AUCKLAND, Today: Marketing & digital insights analysts, customer experience specialists, content editors and communications executives are four of the “hotspot” skills sought by the 49% of employers who plan to increase permanent staff levels in NZ over the next 12 months, according to recruiting experts Hays.
But the latest Hays NZ report – out this morning – also predicts a difficult time ahead for ad agencies and media.
“Chief marketing officers in NZ are following their global peers to move their marketing spend allocation from advertising agencies and paid media towards marketing technology and personalisation,” the report’s authors reckon.
“To ensure success of enterprise content and marketing automation programmes, CMOs have continued to hire data driven marketers, customer experience specialists and content specialists,” they say.
“As a result, insights analysts with knowledge of segmentation and contact strategy combined with data analysis skills are in demand.
“Customer experience specialists who can attract and cultivate long term relationships with customers through the full range of brand touchpoints are in high demand too as companies move from a transactional focus to maximising customer value.”
The report was produced from a survey of 900 employers in New Zealand, representing 259,000 employees. Fifty-three percent said technical skills have the highest impact on the effectiveness of an organisation.
Hays believes demand will increase for marketing professionals with strong IT skills. “Marketing job descriptions increasingly feature skills that were once the sole domain of IT,” the report says.
“There’s demand for content editors and comms executives with content writing, imagery and video production skills.”
How marketing interacts with the sales team continues to evolve as organisations learn how to optimise their messaging to attract qualified inbound leads. As a result, organisations are using content to strategically nurture leads and drive customer acquisition.
This is creating demand for content editors with inbound marketing skills, and communications executives with content writing, imagery and video production skills.
Another factor driving the demand for marketing professionals is the adoption of automation and AI, particularly the use of automated AI customer relationship management platforms.
Hubspot and Marketo
“New Zealand’s SME sector continues to prioritise activities that allow them to directly acquire, convert and maximise paying customers,” according to Hays.
“Marketing automation platforms such as Hubspot and Marketo are increasingly popular. This is creating demand for marketing communications specialists with proven demand generation and campaign optimisation skills using these platforms.
“Finally, demand will increase for marketing professionals with strong IT skills. Marketing job descriptions increasingly feature skills that were once the sole domain of IT,” says the report. “These include front end development stacks such as HTML and CSS and database skills like SQL and SAS.”
Hays NZ managing director Adam Shapley said: “Labour supply has been an ongoing issue across New Zealand for some time, so with employers telling us they want to continue adding to their headcount in the next few months, highly-skilled professionals will be in high demand and can access strong career-advancing opportunities.”
Salary trends
Insights analysts are in short supply and salaries have therefore increased in both agencies and the corporate sector.
- View the full Hays Jobs Report at www.hays.net.nz/report
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