Consider McKinley Marketing Partners when choosing a marketing staffing agency

I’ve been reading a lot recently about marketing staff being reduced at many different sized businesses across all industries. I feel for those people because I’ve been there and know the initial struggle a person goes through as they come to terms with being “right-sized”. As much as I believe that companies are being shortsighted by reducing staff, I still believe businesses need to be autonomous and have the flexibility to determine what cost-cutting are best for them. The last thing this great country of ours needs is a system similar to France where employees are virtually guaranteed employment for life no matter how bad their performance.

Here’s a disclaimer, I’m currently working with McKinley Marketing Partners and performing onsite optimization as well as link building, aka SEO.

I’ve been working with McKinley Marketing Partners since December of 2008 performing SEO services for them and have learned quite a lot about their business. McKinley is a marketing staffing agency that represents marketing consultants who must have at least 10 years professional marketing experience with proof of measurable results before they agree to represent the person to their clients.

I’ve worked with quite a few marketing staffing agencies throughout my marketing career and have had mixed results with freelance marketing agencies. My experience as a Marketing Director looking to find talent through a marketing placement company has been mostly disappointing. I won’t call out the two best known agencies that I’ve used, but I can say that the candidates they sent me were not as experienced nor as talented as they described them to be. I’ve used one very well known agency over the course of six years and have had a hit and miss experience with their talent.

So why was that the case and why such inconsistency? Well, I think I know the answer. I’ve also been on the other side and have had agencies represent me. I can tell you that many marketing placement agencies will only request to meet you one time for about 30-60 minutes and will then send you out to their clients. In some cases, you can be in their database for years and never meet another person at the agency again. In the meantime, the person who originally interviewed you has long gone.

Not so with McKinley Marketing Partners. The tenure of their staff is years not months. Their staff turnover is negligible and the marketing professionals they represent have been with McKinley for up to 12 years and in many cases up to ten years. That’s impressive as compared to all the other marketing staffing agencies. They’re extremely careful during their vetting process which includes multiple interviews with candidates, references and past employees.

I suggest that if you’re in the market for representation or in need of marketing talent, include McKinley Marketing Partners part of your due diligence for finding 1099 marketing talent.