Marketer’s approach to hiring (Adaptibility over experience)

Marketer is one of the fastest-growing startups emerging from the Norwegian tech scene, launching in November 2024. From the founding team to their newest hires, Marketer has always prioritised raw talent and adaptability over years of experience. When you're building an industry-disrupting tool like theirs, it requires a new way of thinking and a new way of hiring.

In this article, we'll explore the founder's unconventional approach to hiring and how they find gold in candidates other companies overlook.

Quick context: Marketer is an AI-marketing tool that automates the entire ad creation process for Shopify stores, from idea to published, and tracking.

Their story

From the get-go, marketer has always chosen their players wisely- but out of the norm. Serial founder Amir Folkestad Habhab started the idea after a succesfull proptech scale MRET.com. He gathered up a small and mean team of A-players from his previous venture including Tarik Mustedanagic & Christopher Køltzow and went to work. By coincidence he met Victor Helgeland, a 18 year old high school Agency owner that pitched him the scrappy version of Marketer.com. Amir hired Victor as a Intern- where he dropped out of high school and went all in.

After launching in November 2024 they had a small but hungry team, but we’re always actively hiring for new additions. When defining their needs, wants and persona- they always doubled down on young talent with Ecom or marketing experience, rather than a senior more experienced profile. This did not only prove effective with their adaptability, fast output and work ethic, but also really good for thinking of new ways to automate paid marketing. They could not bet on senior minds broken by old methodologies.

Effective hiring process

Marketer's current hiring process is simple yet highly effective, built on three core principles:

1. Active Sourcing

The team doesn't wait for applications to roll in. They use a combination of recruiters and their personal networks to actively hunt for emerging talent. They cast a wide net: LinkedIn, niche subreddits, Slack channels, anywhere talented people gather. Every outreach is personalised, connecting the candidate's current skills directly to Marketer's vision and showing them why they'd be a perfect fit.

2. Real Skills, Real Scenarios

Once candidates connect with the founders, there's no time wasted on theoretical questions. Marketer immediately evaluates how candidates would perform if they started tomorrow. Whether it's Sales, Customer Success, or Product, they use real scenarios the team encounters daily as case tests. This approach cuts through resume fluff and reveals true capabilities, while giving candidates a genuine opportunity to demonstrate their potential in context.

3. Speed as a Filter

All hiring decisions are made quickly, backed by data from the testing phase. If a candidate can't make decisions quickly or prepare efficiently, they're already out of the running. Marketer's culture is built on speed and efficiency—if even one person slows down, it affects the entire team's momentum. Speed isn't just a hiring metric; it's a cultural litmus test.

Summary

By hiring for potential over pedigree, Marketer has built a team that moves fast, thinks differently, and executes relentlessly. Their unconventional approach to talent has been a key driver in their explosive growth trajectory—proving that when you're disrupting an industry, you need to disrupt your hiring process too. Don't hire for the job that existed yesterday. Hire for the company you're building tomorrow.