding what the business needs from them. It was an in office role so location mattered and then of course the style of marketing, ABM because of their niche. They also needed exposure to events, webinars and building out marketing with AI which at the time of this search was not something every marketing leader had done.
Read that list and the problem becomes obvious. There is no advert that calls in this person. If you wrote one, the people who fit this are not reading job ads, they are likely employed and most likely thriving in their roles. And the keywords that would have surfaced her were not even on her profile. “Marketing manager” means a hundred different things at a hundred different companies. How would the right person have known that one particular advert was the one worth answering when not knowing the company, their goals and their set up?
So we did not advertise. We built a talent pool, the way that we build talent pools.
We mapped the market by company first, over 400 SaaS businesses that hire in South Africa (specifically in the province we were recruiting for), but the businesses themselves were national and international. We extended that into adjacent software product businesses, development houses, payments, and others. Then we widened it once more, deliberately, into professional services companies in the same B2B niche, to test whether a marketing leader from that world, even without SaaS, might bring real understanding of the specific problem the platform solves. They could, so they stayed in.
From those companies we pulled every marketer who currently worked there or used to, because past context counts. We sorted them into those ready to step up into ownership and those already operating at that level who could bring their experience to a new environment. We removed the clearly too senior and the clearly too junior, and those whose focus did not match the kind of marketing this role needed. We also removed people from large, heavily resourced companies where the work was split across many specialists, because that experience would not transfer to a business like this.
Everyone who remained, we reached out to with a well thought out, crafted, specific message, and invited them to meet. We do in a way that repels those who don’t fit and attract those who want the kind of challenge the role was offering. Many met with me, even those who weren’t looking. During our many meetings with many marketing leaders and talked about the market, their environment, our clients environment, what each of them wanted next, and what this role offered. The ones who aligned, on experience and on their own goals, we took further.
The result was that the company interviewed a set of candidates who could have all been a fit. All from SaaS or the adjacent world, all B2B, all lead-gen, all from smaller environments, all able to hold their own with an academic leadership team. Because they all fit, the company could be fussier about the things that are hard to screen for and easy to underestimate. Who would still be the right person in two years, not just at month three. Who would most likely stay. Who could grow into an executive seat. Who would add something to the culture of the team.
The person they placed is thriving, and so is the company for having found her. She had never heard of this business before we met with her. It was a small scale-up in a niche, and there was no reason she would have. She was not looking, not scanning adverts, and if she had been, she would have had no way of knowing that one role among hundreds was the one built for exactly her. We found her because we had mapped the market, and her company was in it. We had filtered by size, and hers came up. That single similarity, the right kind of company at the right stage, is what made the introduction possible at all. Its worth noting this cannot be done this way on linkedin or a job board as SaaS isn’t a filter on a any platform. We can do it because we have fully mapped the market we serve in ways that help us deliver in this way.
This is the whole point of building a talent pool properly. It is not about finding people who are available. It is about finding the people who fit, most of whom are not available, and giving the client a real choice between strong options rather than a search for the least-wrong one. There were other excellent candidates in that talent pool, any of whom could have done the job well. With that much choice, the company did not settle. They chose their match.
An advert would never have produced her. A few generalist recruiters sending through whatever a keyword search returned would never have produced her. A thorough mapping process is what it takes, and it is what we do. From our initial discovery meeting with the client to the candidate signing her offer took 7 weeks. Seven weeks to map, organise outreach, interview, assess and hire.
