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“A lot of brands are starting to build their own teams. Agencies are more and more competitive for talent. Everyone wants this talent. I think they're also realizing, especially on the Amazon platform, that having talent who really gets that space makes all the difference in the world in terms of what you can do with your Amazon business.”
— Lisa Heins, Founder, Talent Concierge
If you want to build a high-performing ecommerce organization, you need to have the right talent. But in a job market transformed by the “Great Resignation” and a massive pivot to remote work, figuring out how to attract ecommerce talent is much easier said than done for brands.
Lisa Heins, who previously worked in recruiting roles at Microsoft and Amazon, has harnessed her years of experience to help brands in the pure play, omnichannel, and retail media space find executive-level and managerial talent.
She says in today’s hyper-competitive job market, brands need a talent management strategy that takes into account current market dynamics. Their compensation and benefits packages, workplace schedule, and culture must align with what the market now demands. Otherwise, they’ll likely lose skilled talent to competitors.
Heins joined a recent episode of the “Unpacking the Digital Shelf” podcast, “Recruiting Ecommerce Talent,” to share how the market is changing, discuss how brands and agencies can effectively respond, and offer several best practices these organizations can implement to ensure it doesn’t take months to hire for their next role.
Heins primarily works with brands and agencies that do business on marketplaces, such as Amazon, Walmart.com, Target.com, and Instacart.
She says her clients are “dealing with some really intense supply and demand issues” when it comes to talent recruitment. Namely, there’s not enough talent to go around.
“A lot of brands are starting to build their own teams. Agencies are more and more competitive for talent. Everyone wants this talent,” Heins says. “I think they're also realizing, especially on the Amazon platform, that having talent who really gets that space makes all the difference in the world in terms of what you can do with your Amazon business.”
Heins says that professionals with even a year of Amazon advertising experience are in high demand. Candidates are also becoming more selective because recruiters are inundating them with interview requests and job offers. Heins is also seeing what she calls “compensation inflation.”
“The first thing I would say, especially for people who are building initial teams or just really haven't hired in this space very well, is what you think you're going to be paying for the role, it's probably not appropriate,” she says. “I would say, roughly in the last 18 months at least, compensation has gone up 20% in this space.”
Due to all these shifting dynamics, brands and agencies need to revamp their approach to recruiting. Heins offers six best practices for how they can make this shift.
Because candidates now have an array of choices, hiring managers need to be more prepared, Heins says.
“They're making fairly quick decisions on the caliber of your company and how you operate. Make sure that you and anyone involved in the interview process knows and understands the role. Know ahead of time who's interviewing for it. Make sure they know they need to make their calendars available,” she says.
“And then, know that your compensation is competitive,” she adds, “because you do not have time at the offer stage to get compensation and finance on board and do all the justification that takes. It takes too long. You'll lose the candidates.”
To that point, Heins says companies need to move quickly to get high-potential talent.
She often finds that a candidate may not be looking for a new job, but once they interview for one role, they become more open to interviewing for others — increasing the competition for the brands and agencies trying to recruit them.
“Definitely move quickly in the interview process from the first point of contact with that candidate all the way through the offer stage,” Hein says. “That should be no more than a few weeks. I have some clients that are doing it within a week.”
Heins says more candidates are looking for flexibility, not just in terms of remote work but also their actual work schedule. This may mean a company holds most of its meetings in the middle of the day, so that meetings are convenient for employees on both the East Coast and West Coast.
Employees are also looking for more paid time off (PTO). In fact, unlimited time off is an increasingly desirable benefit, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Heins says offering remote work arrangements is now crucial for most companies. However, many old-school brands are still reluctant to do so. This only lengthens their candidate search because they dramatically shrink their pool of qualified candidates.
“Honestly, I think you're reducing your pool by 90% at this point when you say, ‘They have to work in this office at least three to five days a week, in this particular location.’” — Lisa Heins, Founder, Talent Concierge
Heins says her management and executive-level talent candidates are looking for something different at this stage of their career.
Yes, compensation is important, but candidates also want work that aligns with their values or that is tied to a larger mission or purpose.
“They've had great careers. They've maybe been at Amazon for a decade or all these great companies, so they're looking to fulfill something a little bit different in their next work choice,” Heins says. “They want to work for a company that makes a difference. That could be in terms of the actual company and their offering, but if not, it could just be in the values that the company promotes.”
This doesn’t mean companies should be insincere during the hiring process and claim they’re doing things they actually aren't (i.e., the greenwashing that often occurs in the sustainability space, as described by CFI).
But it does mean companies should highlight their authentic brand values and strategic priorities that align with things like environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Employing this strategy can help brands and agencies land highly skilled talent — and retain this talent longer because they’re more passionate about their work.
Ecommerce job candidates are increasingly interested in omnichannel commerce — and want opportunities where they can work on marketplaces besides Amazon, Heins says. They also want to work for organizations that make ecommerce a strategic priority, and not an afterthought.
“For some of these brands, especially the older-school brands, candidates are really skeptical. They know that evangelism and educating is going to be a big part of the job, but they don't want to constantly be knocking their head against a wall,” Heins says, adding that brands must be ready to showcase that they’re heavily invested in ecommerce from the very beginning of the recruitment process.
In a tight job market, companies must pay close attention to their job descriptions, because emphasizing the wrong things may turn off potential candidates.
Heins gave the example of one company writing too broad a job description, which gave candidates the impression that they’d be overloaded with work or doing work that wasn’t really aligned to their unique skill set.
“They wanted the person to do seven different things, for one. They wanted to do [Amazon] ads, content, chargebacks, and sales, and promotions. That's not one person, typically. The person who's capable and qualified to do the sales and promotions and advertising doesn't want to do the content and doesn't want to do the more manual work, so that's a turnoff,” she says.
“You’ve got to be honest about the job, but when you're trying to attract the candidate, you don't want to emphasize the parts they're going to hate. It shouldn't be half your job description,” Heins adds.
The above best practices provide a roadmap organizations can use to navigate today’s tight ecommerce talent market. Brands and agencies that want to recruit the best talent — in a matter of weeks and not months — would be wise to follow Heins’ sage advice.
To hear more of Heins’ best practices for ecommerce talent recruitment, check out the full episode of “Unpacking the Digital Shelf.” 
