As recruitment marketer, bonus schemes have been responsible for my success

This article is part of SourceFlow’s “Should recruitment marketers be incentivised?” series, where recruitment leaders and marketers share different perspectives on incentives, commission structures and commercial performance in recruitment marketing.

Across my seven-year career as a recruitment marketer, I always had a bonus scheme.

From Marketing Administrator to Global Director, there was always one in place.

I worked for two specialist tech recruitment agencies during that time. One was a smaller business of around 20 people where I was the lone marketer. The other had between 100 and 200 staff, and eventually I built the marketing team from one person to seven.

In both businesses, bonus schemes played a huge role in shaping my motivation, my progression, my success, and my management of other marketers.

What bonus schemes did for me early in my career

When I was in junior roles, bonus schemes were an incredible motivator for me.

Partly because of my personality and background:

I’d been skint for years
I’m competitive
I like working independently
I genuinely enjoy maths and data

At the time, I had a manager who didn’t really want to spend time coaching or constantly chasing me for progress. The bonus scheme meant he didn’t have to.

It gave me complete focus on the targets and tactics I needed to deliver.

As my role grew, so did the incentives

The first scheme I worked under was points-based and I could earn up to £500 per quarter. That might not sound like much, but when I was earning £22K, it was roughly 30% of my monthly salary. I worked hard to hit the numbers every quarter because I genuinely wanted and needed the money.

At the start, the scheme focused more on tactical deliverables. Over time, as my role progressed, the rewards became more commercially linked. I started receiving profit share, tied to quarterly profits, and bonuses linked to SQL generation.

By the time I was a Marketing Executive, I could earn up to £1,600 per quarter through bonuses.

Again, maybe that does not sound huge to everyone, but at that stage it was around 65% of my monthly salary. I was grateful for it and highly motivated to achieve it.

I also received incentives beyond cash.

The business paid for my CIM Level 6 Diploma in Strategic Marketing, which gave me the opportunity to build the skills I needed to progress further in my career.

From the employer’s perspective, the schemes were working too.

The incentives helped create consistency around our content and SEO strategy. We managed to rank number one for the search term “IT recruitment agency”, generated a strong number of SQLs and contributed significantly to revenue growth.

What changed when I started leading a marketing team

When I became a Marketing Manager and started building a team of my own, I wanted to implement a similar scheme because I believed it would motivate people in the same way it had motivated me.

I also introduced schemes that were linked to personal development plans and promotion opportunities.

They absolutely helped focus activity around strategic objectives like SEO, traffic, leads, event attendees and key project delivery. They also aligned the whole team around what the business was trying to achieve.

During the 2021–2022 financial year, the marketing team was flying and, as a result, so was the business. Turnover increased by 83% to £45 million - the largest turnover to date.

But this was also the point where I learnt that recruitment marketers are motivated very differently from one another.

I had some team members who would do absolutely anything to achieve their goals, but others simply wanted to do a good job day-to-day without feeling pressure to constantly hit targets in order to progress.

They wanted fair salary increases, promotions, stability and recognition for consistently doing good work and being loyal but they don’t want everything to be targeted. I think people like that also deserve to share in the success of the business when things are going well.

Profit share, for example, can work really well in those situations.

So, should recruitment marketers be incentivised?

From my experience, bonus schemes and incentives can be incredibly effective for driving marketing strategy and positive outcomes in recruitment businesses.

But I’ve also learnt that money and career progression are not the core motivator for every marketer.

For some people, soft skills, creativity, delivering work they are proud of and working within a good culture are just as important.

I think respect, freedom and the right amount of pressure need to be bundled in with financial rewards if recruitment marketers are to excel.

About the contributor

Will Astbury is Global VP of Growth at SourceFlow. Before joining SourceFlow, he spent seven years working in recruitment marketing, starting as a Marketing Administrator and progressing to Global Marketing Director within specialist tech recruitment businesses.

Other perspectives in this series:

The views expressed in this article are those of the individual contributor and do not necessarily reflect the views of SourceFlow

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