By Abby Breckenridge

Image by Rachel Adams

There’s a misconception about staffing firms

There’s a misconception about staffing firms—that we simply pocket the gap between what a client pays and what a contractor earns.

The reality is more complicated, and it’s where you can tell the difference between a transactional staffing vendor and a true talent partner.

At 2A Recruiting & Staffing, we believe great people do their best work when they’re supported well. That means much of the spread between bill rate and pay rate is invested back into employee experience, operational support, and long-term business health.

Here’s a rundown of what the staffing fee actually covers.

1. The consultant salary

Yep, that’s the one you already knew about.

2. Employee benefits and infrastructure

This bucket is the direct cost of supporting the consultant, in their job and life.

That includes things like payroll taxes and benefits, including:

• Health, vision, and dental insurance
• Life insurance
• 401(k) matching
• Other benefits like disability insurance, parental leave, fertility and fitness benefits, and professional development funds

It also includes a lot of infrastructure that people don’t always think about:

• Laptops and equipment
• Software licenses
• Phone and internet stipends
• Security and compliance systems

Some staffing firms intentionally minimize these investments to maximize profit margins. Lower benefits. Minimal support. Bare-bones tooling.

We’ve taken the opposite approach.

Strong benefits and reliable infrastructure help attract stronger talent, improve retention, and create a better overall consultant experience. In a competitive market, talented people have options. The firms that invest in their consultants tend to attract the people clients actually want to hire.

And from the client side, that stability matters. Consultants who feel supported are generally more engaged, more reliable, and more likely to stay through the life of an engagement.

READ MORE: Hiring managers: 4 questions to ask when choosing a consulting agency for contract roles

3. In-role consultant support

The best staffing firms don’t disappear after placement. Without active support, small issues can become major retention problems.

That’s why we invest in ongoing consultant support, including:

• Regular employee check-ins
• Career guidance
• Renewal support
• IT troubleshooting and onboarding help
• Recognition gifts and morale boosters
• Team events and community building

This layer of support often gets overlooked because it’s harder to quantify than payroll or benefits. But it has a real impact on performance and retention.

Consultants who feel connected and valued tend to communicate better, ramp faster, and stay engaged longer. Clients benefit from fewer disruptions, stronger continuity, and better long-term relationships with the people on their teams.

In other words: support isn’t fluff. It’s operational stability.

4. Recruiting, operations, and business support

This final bucket is the cost of actually running a staffing business.

Behind every successful placement is an operational engine that includes:

• Sourcing, vetting, and staying connected with top talent
• Sales and account management
• Payroll administration
• HR and compliance support
• Finance and accounting
• Legal oversight

And yes—profit

Why this matters

Healthy businesses need margin in order to continue investing in people, tools, and service quality. The problem isn’t that staffing firms make money. The problem is when firms maximize profit by cutting support everywhere else.

That shows up eventually in the form of poor communication, weak recruiting, consultant turnover, and inconsistent delivery.

Two firms may quote similar rates while delivering completely different consultant experiences and wildly different levels of support.

At 2A, we’d rather build a model that supports both the client and the consultant for the long term. Better-supported people tend to do better work. And in staffing, better work is what everyone is actually paying for.

By Nora Bright, Carolyn Lange

Image by Emily Zheng

A good CMO brings strategy, focus, leadership, and a sharp point of view on how marketing should support growth.

They also bring a full-time executive salary.

For some companies, that investment makes sense. For others, it’s not quite time. Maybe your marketing team is still small. Maybe your budget is better spent on execution. You need senior guidance, but not 40 hours a week of it. That’s where a fractional CMO can fit.

A fractional CMO gives you access to senior-level marketing leadership without hiring a full-time executive. They can help set strategy, sharpen messaging, guide your team, evaluate performance, and make sure marketing is doing more than keeping everyone very, very busy.

Because “busy” is not the same thing as “working.”

Here are five signs it may be time to bring in a fractional CMO.

1. You don’t know what success looks like

Your team is posting. Campaigns are running. Emails are going out. Someone is definitely making a spreadsheet. But when you ask how marketing is performing, the answer gets fuzzy.

That usually sounds like:

• “Website traffic is up, but we’re not sure if it’s the right traffic.”
• “The newsletter performed well, depending on how you define well.”
• “We got a lot of leads, but sales says they weren’t good leads.”
• “We’re tracking a bunch of metrics, but nobody really knows which ones matter.”

This is one of the clearest signs that marketing needs leadership. Without agreed-upon goals, teams end up measuring activity instead of impact. They can tell you what shipped, but not what changed because of it.

A fractional CMO can help define what success actually means for your business. That might include KPIs, reporting rhythms, campaign benchmarks, attribution models, or better alignment between marketing and sales.

2. Your messaging isn’t landing

Sometimes the problem isn’t your marketing channels, but what you’re saying.

Your sales deck says one thing. Your website says another. And that inconsistency can cost you.

When messaging isn’t clear, prospects have to do too much work. They have to figure out what you do, who it’s for, why it matters, and how you’re different from the other companies saying something suspiciously similar.

Messaging issues can show up in a few ways:

• Prospects understand the category but not your differentiation.
• Sales calls spend too much time explaining the basics.
• Content gets traffic but does not convert.
• Internal teams describe the product, service, or company differently.
• Your website sounds polished, but not especially specific.

A fractional CMO can help clarify your positioning and create messaging that actually gives your team something useful to work with. That may include refining your value proposition, tightening your audience definition, sharpening competitive differentiation, or building messaging frameworks that sales, marketing, and leadership can all use.

3. You’re unsure if your marketing mix makes sense

You’ve got it all: A little paid search here. A webinar program there. A few events because competitors are showing up. Some SEO and a social media calendar because someone said they’re important. Maybe a podcast. Maybe a booth with stress balls, if things have gone too far.

Individually, none of these tactics are necessarily wrong, but do they make sense together?

A fractional CMO can step back and look at the full picture:

• Which channels are helping move the business forward?
• Which ones are consuming budget without clear return?
• Where are you over-invested?
• Where are you under-invested?
• Are your tactics aligned to your audience and sales cycle?
• Are you trying to do too many things at once?

This is especially important for companies that have grown quickly or changed direction. The marketing plan that made sense two years ago may not fit the business you are today.

READ MORE: 7 questions to ask when hiring a marketing consultant

A fractional CMO can audit your current efforts and help refocus your resources on the channels most likely to drive results. Sometimes that means adding something new. Often, it means finally letting something go.

RIP to the campaign that technically still exists but no one can explain why.

4. You know something is off, but you’re not sure what

Revenue is not where it should be, leads are inconsistent, and sales conversations are stalling.

Maybe it’s the messaging. Maybe it’s the targeting. Maybe the sales handoff is broken.

Maybe it’s all of the above, which is rude but possible.

When you’re inside the business every day, it can be hard to see the real issue. Teams get close to their own assumptions. They inherit decisions from earlier stages of the company. They keep doing what has always been done because no one has had the time, authority, or distance to question it.

A fractional CMO brings outside perspective and pattern recognition. They’ve usually seen similar problems across different companies, growth stages, and markets. That makes it easier to spot what’s actually happening and what needs to change.

This doesn’t mean they walk in with a magic answer on day one—they just know where to look. They can evaluate the strategy, team structure, messaging, funnel, performance data, and customer journey to identify the gaps that are holding marketing back.

5. Your marketing team needs a leader

A lot of companies have capable people doing marketing work. They have a junior marketer, a content person, a designer, an agency, a freelancer, or some combination of people keeping the machine moving.

What they don’t have is someone clearly leading the function.

That gap shows up fast.

Without senior marketing leadership, teams can struggle with:

• Prioritizing work
• Connecting campaigns to business goals
• Deciding where budget should go
• Saying no to low-value requests
• Creating consistent messaging
• Setting performance expectations
• Translating leadership ideas into an actual marketing plan

This is how marketing teams become very productive in a way that doesn’t necessarily move the business forward. A fractional CMO can give execution teams the direction they need. They can help decide what matters most, what can wait, and what should never have become a priority in the first place.

For smaller teams, that leadership is important. Junior marketers often have the energy and skill to execute, but they may not have the experience to build strategy, manage stakeholders, allocate budget, or push back when every department wants “just one quick thing.”

Fractional CMOs fill the gap

A fractional CMO is not the right fit for every company. Some businesses truly need a full-time executive. But if your marketing has momentum without direction, activity without measurement, or a team without a leader, a fractional CMO may be the missing piece.

They can be hands-on, helping build the plan and guide the work. They can act as a strategic advisor, giving leadership teams the perspective they need to make better decisions. Or they can sit somewhere in between, offering structure, accountability, and senior-level guidance without the full-time overhead.

The point is not to add another voice to the room. It’s to add the right kind of leadership.

At 2A Recruiting & Staffing, we help companies figure out what kind of marketing leadership they actually need—and connect them with experienced fractional CMOs who can step in and help.

If your marketing feels stuck, scattered, or harder than it should be, we can help you find the person who knows what to fix first.

Reach out to 2A Recruiting & Staffing

By Nora Bright

Image by Jenni Lydell

Clients are increasingly asking me how our recruiters use AI at 2A Recruiting & Staffing.

The truth is, AI is making it easier for candidates to apply to more jobs, leading to a surge in applications, and recruiters need good tools to sort through them. However, the reality of how we use AI is more nuanced than many people assume.

We use AI to make our process more efficient, but we don’t use it for making decisions about which candidates to phone screen, or which to pass along to our clients. To better understand what AI recruiting tools we use, it helps to differentiate between automation and AI:

Automation: Ways to improve efficiency and organization, but not evaluate candidates.

• Calendaring
• Email templates
• Knockout questions in our ATS (multiple choice questions that filter candidates, like “Do you live on the West Coast?” if a PT time zone is required)

AI: A synthesizer of information, a thinking partner, and a speedy writer

• Drafting job descriptions with inclusive, effective language, using our 2A template
• Getting us up to speed on new industries or roles
• Brainstorming candidate profiles and sourcing strategies
• Drafting or refining candidate summaries sent to clients

Do you use AI for resume screening?

The answer is no, not yet. AI tools for reviewing resumes just aren’t that good right now. Our ATS has an AI resume screening tool that I’ve piloted, and I’ve often found myself disagreeing with it. Beyond sometimes failing to see a basic match between role and candidate, the tool also doesn’t know everything I do about a particular team or a manager that I may have gained from years of experience working with them. For creative roles, it doesn’t work well at all. For example, it can’t review a graphic design portfolio or watch a video reel. And many resumes we get are unreadable by our ATS.

Of course, the potential for bias in AI looms heavy in my mind as well, and I’m mindful of not perpetuating inequities that already exist in hiring. There’s growing research showing that AI resume screening tools can reflect and even amplify historical biases in hiring data. And as a recruiter, the idea that I might miss the perfect candidate is enough to keep me up at night. Ultimately, it doesn’t seem that the benefits outweigh the risks.

AI can’t replace the human side of recruiting

I certainly don’t use any AI tools to interview candidates on our behalf. I see a big part of my job as building relationships with our candidates, so these tools seem counterproductive. I have tried out AI notetaking tools during phone screens, especially for technical roles where there’s lots of technical details. Generally, we avoid them because being recorded and transcribed can make candidates feel awkward, and can make it harder to build real relationships.

So much of what makes a great recruiter is their relationships with candidates. The best recruiters I’ve worked with know their candidates deeply. At a previous firm, we used to joke that one of our senior recruiters could tell you not just a candidate’s career history, but the names of their kids—and their pets. When it comes to negotiating a tricky deal, or getting a candidate to lay their cards on the table when it matters, candidate relationships are extremely important.

I really believe in 2A’s focus on kindness and taking care of our people, and for me that starts with the candidate experience. I’m a “helper” at heart, and giving one job seeker, who might be navigating a brutal job search, a good experience, makes me feel I’ve done something meaningful that day. And it’s also the part of the job that’s hardest to replicate with technology.

Automation and AI can speed things up, but ultimately the human touch is still just as essential in our recruiting process.

By Abby Breckenridge

Image by Emily Zheng

So, it’s time to hire. You’re thinking: post a job, run interviews, make an offer. Done, right? Not quite. The true cost of hiring goes far beyond salary. When you factor in time, risk, and lost momentum, the DIY route can quickly become the most expensive one.

Here’s where those hidden costs can show up:

• Productivity drain: Hiring pulls your team away from the work that drives results. Writing job descriptions, reviewing resumes, interviewing, and aligning on decisions take up valuable time your team isn’t spending on their core jobs. As roles sit open, teams stretch to fill the gaps. That can lead to burnout, delayed priorities, and managers spending more time hiring than leading.
  
• Mis-hire risk: A great hire takes time to ramp. A bad hire takes even more time, and then you’re starting over. Performance improvement plans, backfills, and another hiring loop can cost up to half the role’s annual salary, not to mention the disruption to your team.
  
• Missed opportunities: If you’re hiring, it’s because there’s work that needs to get done. While the role sits open, that work stalls. Projects get pushed, pipelines slow, and launches lose steam. For fast-moving teams, those delays can translate directly into opportunities passing them by.
  
• Limited talent access: Job boards mostly reach active job seekers. Many of the best candidates aren’t applying—they’re being recruited. Without access to those networks, roles take longer to fill and quality can suffer.
  
• Losing top candidates: Strong candidates don’t stay on the market for long. A slow or inconsistent hiring process can mean your best options accept other offers before you’re ready to move. In some cases, that means restarting the search entirely.

This is where a skilled recruiting partner can change the equation. We help you fill roles faster with less strain on your team by bringing a vetted network of talent we’re constantly developing. With more than a decade of experience as a creative and recruiting agency working with some of the top companies in tech, we understand the roles, skills, and collaboration it takes to build high-performing teams.

When you’re deciding whether to partner with a recruiting agency for an important hire, be sure to look beyond the upfront agency investment. The hidden costs of hiring on your own tend to compound over time. We can help, and it’ll save you money.

By Abby Breckenridge

Image by Nicole Todd

“Violence against women affects me as a human being—my message shouldn’t be a feminist message. It’s a universal message.” — Bad Bunny

Is it a cheap trick to open with a Bad Bunny quote? Probably. Am I above it? Certainly not.

As a women’s studies minor and lifelong feminist, I have spent a lot of time mulling over feminist issues, and I firmly believe in the concept behind what Bad Bunny is highlighting here. Most things we call women’s issues are just human issues and segmenting them off usually does their cause a disservice.

I feel the same way about parental leave. It’s on all of us to help make sure folks can have and raise kids, and adequate parental leave is part of that.

In the staffing agency world, benefits like parental leave are rare. Most staffing models treat staffing consultants and contract workers as temporary resources: deliver the work, finish the contract, move on. Benefits are minimal, and life events are often treated as inconveniences to the system.

But having children isn’t an inconvenience. It’s how societies continue. If we want thriving communities, people must be able to have and raise children without sacrificing their careers. That responsibility has not been picked up by our government, so for now it belongs to all of us, including companies.

That’s why we provide paid parental leave to our staffing consultants.

Our team is made up of experts who help our clients ship campaigns, launch products, and scale content programs. They’re professionals with careers and lives. Supporting them through major life moments is good policy. And it’s good for business.

People do their best work when they know they’re valued as humans, not just as billable hours. And by respectfully handling our consultants’ parental leave needs, including temporary replacements and overlap time for handoffs, we’re also helping our clients. Win/win.

By Nora Bright, Andrea Swangard

Image by Nicole Todd

For many B2B tech organizations, building a partner program feels like a natural next step as they look to expand their go-to-market strategy. Partnerships, integrations, co-sell motions, and marketplace participation can extend your reach and unlock new revenue without requiring you to expand your core product. For many companies, this becomes a key part of their partner ecosystem strategy.

What’s less obvious at the outset is how quickly the team structure behind a partner program needs to evolve. Early on, partnerships are primarily about building relationships. As the ecosystem grows, the work becomes more operational and programmatic, and the partner program structure often needs to evolve with it.

Early stage: One person, many hats

At the beginning, partner programs are relationship-led. One person, sometimes a founder, builds alliances, negotiates integrations, supports sales conversations, and experiments with light co-marketing.

Processes are informal with loosely-defined incentives, and pipeline influence isn’t always tracked in a rigorous way.

Hiring focus: Hire for versatility and ownership. You need someone comfortable operating without a playbook, who can move between strategy and execution without friction. Over-specializing too early can slow momentum when scaling a partner program.

Growth stage: Complexity starts to surface

As your ecosystem grows to a meaningful portfolio of partners, team needs evolve. Sales wants clearer co-sell guidance and marketing sees repeatable campaign opportunities. Leadership asks for reporting and marketplace programs introduce new requirements.

This is often the point where organizations expect one person to manage relationships, marketing, enablement, and reporting simultaneously, and that structure rarely holds up as the program expands.

Hiring focus: Before adding headcount, define what’s actually breaking. Is it enablement? Campaign execution? Reporting? Hiring without clarifying ownership usually recreates the same bottleneck in a slightly different form as partner ecosystem management becomes more complex.

Mature stage: Partnerships become a growth channel

When partnerships begin influencing a material portion of pipeline, informality stops working. Revenue targets emerge, incentives formalize, and the work that once sat with a single generalist begins to separate into more defined functions:

• Strategic alliances (which partners to prioritize)
• Partner marketing (how to activate demand)
• Enablement (how sellers and partners execute)
• Operations (how performance is tracked and measured)

At this stage of partner program maturity, organizations typically move toward a more clearly defined partnership team structure.

Hiring focus: Define scope and revenue accountability clearly before hiring senior talent. Strong candidates will expect clarity around authority, KPIs, and decision rights before accepting the role, especially when revenue is involved.

Structure enables alignment and scale

As partner programs grow, structure is what allows teams to keep moving quickly instead of getting stuck in ambiguity. The organizations that get the most from their partner ecosystems are usually the ones that redefine roles just ahead of complexity, not in reaction to it. Taking the time to scope those roles clearly helps organizations make the right hires and ensures new team members are set up to succeed.

If you’re evaluating your next partner hire or thinking about how your ecosystem team should evolve, it can help to talk through the structure before opening a search. If you’d like an experienced perspective, reach out!

By Nora Bright, Andrea Swangard

Image by Nicole Todd

Contract roles are foundational to how large tech companies operate: entire teams and initiatives depend on contractors doing high-impact work. Yet despite how mission critical these roles are, many companies rely on vendor management systems (VMS) to find talent, often with subpar outcomes.

On the surface, these contractor hiring portals promise scale and speed. But in practice, they often strip away the context and care that good recruiting depends on. What you get is a system optimized for volume, not for finding the right person for the work.

Where VMS-driven hiring starts to break down

When roles are posted in a portal, staffing firms are competing against dozens, sometimes hundreds, of other agencies. With such low odds of placement, recruiters are naturally incentivized to move fast and submit often. Spending extra time deeply vetting candidates or digging into the nuances of a role rarely pays off.

To make matters harder, recruiters usually have little to no direct access to the hiring team. Without meaningful context about the role or team, even strong recruiters are left guessing. Volume becomes the safest bet, while candidate fit becomes secondary.

Scale over relationships erodes the experience

VMS portals tend to favor the largest staffing firms. Enterprises can’t realistically onboard every specialized agency, so size becomes the deciding factor. Many agencies that appear boutique in a portal are actually owned by large conglomerates and operate like one.

From the client side, agencies become interchangeable. That makes it difficult to understand how one firm might support the hiring manager during the engagement, or how contractors are treated once they’re on the job. Over time, this lack of differentiation removes the incentive to invest in better experiences.

Contractors feel this quickly. Large agencies often offer the bare minimum in benefits and route support through impersonal service desks with slow response times. Talented, experienced contractors notice and choose to work elsewhere. Poor support leads to higher churn, disengaged talent, and teams that are constantly backfilling instead of moving forward.

A more thoughtful way to hire contractors

Boutique agencies, like 2A Recruiting and Staffing, take a different approach. We build long-term partnerships with our clients and our contractors because thoughtful recruiting leads to better results. That starts with strong benefits, like our fully covered health, dental, and vision insurance, 4 weeks+ of PTO annually, and 401(k) with employer match. It also means regular check-ins, personal, responsive support, and staying engaged throughout the entire contract. Because of benefits like these, in 2025 more than 85% of our contractors completed or extended their engagements.

When contract roles are truly mission critical, they deserve more than portal submissions. If you’re ready to go beyond the portal and work with a firm that treats contractor hiring like the strategic function it is, we’d love to talk.

By Nora Bright, Andrea Swangard

Image by Nicole Todd

After years of recruiting for large, matrixed organizations where employees collaborate across functions and regions, we’ve noticed a consistent pattern. While technical skills might land someone the job, they rarely determine whether that person thrives long-term. What truly sets candidates apart is how they operate in complex, fast-changing environments.

That’s why our interview process focuses on core behavioral traits we’ve found to be strong predictors of success. Here’s what we look for, and why it matters.

1. Driving self-directed execution

In complex roles, candidates need the ability to take initiative and keep things moving. We look for people who can work through ambiguity without getting stuck. They’re comfortable getting started even when the details are incomplete, and they know how to break down fuzzy goals into clear, actionable steps.

They also keep stakeholders informed without needing close oversight. And when something stalls, they don’t wait; they know when to keep going and when to raise a flag. This combination of independence and judgment keeps work momentum going, even when guidance is limited.

2. Taking proactive ownership

In fast-moving environments with shifting priorities, success often comes down to mindset. The people who thrive are those who treat problems as theirs to solve, even if they fall outside their job description. Rather than waiting to be asked, they build cross-functional relationships, seek out context, and stay curious. When something needs doing, they step in because they see the broader value in helping the team move forward.

3. Communicating with clarity and context

In cross-functional, global teams, misalignment can create major downstream issues. That’s why clear, contextual communication is essential. We look for people who tailor their communication style based on who they’re talking to and what the situation calls for, whether it’s explaining a project to a non-technical stakeholder or looping in a team across time zones.

They make sure their work connects to broader goals and that they identify conflicting priorities early, which helps prevent misalignment that can slow things down later.

4. Staying adaptable and resilient

Change is a constant in complex organizations, and success depends on being able to roll with it. We look for people who maintain focus and productivity even when priorities shift, plans change, or teams restructure.

Resilient candidates recover quickly from setbacks and keep a constructive mindset under pressure. They don’t rely on certainty and know how to move forward without it.

Looking for candidates with these traits?

We’ve spent over a decade helping enterprise teams hire professionals who have the right skills and the behaviors that lead to long-term success. Our screening process is designed to surface these traits early, so you meet candidates who are ready to thrive in real-world complexity.

Want to see what that looks like? Explore our recruiting and staffing services, or reach out to us. We’d love to help!

By Abby Breckenridge

Image by Rachel Adams

“2A is great, they don’t freak out.”
I overheard a long-time client say this to a colleague while convincing her that our creative agency was the right team to help get an executive keynote presentation across the finish line.

It made us laugh, and it perfectly captured something I’ve come to value in marketers. Whether I’m hiring for our creative agency or helping our recruiting and staffing clients build their own teams, I look for candidates who are flexible. In other words, they don’t freak out.

A lot can change over the course of a tech marketing initiative. Executive priorities shift. Tools and channels gain or lose effectiveness. And we’ve all seen AI reshape workflows that, not long ago, were considered best practice.

Great marketers aren’t overly attached to any single tool or tactic—they stay focused on outcomes. When something stops working, they test, learn, and adjust without panic.

Translating change into opportunity 

Product change adds even more complexity. In tech, features are added, removed, or repositioned frequently as roadmaps evolve in response to customer needs and competitive pressure. Marketers who struggle with change risk misalignment and missed opportunities. The strongest ones stay close to the product, translate updates into customer value, and evolve the story without unnecessary friction.

This doesn’t mean the fundamentals don’t matter. A deep understanding of marketing principles, the ability to tell a compelling story, and a strong grasp of the product and/or industry are still essential. But on top of that, the best marketers quickly absorb new information and evaluate how it changes their course.

When you’re hiring a marketer, look for the ones who can adapt, recalibrate, and move forward confidently. Your team (and your customers!) will thank you.

By Nora Bright, Kimberly Mass

Image by Nicole Todd

When a partner marketer leaves, hiring their replacement can feel like a big lift—it’s a niche role that blends strategy, relationship management, marketing execution, cross-functional coordination, and project management. But it’s also a natural moment to pause, reassess what you need, and shape the role in a way that moves your partner marketing program forward. 

With a little structure—and a little guidance—you can use this transition time to re-scope the role, sharpen expectations, and quickly attract quality candidates who can hit the ground running. 

Let’s get started! 

Step 1. Evaluate the role: What do you want to keep, adjust, or elevate?  

Start by reflecting on the role as it is today and where you see your partner program heading in the future: 

• What’s changed since this role was last open?  
  • Has your partner program matured—more partners, more tiers, higher goals? 
  • Have priorities shifted—different customer focus, new products, new regions, new motions? 
• What worked well? What could work better? 
  • Collaboration: Was there friction between teams when making decisions? Did cross-functional teams slow down or genuinely support the last person? 
  • Capacity: Was there too much (or too little) to do?
  • Support: Was there enough support from a manager or mentor?
• How should your new hire be the same (or different) from your last hire?
  • Were any skills lacking? 
  • What strengths are essential to maintain? 
  • Are there different skills this person might need based on new priorities? 

Step 2. Audit tools and workflows: What systems and processes are in place today—and what needs to be changed or built? 

The seniority and experience you need depends on the current state of your operations. Evaluate your workflows and tools and categorize each as “keep running,” “change,” or “build.” Here is a list to help you get started:

• Intake and prioritization: How work requests come in, get approved, and get scheduled
• Project management cadence: How timelines and stakeholders are managed 
• Partner communications engine: Communication schedule, messaging consistency, and ownership
• Co-marketing workflow: Campaign planning through execution and follow-up 
• Assets and enablement: Where partner-ready materials live and how they’re managed 
• Systems and handoffs: CRM/PRM basics, lead flow, ownership, and data hygiene
• Measurement: What “success” means and how it’s tracked and reported
• Budget and vendors: MDF spend (if any), agencies, tools, and ownership 

Step 3. Decide what level of role you’re hiring for: Operator, strategic lead, or hybrid 

Based on your answers to steps 1 and 2, you should have a clearer picture of the role level you’re hiring for:

• Operator: Ideal when systems are already in place and details just need to be managed. This person is essentially a project manager—driving timelines, managing stakeholders, and keeping work moving. 
• Strategic lead: Best when priorities are unclear and the overall partner marketing program needs rethinking. This person shapes strategy, sets priorities, makes high-level decisions, and drives executive communications. 
• Hybrid: A blend of the two: Best when you only have the ability to hire one person or when your program is in its earlier phases and still evolving. Keep in mind, finding someone who can and wants to do both can be tricky.  

Step 4. Define what success looks like in the first 30, 60, and 90 days 

Now that you’ve outlined the role, the next step is understanding what strong performance looks like in the first few months. A simple 30–60–90 framework can be used to help you set direction and align everyone involved in hiring. For example:   

• 30 days: Get up to speed on the partner program, stakeholders, partners, and current priorities. Clarify goals, success metrics, and “who owns what,” and then create a realistic plan for what will (and won’t) get done. 
• 60 days: Start delivering meaningful work, including 1 or 2 quick wins. 
• 90 days: Turn early wins into repeatable processes. Set a forward-looking roadmap. 

Step 5. Write the job description and interview for what you need 

Once the role is well-defined, writing a clear and compelling job description that attracts the right candidates is much easier. Make sure to include the following: 

• From step 1: Role mission and top priorities 
• From step 2: Build/fix/run expectations 
• From step 3: Role level and required skills (this will also help determine compensation) 
• From step 4: 90-day outcomes  

Having a clear job description also makes it easier to write interview questions. Check out our list of recommended interview questions for partner marketers. 

Ready, set, hire 

When you take the time to define what you really need before you hire, the process becomes smoother, faster, and far more likely to deliver a great outcome. 

2A Recruiting & Staffing has over a decade of experience recruiting for partner marketing roles. We can help scope your open role, calibrate level and compensation, and deliver qualified partner marketing candidates.