Paid media expertise used to be enough to get a marketer noticed.
These days, on its own, it doesn’t carry the same weight. In conversations with hiring managers across the market, I’m hearing a consistent preference for marketers who understand what happens across the whole customer journey, not only the channel they run.
For a long time, a marketer who could build a clean campaign structure, manage bids well and hit a target CPA was a strong hire on those credentials alone. That still matters, but it’s become the baseline rather than the standout.
Add one interview question to screen for full-funnel thinking
If you’re hiring for a paid media or channel-specific role, add one question to your next interview: ask the candidate to walk you through what happened to their traffic after the click. Look for whether they can speak to:
- the conversion page the traffic reached, and any testing that followed
- how the customer was picked up by lifecycle or CRM
- what it meant for retention
This tells you more than campaign metrics alone. It shows quickly whether a candidate understands the funnel they’re contributing to, rather than only the channel sitting in front of them.
What full-funnel experience covers, from acquisition to retention
The marketers commanding the most interest are the ones who can trace their work through to what happened next. That starts with acquisition and the creative that drove the click, but it doesn’t stop there.
It extends into conversion rate optimisation on the page traffic reaches, into how that customer is picked up by lifecycle and CRM, and through to whether they’re retained.
A candidate who can speak to that full chain, even if their day to day role sits in one part of it, is showing you something a channel specialist working in isolation can’t.
They understand how their piece of the funnel affects everything downstream of it, and they talk about outcomes as well as outputs when they walk you through a campaign. That’s a different skill to being a generalist across all five areas, and it’s the one worth screening for.
Why channel specialists are still in demand, but the bar has moved
Channel specialist roles remain in strong demand. Businesses still need people who are deep in paid social, search or programmatic. The difference inside that specialist pool is what separates the strongest candidates: an understanding of what happens to traffic once it leaves their channel, and how that connects to conversion, lifecycle and retention.
Two candidates can have near identical platform experience and very different value to your business. One can tell you what their traffic did once it arrived. The other can only tell you how it got there.
Ready to talk about your next marketing hire? Get in touch.
Lilian
Digital Marketing, Social & Analytics Recruitment
Last updated: September 2026
