B2B talent ‘hunger games’ as brands in-house analytics, tech, digital upskilling to cover shortfall, raiding B2C guns and ‘boomerangs’ as business-consumer marketing lines blur

It’s the “hunger games” out there in the B2B talent wars. Software firm ServiceNow’s solution? In-house training. It’s the best way to get good analytics people, Head of Marketing Caroline Raj says. “Everybody is dipping into everybody’s pool at the moment,” she says. It has been a tough two years. Of the 140,000 marketing and advertising people in Australia, 20,000 have moved jobs in the past 20 months, per LinkedIn’s Prue Cox. Agency churn has increased by 50 per cent in the past year – off a high base. Average marketing tenure is now a mere 1.4 years. “That’s quite terrifying,” Telstra’s Kelly Tyson says. She’s not seeing that at the telco, which works hard on culture, but the talent pool is tight. The market for B2B savvy, IT and tech-literate marketers is running hot.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.