Building your 'DAM Fam' [3/4]: Hiring a digital asset manager

Part 3 of our 'DAM Fam' mini-series provides best practices on hiring the perfect digital asset manager at your organization, so you can ensure your digital asset management project is set up for success from Day 1. In case you missed Part 1 & 2, check it out here:

Building your 'DAM Fam' [1/4]: How to kickstart a digital asset management project

Building your 'DAM Fam' [2/4]: How to find the perfect DAM project team at your organization

Having a dedicated DAM champion to be the main driver for all things digital asset management can make all the difference in how much value you get from the solution.

If you’ve already purchased a DAM, implemented it, and it’s a mess because no one is owning the project, then the need to hire a DAM manager should be abundantly clear. If that’s the case, you’re probably in dire need of a dedicated internal taskforce to get your DAM project back on the right track.

Ideally, you’ll need to articulate why there’s a need for a DAM hire and justify it clearly to the powers that be. That way, you can introduce that role to your team and prepare accordingly in advance of implementation.

The first pushback question that you’ll likely get is: "What is this person going to do, anyway?"

While there may be subtle differences depending on your specific use case, typical job responsibilities of a dedicated DAM manager include:

• Procurement of the DAM tool
• Identifying key stakeholders
• Reviewing key assets and evaluating what should be migrated to the DAM
• Creating the taxonomy & metadata schema
• Training and on-boarding of users
• Advocacy and creating awareness within your company about DAM, including its overall purpose and benefits
• Being the main point-of-contact with the DAM vendor
• Being the go-to person for your organization’s DAM projects (new user groups, new use-cases, integrations, new features, and more)
• Creating reports to demonstrate ROI (return on investment) and user adoption
• Ensuring adoption and ongoing success of the DAM investment
• Running the entire DAM strategy

Ultimately, a dedicated digital asset manager protects an organization’s DAM investment. Hiring for this initiative not only protects that investment by ensuring its long-term success, but it also promises to transform content operations at your entire organization, and future-proofing your brand for the digital era. How much is that worth to you, and your brand?

Some additional costs that DAM can protect by ensuring efficiency in operations are:

• Advertising spend
• Marketing technology spend
• Cost of production (internal and externally)
• PR, agency, and media costs

And in some cases, a high-profile horror story on the risks of careless content management may just do the trick:

Asking the right questions during the recruitment process

If you’re hiring for a digital asset manager, finding the perfect one for your business relies on asking the right questions that challenge the candidate, forcing them to think critically. The following 15 thought-provoking example questions should give you a good understanding of a potential applicant’s suitability to the role:

1. You come to work and have 2,000 assets to catalog, but only enough space for 1,000 in the DAM. How do you choose which ones to keep?
2. Your 4 year old nephew wants to know what you do. What do you tell him?
3. An important stakeholder won’t allow you to ingest company logos into the DAM. What are your next steps?
4. What if you have 15 minutes to extract as many assets from the DAM as you can and what you don’t take will be lost forever. What would you save?
5. If I asked you to get me a cup of coffee, where would you go and what kind of coffee would you get me?
6. Is it better to ask for forgiveness or ask for permission?
7. What’s the best training you’ve ever attended, and why was it memorable?
8. Someone walks up to you and says, "No one searches by metadata." What is your response?
9. What if I asked you to teach me something new about digital asset management?
10. You have $15,000 left in your DAM budget for the year. If you don’t spend it, you lose it next year. What do you spend it on and how do you decide?
11. What if a DAM thief has stolen your digital assets and there’s no way to get them back. How do you quantify the value of the stolen assets?
12. If you could be a DAM manager for any brand in the world (besides us), who would it be?
13. What if you were suddenly tasked with controlling all the information on the internet. How would you manage such an enormous undertaking?
14. If you were a metadata standard which one would you be, and why?
15. Your friend knows nothing about donuts. How do you introduce them to donuts? a) Make them a donut. b) Direct them to a donut store. c) Describe a donut to them.

Get a digital asset manager job description template in Part 4

For that extra helping hand in finding the perfect digital asset manager for your organization, Part 4 of the ‘Dam Fam’ mini-series will provide a typical job description template for you to use as reference during the recruitment process. Happy hunting!