Each month we go in-depth into topics discussed in one of the Master B2B Boardrooms, our monthly roundtables for B2B eCommerce executives.

What we heard in the Boardrooms:

This month the chatter in the Master B2B Boardrooms was around the evergreen topic of hiring. We heard 3 conversations around hiring that we wanted to share:

• If you were allowed to bring in one additional team member, what role would it be?
• How do you convince your bosses that you need a new role opened on your team?
• Where does a PIM manager sit in your organization?

Let’s dig into those questions.

Why that matters:

If you’re in a role where you need to hire people, you’ve likely noticed one or both of these things over the past six months:

You’re getting a lot more questions than you have in the recent past about why you need to fill that open role, or why you need to create the new position.

It’s taking longer to fill open roles – not because there are too few people available, but because the company is overwhelmed by the number of candidates available and spends months trying to find someone with the exact (exact!) mix of skills they believe are necessary to be successful in the role.

It seems like just a few months back when Boardroom members were talking about how difficult it was to fill all the open roles they had because of a lack of candidates.

How quickly it all changes…

What to do about it:

At our recent Master B2B Summit in Chicago we did an exercise where we asked tables of practitioners if they could hire for just one role, what role would it be.  We then asked the same of our Boardroom members over the past month and the answer was overwhelmingly the same – we would hire a data analyst.

One Boardroom member actually did just hire a data analyst and was raving about how much manual work the person took off his plate (“I used to write SQL queries myself!”) and how much more information he now had at his fingertips when he wanted to make a decision based on data.

Given the challenge around hiring and creating new roles, another Boardroom member said that she was able to move an analyst out of the finance team (allowing that team to reduce their headcount without having to let anyone go) and onto the eCommerce team since that person had analytical skills and understood how the company worked.

Another member who works at a large distributor talked about how she avoids pushback about opening a new role.  Before introducing the idea of the new role internally, she hires an agency to do the work.  Then when the team sees the benefits of having someone do that work, she presents the idea of moving it in-house as a cost-saving measure (compared to continuing to work with the agency).  We liked this strategy because the value is already proven and the new role is positioned as a cost savings compared to using an agency rather than an entirely new hire.

Finally – how do you solve a problem like a PIM manager?

A common story we’ve heard is that as the product catalog grows, the number of people working on product information also increases.  At some point the head of eCommerce then notices that more than five people are working in the PIM without anyone owning it.

Hiring a PIM manager is tricky. The ideal person is likely a combination of a Subject Matter Expert + Technologist + Project Manager.  If you’re reading that thinking, “that sounds like a unicorn,” you’re correct.  One way we’ve seen this work is to take an online merchandiser who has an interest in tech and move them into the PIM manager role.  They have a deep understanding of product that will be difficult to match if you bring someone in from the outside.

The other tricky aspect of hiring for this role is deciding which team the person will report to.  One Boardroom member shared how she is part of the marketing team and they manage some product data.  But other data is ultimately owned by the eCommerce Operations team.  In this case, should the PIM manager report into marketing or into operations?  We’d suggest that the PIM manager report into whichever team best aligns with that person’s background.  Someone with a marketing background will likely find more success surrounded by like-minded folks.  Of course, they’ll still need to collaborate closely with other teams.