There is a question that keeps coming up in growing companies:
We need to hire someone for marketing, but what kind of profile?
A generalist who does a bit of everything?
Or a specialist focused on a specific area?
At first glance, it looks like a simple resource allocation decision. In practice, it can compromise the efficiency of an entire department, and even the business itself.
It is extremely common to see companies get this wrong. Not because they choose the wrong profile per se, but because they fail to diagnose the stage the business is actually at.
The result is predictable (and if you are reading this and have made it this far, I am probably not telling you anything new):
- If you hire a generalist, “there is not enough depth.”
- If you hire a specialist, “there is not enough vision.”
The problem is often not the person in question (sometimes it will be, but that is a topic for another post). It is a matter of defining expectations properly and, as managers, knowing exactly what you want to get out of that resource.
A generalist is, by definition, someone comfortable with ambiguity. They can navigate multiple areas (strategy, content, performance, analytics) without being deep in all of them. They are particularly useful when there are still more questions than answers. When the business is still testing channels, messaging, positioning.
But there is a clear limit: a generalist does not replace specialisation when the problem is already identified.
If you know your biggest blocker is in performance, SEO, CRM, or conversion, then you do not need someone who “does a bit of everything.” You need someone who solves one specific thing well.
On the other hand, a specialist is extremely effective within their perimeter. They can optimise, go deep, and scale.
But they need a lot of context and, probably, a lot of direction to avoid the risk of optimising for the wrong objective.
This happens more often than it seems:
Companies hire specialists to improve campaigns when the problem is in the offer. Or to generate more leads when the blocker is in conversion. The result is more activity, fewer results.
At its core, the choice between generalist and specialist should not start with the role. It should start with a simpler question: where is the biggest blocker in the business right now?
If you cannot answer that clearly, the probability of hiring badly is high, because you are trying to solve a problem you have not yet diagnosed.
Companies in an early or intermediate stage, with some traction but no defined structure, benefit from generalist profiles. Someone who organises, who tests, who connects the dots between marketing, product, and sales. Someone who helps turn scattered effort into direction.
But that model does not scale indefinitely.
There comes a moment when the problem stops being “what to do” and becomes “how to do it better.”
That is when specialists come in.
When there is already direction, data, history. When you already know a certain channel works and you want to extract more efficiency from it. When you need depth to gain an edge.
The mistake is trying to accelerate that phase.
Hiring specialists too early, without a foundation, leads to waste. Each one optimises their own area, but nobody ensures coherence across the whole.
On the other hand, keeping only generalists when the business already demands depth leads to stagnation. There is effort, but there is a lack of excellence.
There is also a third scenario, very common.
Companies that try to solve everything with a single hire.
They want someone strategic, operational, creative, analytical. Someone who handles performance, content, CRM, SEO, and also aligns with sales.
That profile, in practice, does not exist. And when it does, it quickly becomes a bottleneck.
Because the problem is not the person’s capability. It is the expectation placed on the role.
At its core, this decision is not binary. It is sequential.
First, you need clarity.
Then, structure.
Only then, specialisation.
Ignoring this sequence is one of the fastest ways to burn budget without building real capability inside the company.
There is a question that helps guide this decision:
If you solved your biggest marketing problem tomorrow, would you know what the next one would be?
If the answer is no, you are still in an exploration phase. A generalist profile makes more sense.
If the answer is yes, and that problem is clear and recurring, then you probably need specialisation.
At Grow Beyond, we rarely start by recommending hires. We start by diagnosing:
Where is the blocker? What is already working? What still needs to be structured?
Only then does it make sense to define which profile is actually needed, and at what point.
Because hiring the right person at the wrong time is, more often than not, the same as hiring the wrong person.
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