S1E1 The Hunt for a Marketing Midas: “The Job”
Divya K
On a monotonous Sunday afternoon, sitting on his favourite worn-out sofa, a stout middle-aged man with chocolaty complexion and having a curious blend of brown and grey hair scattered unevenly on his head, Mr. Mogambo was lost in his thoughts.
He was staring at nothing in particular through his glasses. Anybody looking at him would have imagined that he was wondering about some mid-life crisis.
“I am not going to talk to you.” Mrs. Mogambo’s voice broke his musing.
Mr. Mogambo calmly said, “Okay”.
Surprised and more angered at the same time, Mrs. Mogambo asked “Don’t you even want to know why?”
To this, Mr. Mogambo replied “That’s because I respect and trust your decisions, love.” which escalated the temperature further.
She shrieked “Are you going to get bhindis today or have you planned to sleep the night out in the corridor?”
“Love, please don’t force me to go outside, today at least. I need this day to give time to my thoughts on a very critical matter… of course other than you” he said coyly and smiling, he went back to his world of thoughts with the blurred noise of Mrs. Mogambo’s complaints in the background.
Mr. Mogambo was actually thinking about a new open position at his company for the Head of Marketing and wondering how to proceed with the candidates who had applied.
Mr. Mogambo was about 45 years old and had spent a better part of a decade as the Head of HR & Talent Acquisition in a chocolate manufacturing company called ‘Bitter Chocolates Inc.’ under the leadership of the Owner & Managing Director, Mr. Gabbar Singh. (It was supposed to be ‘Better Chocolates Inc.’ but the typo error went unnoticed from the letter heads to the chocolate wrappers of the company, till everyone thought it was a deliberate act…)
Slightly above middle age, Mr. Gabbar Singh had the abs of a body builder and anyone looking at him appreciated his fitness. His employees did secretly have fun at his expense because there was this suspicion that he never ate any of the chocolates that he gleefully sold to thousands of customers.
Just like the name of his company, at times, Mr. Gabbar Singh was a little bitter too. He started the company from scratch when he had nothing. He had toiled day in and out and brought his company to a stage where people acknowledged it as a brand that provided quality dark chocolates. Bitter Chocolates had been a hit among chocolate lovers, bakers and confectioners.
But since his talented Director of Marketing Mr. Circuit left his company to join his rival ‘Nothing Bitter About It, Inc.’, Bitter Chocolates was facing challenges. In the absence of Mr. Circuit, the team had been trying various initiatives but without much effect.
Just a quarter ago, they started a campaign by launching 7 types of chocolates having 7 different colours of the rainbow, called the vibgyor series. This campaign too failed miserably because Mr. Circuit’s company launched 7 types of chocolates, each designed to complement one of the 7 deadly sins, and hence aptly titled as the ‘Oh, So Sinful’ series. This hurt Bitter Chocolates and Mr. Gabbar Singh very badly.
The dipping sales numbers had started to create whispers of a shutdown. Many employees had started putting in their papers to find other sources of livelihood for themselves.
Amidst all these, only Mr. Mogambo knew what Mr. Gabbar Singh was going through, and stood strong with him. And one day, a week back, with the intention of giving it all it takes, Mr. Gabbar Singh decided to bring in a new Head of Marketing. He had called Mr. Mogambo and handed him this enormous responsibility with a Job Description which was brief & simple.
The JD read:Position: Head of MarketingResponsibilities: Win 1% market share each month for 36 consecutive monthsSkills: Must have a Midas touchNote: Give me 3 shortlisted candidates to choose from
Mr. Mogambo had undertaken many leadership hiring responsibilities in his career and each chapter had left a new impression or a new learning or some other change in his life. He wondered what this thrilling chapter would bring and what characters he will get to meet.
With this in mind, he had logged into Expertite, and with a few clicks, he had created a proper Job Description and published it so that it went directly to their Career site. He also posted this job from Expertite to LinkedIn and Facebook hoping to attract and engage some candidates who were active on Social Media. Finally, he clicked Employee Referrals and shared this job with his colleagues.
In the last few days, his job had attracted a few potential candidates, supposed experts in the field of B2C marketing. He had reviewed their profiles on Expertite - some had rich experience, some were referrals and so on.
Expertite also provided him analytics on candidate engagement (for example, whether a candidate had visited their website or not to understand whether a candidate was serious about the opportunity or not). He had then shortlisted a few of the applicants, called them further to check their availability and accordingly, sent them interview schedules.
The first interview was scheduled the next day, Monday.
Will Mr. Mogambo be able to do justice with Mr. Gabbar Singh’s faith in him?
Will he be able to discover that talented Midas who will change the destiny of Bitter Chocolates Inc.?
Let’s find out in the next episode. Stay Tuned!
About the author: Divya K