I was sitting at the table after dinner, thinking about a simple thing, Tibs had cooked a Thai green curry from scratch, Rua had thrown together a roast vegetable salad with halloumi, and neither of them needed to be told what to do next. They saw the problem, owned the outcome, and got on with it. That was the same pattern I’d been seeing in the market when founders start asking for a Senior Digital Marketing Manager before the team is really ready for one, and it is exactly where the question of when to hire your first Senior Digital Marketing Manager starts to matter. It usually shows up after a few months of growth, a couple of channel wins, and a founder who is tired of being the person who approves every email, landing page, and ad test.
That dinner made me think about team design more than titles. I see a lot of founders assume seniority will solve a pace problem, when the actual issue is ownership. If the business still needs someone to define priorities, create operating rhythm, and make trade-offs across channels, then the hire needs room to lead. If the founder is still holding the steering wheel, a senior title can create more confusion than momentum.
What the founder thought they needed was more hands, what the search showed was a leadership gap
The brief landed with a familiar shape. Fast-growing B2B business, small internal marketing function, founder still involved in every decision, and a request for a Senior Digital Marketing Manager to “take the pressure off”. There were too many campaigns in flight, too much reliance on one coordinator, and not enough time to think. On paper, it sounded like a delivery problem. In the first call, though, I could hear something else underneath it, a need for someone who could make sense of the whole function.
That distinction matters because hiring is often framed as capacity, when the pressure is actually coming from leadership. McKinsey has pointed out that companies with strong organisational health are materially more likely to outperform, because clear decision rights and operating rhythm improve execution. I see that all the time in digital marketing. When no one owns prioritisation, channel choices get noisy. When no one owns the standard, “busy” becomes the default.
The founder thought they needed more hands because the team was stretched across paid media, email, content, and reporting. What the search showed was that team design had never caught up with growth. The marketing coordinator was doing three jobs. The founder was approving tactics. The external agency was filling gaps without any clear internal owner. That is not a senior marketing structure, that is a collection of tasks.
when to hire your first Senior Digital Marketing Manager starts with decision rights, not a job ad
The question I keep coming back to is simple, who is making the calls when the work gets messy? A strong senior marketer is not there to keep a channel calendar moving. They are there to decide what matters now, what can wait, and what gets cut. If the founder still wants to approve every campaign, then the role is too senior for the current operating model. That is where the job title outruns the business.
LinkedIn’s hiring research has long shown that candidates are more likely to engage when they can see genuine scope, clear reporting lines, and a path to influence. That lines up with what I see on the ground. Senior digital marketers want a brief that includes ownership, not a vague “wear a few hats” note. They want to know whether they are building a function, managing stakeholders, or simply being asked to cover volume.
ABS business data has also kept reminding me how uneven growth can be across sectors, which means team design can’t follow a generic template. Some businesses need a hands-on channel lead first. Others need someone who can pull the scattered pieces into a function. When a founder asks me about when to hire your first Senior Digital Marketing Manager, I start with autonomy, reporting rhythm, and decision rights. If those three things are not there, the person in the role ends up carrying responsibility without authority.
Why strong candidates keep walking when the brief is too tactical
The first shortlist told the story. The candidates with the best mix of strategy and delivery were interested at first, then the questions started to sharpen. “Who owns budget allocation?” “Am I leading anything directly?” “How much of this is building versus executing?” Those are fair questions. A senior hire can sense very quickly whether the role is designed for leadership or for overflow.
I remember one conversation where the candidate said, “This sounds like a traffic controller role with a senior title.” That stung a bit, because it was accurate. The founder wanted someone who could optimise paid search, sort content priorities, and tidy up campaign reporting. Useful work, no doubt, but not enough to attract someone ready to shape a function. Strong candidates can feel when a brief is tactical dressed up as strategic.
This is where candidate drop-off often gets misread. Founders assume the market is thin or that people are being picky. Sometimes that is true, but more often the brief is asking for too much execution and too little authority. SEEK’s recruitment insights have repeatedly shown that clarity around responsibilities and impact improves applicant quality. In senior marketing searches, that clarity is the difference between attracting a doer and attracting a leader.
What the market showed me about seniority, and why team design had to change
The market was not short on digital marketers. It was short on people who wanted a role that sat awkwardly between founder control and team dependency. Candidates with strong channel depth were available, but they wanted either a true Head of Marketing remit or a role where they could own a well-defined lane with enough independence to make decisions. That is where team design became the real issue, not the talent pool.
Jules and I talked through the search the way we usually do when the brief feels a bit off. He pointed out that the team had a coordinator, a founder who still operated as chief approver, and an external agency handling specialist execution. What they lacked was a person to integrate the work. That changed how I framed the search. We stopped describing the role as a fix for workload and started describing it as the person who would create rhythm, standards, and prioritisation.
There is a quiet lesson in that. The best senior hires do not arrive to rescue a messy setup, they work when the setup is ready to be led. Harvard Business Review has written often about the cost of ambiguity in teams, and I think about that a lot in search. Ambiguity drains the energy out of capable people. A Senior Digital Marketing Manager wants a boundary to lead within, not a fog to fight through.
What changed once we reframed the role around ownership, not just delivery
We went back to the founder and reworked the brief. Instead of asking for someone to keep all channels moving, we shaped it around ownership of marketing rhythm, cross-channel prioritisation, and clearer accountability for outcomes. We also tightened the reporting line. The role would no longer sit as a broad support function under the founder’s daily direction. It would become the internal owner of digital marketing decisions, with the founder stepping back from task-level approvals.
That shift changed the quality of the conversation straight away. Candidates started engaging with the role as a genuine leadership opportunity. The strongest ones asked about resourcing, decision pace, and how much authority they would have to redirect spend or pause underperforming work. Those are the questions I want to hear in a search like this, because they show someone thinking about operating rhythm, not just output.
Simon Sinek’s line, “Leadership is not about being in charge, it is about taking care of those in your charge,” came to mind during that process. In this case, taking care meant setting the senior hire up to lead something real. Once the brief reflected that, the conversation improved. We still had to assess technical depth, but the bigger filter became judgement. Could this person decide, challenge, and simplify without waiting to be told?
The interview process exposed the same problem the brief had been hiding
The interviews made one thing obvious, the founder had been interviewing for compliance rather than leadership. A few candidates were being tested on channel detail, which was fine, but not enough. The sharper part of the search was finding out who could speak to trade-offs. What do you cut when three campaigns are competing? How do you handle an executive who wants to launch before the data is ready? How do you measure value when attribution is imperfect?
That is where a senior marketing hire earns their place. Maya Angelou’s line, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” is often quoted in leadership contexts. In hiring, I think the more practical version is that candidates remember whether the process felt like a real assessment of leadership or a checklist exercise. Senior people can tell very quickly if they are being sized up for agency rather than judgement.
We changed the interview structure so it tested problem-solving and decision-making in the context of the business. That gave the founder a clearer read on who could handle autonomy. It also exposed which candidates were only strong when the brief was narrow and fully defined. In a role like this, the point is not to find the person who can do everything. The point is to find the person who can choose what matters.
The dinner test I use now when a founder says they need a senior marketer
I keep coming back to Tibs and Rua at the table. They did not wait for instructions because the problem was visible, the outcome was theirs, and they had the confidence to get on with it. That is what I look for in a senior digital marketing hire. If the person will spend half their time waiting for founder approval, then the business may be asking for maturity before it has created the space for it.
That is the dinner test I use now. If a founder tells me they need a Senior Digital Marketing Manager, I ask myself whether the role has enough room to lead. Does it need judgement, or does it need task completion? Does the team have a structure that supports seniority, or is team design still being held together by the founder’s inbox? If the answer points to the latter, I often push the brief back a level and say the business may need stronger mid-level capability first.
That case changed the way I think about senior marketing hires. A title can look like progress, but if the founder still owns every decision, the person in the chair has nowhere to lead. Since then, I have been more direct with clients about whether they are hiring a leader or outsourcing their own indecision. The businesses that get this right move faster, hire better, and build marketing teams that can hold their own. The ones that do not usually end up reliving the same search six months later.
The future is bright, let’s go there together!
Thanks for reading,
Cheers Keiran
Big Wave Digital.
Born in Sydney. Built for digital.
Obsessed with tech.
Trusted by the best.
And, most importantly, ready when you are.
“Courage is knowing what not to fear.”
— Plato
Fear slow hires.
Fear bad hires.
Fear wasting time.
But don’t fear reaching out.
We’re right here.
Let us help you build a Brilliant team in Digital.
Big Wave Digital are experts in Digital Recruitment Sydney
At Big Wave Digital, Sydney’s leading digital, blockchain and technical recruitment agency, we have deep connections, experience and proven expertise, and the ability to achieve a win for all parties in the challenging recruiting process. We can connect to highly coveted digital and tech talent with the world’s best employers.
Keiran Hathorn is the CEO & Founder of Big Wave Digital. A Sydney based niche Digital, Blockchain & Technology recruitment company. Keiran leads a high performance, experienced recruitment team, assisting companies of all sizes secure the best talent.
Digital Marketing Recruitment in 2026 Sydney
