What an Expert Recruiter Knows about Filling Top CPG Brand Manager and Marketing Director Roles

Priscilla McKinney Hello and welcome to Ponderings from the Birch, the Little Bird Marketing Company podcast. I'm Priscilla McKinney, Little Bird Mama over here and CEO. And as always, I get to meet and ask amazing professionals to come on. You know, actually I'm getting some kind of a feedback. I'm wondering what it is over on your side.

Hold on. Let me go into your side. Let see if I do. Yeah, it is your side. Do you have like a TV or something on somewhere else?

Diana Benedikt I have a TV plugged in here. I can unplug it. Would that help?

Priscilla McKinney I'm just hearing a little something, like a little voice of something. I don't know if something else is playing.

Diana Benedikt No, no, I don't have a TV playing. No, no.

Priscilla McKinney No, that wouldn't affect it. Let me...

Diana Benedikt Well, I just unplugged it. Yeah, I'm very quiet here this morning. There's nobody in the street. There's no...

Priscilla McKinney I'm just gonna go into some settings real quick and get a little bit of noise cancellation in there. Okay, okay that that is a little better. I don't know what happened there but I just clicked something else so we'll try that. Okay, you know what? Let me click here.

Let me try this. Okay. And what we see oftentimes is a little lower quality than what it's recording because it's sending the best of what it has over to the recording. So we should be good.

Diana Benedikt Okay, because for me, you're going in getting a little fuzzy and then coming back, right? You just did that.

Priscilla McKinney Yeah, sometimes that happens, but it's actually taking the strongest signal from the recording. Hold on one second. I'm gonna go grab a sweater because I'm freezing.

Diana Benedikt I bet. It's cold out there. I don't know where you are. It's cold here.

Priscilla McKinney Okay, my wet hair is making me so cold. I was just gonna... that's much better. Okay.

Diana Benedikt Yeah, I bet. Remind me where you are. You're somewhere in the Midwest, right?

Priscilla McKinney Yeah, I'm right in like south of Kansas City. So, yeah, not too bad today, but that wet hair was just killing me. Okay, all right, here we go again.

Okay, but I can hear you typing when you type.

Diana Benedikt Yeah, I just was making one quick note.

Priscilla McKinney Okay, no problem. And also we're on two different things, so even when I'm talking we can mute yours, so it's not a big deal. Okay, here we go.

Hello and welcome to Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing Company podcast. I'm Priscilla McKinney, CEO and mama bird here. And it is always my pleasure to bring people on the show who have expertise outside of my expertise to have the most amazing just dialogue, just exploring different aspects of business. And just in this casual conversation where people really get to shine.

So you are going to love my guest today. It's Diana Bennett. Welcome to the show.

Diana Benedikt Thank you so much Priscilla, I'm excited.

Priscilla McKinney Well, we've had a few conversations and honestly, it's just been really fun because you have such a different area of expertise. And I just, I found myself just like just digging and digging. So I'm going to let my audience hear from you about it's not really what's going on in the job market so much, but what you know about what is needed to fill top brand and marketing roles.

So she is a part of Newman search group. And this is an amazing executive search firm that focuses on providing talent to CPG companies exclusively in an interesting segment, the Better4U health products. So she has a lot of other business background, which gives her that context.

And she has spent time as a chief of staff and has run business operations for very high growth startups. And so you can see she understands not only the kind of people you need, but why you need such amazing people. You know, everything from tech and consumer products, and now over in that CPG role. Tell us just for a moment to give that context. What's your day to day, Diana?

Diana Benedikt It's a great question. Day to day in recruiting is what it always has been. And that is meeting with our clients, learning what's important to them, and then going out and finding the people that they should be considering for these key jobs that really drive success, drive growth inside organizations.

I just want to take a quick minute to comment on the better for you segment of CPG. It's much more high growth than standard CPG. So people think of CPG as it's there all the time. Everyone goes to the supermarket, but just people wanting to eat healthier things and not Doritos.

And also really currently seeing a lot of people driven by GLP ones and things like that, driving the growth in the better for you segment much higher in general, better for you runs about two plus X what the growth in standard CPG is. So my job is to listen to my clients and go out there and find the best candidates we can. And we do only passive recruiting.

We don't post job ads anywhere. We people on the shoulder with a little tap and say, hey, we've got this. Are you interested? And for the people who are interested, we wanted to see where we can go with them.

Priscilla McKinney Wow. Yeah, so you must be an amazing networker.

Diana Benedikt I do my best.

Priscilla McKinney So this is obviously why we're connected now. When I think of strong marketing professionals, my first thing is to reflect on how they deeply, deeply understand the audience. They know how they're feeling, even things that maybe they can't even communicate. And that is really the foundation of very good persona development and is the basis of strategic planning. Right? That's where from that, marketing perspective.

So what skills specific to audience understanding and as it translates into go-to marketing strategy, do the CPG companies that you work with look for when they're looking for those brand managers, those marketing VPs?

Diana Benedikt Yeah, it's a great question. And I feel like I just want to make a little statement up front here, which is when we're looking for brand people, they are, you know, the middle of the wheel. They are the hub with the spokes coming out of them. And so that audience piece, well, it is absolutely critical understanding audience.

It has to be there. It is a piece of a complex web of skills that our clients are looking for. And so me personally, I spend a lot of time in brand, yet I haven't really had a lot of conversation with many of our clients when we're doing brand searches, specifically on audience understanding.

But we know from getting deeper into the searches and learning what's important as it comes out over time, right? It's an iterative process, is that obviously making informed decisions based on the data they've carefully collected is really important to our client's success, right? Of course, designing that research drives the results.

So they need somebody who's done it before and can do it again, who hopefully understands their segment. I ran a brand search recently for one of our clients we've done a lot of work with, and we had great candidates across the board, but they chose the one guy who was in their particular segment, men's grooming products. If you've worked in food, can you do it in men's grooming products?

Yes, they've proven it in other parts of their, you know, at other levels in their organization that they can bring people in. But when they have somebody who has that experience that you've done this work there, it's critical. That designing that research, understanding, you know, how that does.

And then I would move from audience understanding to the go to market piece because that is critical for our clients, right? They need somebody with that experience all the way from idea generation to launch, right? Go to market covers a lot of ground.

Depending how sophisticated the R &D organization is, whether it's a smaller company or a larger company with more extended reach there, getting that strategy to details, being able to work at all levels, go from 10,000 feet down to in the nitty gritty, all of this is critical. And so things like stage gate experience, really understanding where you have to stick to it and where you can move a little bit. And that stage gate experience is also really important, tying into a more general skill, is cross-functional relationship building.

You know, again, Brenda is at the hub with all of these spokes, and being able to communicate well and get people bought in across the board in the organization is so important to a successful launch.

Priscilla McKinney So you are looking for this, yes, theoretical knowledge, but people have had the experience who said, yes, I've taken the theory and I have actually applied it. Years in execution and I know not necessarily exactly what's going to happen, but I do know the markers of success and I know when we are in trouble and that execution experience would have to be of value.

Diana Benedikt It's critical. It's critical. I would, I would add to that, that, you know, we get a lot of people are like, well, I'm ready to, you know, move up from brand manager to senior brand manager. And we really spent our time at the senior level. If my clients are looking for a senior brand manager, they want somebody who's been a senior brand manager.

Priscilla McKinney Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you talk about this metaphor you and you talk about how it is such a big growth. That also means that many of these brands don't have a long runway to prove it or get to market.

And so these things are sometimes on smaller timelines. You know, so tell me about that. How much high pressure is there when it is such a big growth market?

Diana Benedikt It is, and that's part of the cultural match piece that we pride ourselves on, right? We work with larger organizations that are, we work for instance, with Alby vitamins, part of the Unilever portfolio brands, one of the biggest consumer packaged goods companies in the world. But we also work with much smaller companies.

We have one smaller company that has a very simple product. It's a seasonings product and it's not so simple, but when we first started working with them, I would say about five years ago, they were able to get the product from concept to shelf in six weeks. That's crazy. That's not case, right?

Of course they can't do it anymore. They're much bigger. But I think the point is, is that what we need to do is understand where the candidate has that knowledge and experience and that flexibility and that passion. If you don't care about it, you're not going to do the job.

If it's not important to you to try to get things to market quickly, you're not gonna do it. It's not gonna be done. You're not gonna meet the deadlines. It's not gonna happen. So that's one of the things about working in the Better For You space that I personally love. We get people who really care.

Priscilla McKinney Okay, well what you're touching on there are some maybe tangible intangibles. This is about like culture fit. So this is going beyond the skills. The idea that brand manager needs to know how to be a brand manager.

Diana Benedikt But it's so important. I'm sorry, Priscilla, I have to put my finger on that. A, I can find you a match, but that match is not going to be successful inside your organization, particularly in a sector like ours where this cultural match is critical.

People who are passionate, like for instance, Ollie is a B Corp. And if you're not aware and impassioned and emboldened and motivated by working for a B Corp, it doesn't matter to you and it's just another job. You're not going to fit in there.

Priscilla McKinney Right, right. And that culture fit is so important too, in terms of getting that person aligned with the brand voice and those values they're trying to communicate that really may not be in an exact messaging, but they're in a field, they're a vibe of working at a place, right? How do you have that conversation with people? That's not on a resume.

Diana Benedikt You know, it comes out in conversation. You know, we, we spend time getting to know each other and I know what the push buttons are for, different cultural setups inside different companies, right? So we have companies where it's, it's more corporate and you have to be able to understand it comes from the top down.

We have other organizations where every voice is critical. And if you can't speak up, you're not going to succeed. I had a candidate for another senior brand manager role come in and was hesitant in her, um, in her exercise presentation.

She, she's just a nervous person and she can't help that, but she's incredibly smart and incredibly experienced. She could not communicate well with the folks there. They found a better candidate.

Priscilla McKinney Well, you say that, but what that's telling me is that you actually must have a lot of repeat clients because that's how you know a lot of these cultures pretty intimately. So I'm curious what kind of experience you have with that repeat clientele, what kind of feedback you get and specifically what do those marketing professionals who actually get hired, but really thrive in that role have in common? What does that have to do with like making that right place culturally.

Diana Benedikt Yeah, absolutely. I think I'm gonna address the first thing first, which is we do get a lot of repeat clients. Our clients understand that we can deliver what they're looking for, somebody who is a good match and someone who could get the job done.

And that ties into what does it take to thrive in these organizations and grow? And I guess, you know, I had one client that we've done work with and every time they're like, we're looking for a doer. And everybody is looking for a doer, right?

That you know how to plan, strategize, execute, of course, manage and actually deliver, right? So doers is the phrase I use for that. I gained it from them and they're smart folks. They're publicly traded and we like them a lot.

But I think, you know, you have to be able to go, once you've got the job, you've got to be able to go in and be able to gain that trust and buy in cross-functionally. And that's in every job, right? I put a CFO in who's an incredible communicator.

And that's critical because a lot of people are like, ugh, finance. They're just here to say no, right? Well, that's not what finance is there for, right? So building relationships across the board are key. And we put people in who are good at that. Our clients appreciate that. They come back to us.

Priscilla McKinney You know, just as a side note, I'll mention that one thing we think about at Little Bird Marketing is not really so much cultural fit, but we talk a lot about cultural ad. Like come in and add to us. You know, we don't want to force you necessarily to be exactly, you know, just like the rest of us, but you do need to fit in that sense we're talking about.

But we want to see what else can you bring in here? How do you leave this place better than you found it? And I think that's an interesting way to have a good conversation about that fit piece.

Diana Benedikt Yeah, I think the cultural fit enables you to produce cultural ad, right? If you are generally like-minded and generally, I mean, I think pace is a good example. If you're somebody who, when put in a situation that's high velocity and you have to keep up and you're fighting to keep up all the time and you're not asking questions at meetings to get the answers you need to make your decisions, you are not a cultural fit and you're in no position to provide cultural ad, right?

So they're very connected. But I think that's a great point and I love that concept of cultural ad.

Priscilla McKinney It's how we work at the nest. But now I'm the CEO of a B2B marketing firm that specializes in serving market research companies. Okay. So as I'm out at conferences, one of the topics that we talk about on stop is data driven decision making.

You know, all the big CBG brands of course are spending millions and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars on market research, anything from brand awareness, tracking, just the entire gamut. And it's always a conversation. But in terms of your role in that professional ecosystem and you're in the middle of evaluating candidates, how do you think about people who know how to make data-driven decisions?

What role or what conversations are you having about understand analytics and insights and how they go about making their decisions for the company they work for.

Diana Benedikt Yeah, one I always want to note, David team, are you pulling the data? Are you analyzing the data yourself or do you have a bunch of analysts doing it for you? And if you're pulling it, give me an example of where you've pulled the insights, made a move, right?

Whether it's a pivot or a new product or pricing or whatever you're doing, being able to pull the insights into strategies that drive a positive outcome, right? And then you said the magic word before and I will repeat it, executing on them to success and having metric results to prove that, right? If I have a candidate that doesn't have any metric results, in my opinion, they're going to have a hard time communicating that in the data driven world that we live in.

Most of the brand people understand that and have those metric driven results to drive success for them themselves, you when they go in to talk with folks, right? And again, talking with folks is only part of the piece, right? We get people our clients want more. We generally see some kind of an exercise and then the pedals to the metal there.

Priscilla McKinney I love that. I love that. Okay, now I don't want to confuse people. I know that you don't work with individuals.

You work with the companies to understand the role and then go find that person on a one-by-one basis. So I don't want to confuse our audience. But I do know because of the way that you understand and work inside the industry, I think you could give a little advice today to someone who is a candidate looking to get placed in a high level CPG job in this market. What are your thoughts about that?

Diana Benedikt Absolutely great question. And I think one of the critical pieces, especially for this, these kind of brand and marketing leadership roles, you do your homework, you do your research, be prepared. I had a candidate coming in for a senior brand manager role, which we turned into an assistant director role for her.

And then the CMO left, right? So, but she came into her interviews, she had access and she pulled data and she pulled knowledge and they didn't have an exercise there, but she was careful to include pieces that she had learned and information, data bits, and insights that that drove for her during the interview process, right? I also think it's never bad advice for any candidate for any role inside an organization, be a machine operator or a marketing baby, to be thoughtful and a good listener, right?

If you're not showing that you're listening and helping people feel like they can nod in unison with you, you're not going to have that connection, right? And I would just comment a little bit on the fact that these days, this market that we're in right now, yes, it's, you know, we're nearing the end of the year here, but it is not a candidate driven market right now. There are so many good candidates in the market.

It's very competitive. And so my advice to candidates is don't put all your eggs in one basket. I know I sound like my grandmother when I say that, but you have to bet, put balancing efforts out there.

It will never hurt you and it can potentially create a little leverage for you if the time comes when you're nearing an offer to have other opportunities in process.

Priscilla McKinney Yeah, yeah. You know that listening part is really interesting because it feels often like it's becoming a little bit of a lost art because we're not meeting in person, we're on Zoom constantly. And in this environment, to your point, people are taking 200 interviews before they ever get an offer.

I mean, literally. And it is stressful. You know, it is hard to keep your attention and keep focused. And I don't pull that number just out of the air.

I have talked repeatedly with people who are in, you know, that search mode and it is exhausting. And so I think that's great advice to just remember that in that moment, this is the only thing you have going on right now. If you're hoping to connect, you've got to be that listener. And you know, that I understand that that's hard. So maybe that encourages someone today a little bit. It's like, what the hell? Yeah.

Diana Benedikt I hope so, yeah. I mean, to touch on that briefly and to take it to the client side, one thing we talk to our clients about on every single intake with them is can we shorten the process? We don't wanna lose candidates that are really great who are out there interviewing.

We had a great director candidate for one of our clients go through 14 interviews. In the last interview, there was a presentation and part of it was to present something that was funny that, you know, and he drew a cartoon of, of this ridiculous interview process. 14 interviews is too much. I will never do another search with 14 interviews. I will tell the client, if you need 14 interviews, we're not the right firm for you because we're not going to close this. We're going to lose all the good ones.

Priscilla McKinney Right, oh my gosh. Okay, that's great advice to them. So let's dig a little deeper because this is your world, not dealing directly with the candidates, but dealing with these high-level companies who need these very high-level professionals. So you would tell them, let's shorten this process. What else would you offer to them? How can they be more realistic and how can they make this really work for them?

Diana Benedikt Yeah, absolutely. We really want to encourage our clients to spend a little more time on the job description development process. It's a sales document.

It sells you to the to the candidate and we do a great job selling companies. But like for instance, I'll go back to Ali. All these job descriptions are wonderful. They're graphically enhanced.

They have a lot of information about the culture and the connection that people have and the community that they've worked very hard to create internally. That's something that's an advantage people want to go work for. When the former CEO of Olly sold the company to Unilever and moved on to Everyman Jack, their job descriptions are the same.

He brought that with him because we know that's an advantage in the market anytime. Going back to that what we were talking about before streamlining that interview process, make sure it doesn't get bogged down during steps. If you're not aware, the world is moving so quickly.

Candidates get lost or worse. Candidates have a bad experience. You might be talking to 10 or 15 candidates and one gets the job and they all have a bad experience. That's a big fail.

So, me, having momentum is key, keeping that momentum up. And I would say part of that for us as an agency to go out and sell your story and be able to get the candidates ready 100 % for everything. Having that process laid out beforehand, who they're going to meet with first, what they're going to talk about, what the key drivers are, what second, and not doing it on the fly.

Lay it out beforehand. That is critical. And the last piece of advice, of course, that I would give to any company who's hiring any kind of high-level person is bring in a partner you can trust. And I say that not just to drive business here, but you can't take an AI recruiter, you know, whatever, Jane, the concept recruiter and put them in a onto a CPG brand role.

They don't get it. They don't understand those little in between the lines drivers of success. And when you were asking me, how do we sort that out? We spend a lot of time that we do old fashioned recruiting and that's what drives success for our clients.

Priscilla McKinney Yeah. Yeah, this is such critical information that really only an expert recruiter knows about what it takes to fill these top CPG brand manager and marketing director roles, VP kind of thing. But these roles are high pressure roles, right?

So tell me one quick thing about, I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit about a compliment maybe that one of your peak customers has given you that might have surprised you. When you think about, you mentioned right there, you need to work with someone that is really reputable, knows their stuff. But for you, what's the cultural fit? What kind of a company would work well with your firm?

Diana Benedikt I, you can go to our website and see a quote from one of our clients that they loved working with our, you know, we placed four different people for them, right? So obviously repeat, right? We put a senior brand manager in there, by the way.

I put the VP of sales in there for instance, but they appreciate our professionalism and our expertise, of course, but we have genuinely care about what we're doing and have been, you they note that we put together like a very thorough, thoughtful process and that we take the time to understand what's important to them.

Priscilla McKinney I love that. Well, just so you know, Diana didn't pay me or ask me to say that. I think it's just so wonderful. You're offering your expertise for free to my audience.

And I do think there is something to be said for the way you approach your business and the way you come prepared in order to do your very best for that client. I just really respect that.

Diana Benedikt Thank you. I appreciate that. And I just want to add here quickly that we were talking about, I spend my time with clients. I actually do spend time with candidates and I'm always, I always welcome if somebody wants to send me their resume.

So feel reach out. I only have time to talk to people focused on asserts that I'm on because we're busy. Recruiters are busy. The main asset we have is our time.

And so, but of course connecting, happy to connect on LinkedIn, happy to read resumes because the recruiting process has two sides, the candidate side and the client side. And it's really important that we are have insight into both of them.

Priscilla McKinney Okay, you can connect with her online. It's Diana, D-A-N-A, and it's Benedict, and it is B-E-N-E-D-I-K-T. So if you want to find her on LinkedIn, do thank you so much, Diana, for shedding light on this.

It is a tough environment for those looking for these kinds of high-level jobs, but thank you for just pulling the curtain back a little bit and helping us understand what you're thinking as an expert recruiter.

Diana Benedikt Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. And I personally love, you know, your podcast Priscilla. There's so much to learn. There so many experts and it all connects.

Priscilla McKinney I love it. Thanks so much. From all of us here at Little Bird Marketing, have a great day and happy marketing.

Diana Benedikt Thanks.