MKT1 Finds Few Marketing Job Ads Ask for Shared AI Skills

MKT1 founder Emily Kramer’s October 19 analysis of marketing job advertisements gives hiring managers a specific gap to check before opening their next role. Of 791 posts from private B2B startups, 47% requested AI skills. Just 6% asked candidates to contribute to AI systems the whole team uses.

That difference changes what a new colleague is expected to do. Using an assistant to finish an individual assignment and maintaining instructions that other marketers depend on require different evidence in an interview.

Kramer’s argument is about who carries that responsibility:

“The team’s multiplayer AI system shouldn’t be left to the GTM engineer alone”

Here, multiplayer means the team shares the system. A GTM engineer builds automation for sales and marketing. The hiring decision is whether the next marketer also contributes knowledge and instructions that make that automation useful.

Put the shared work into the role

Consider a product marketer who improves the instructions an AI assistant reads before drafting a campaign. Their contribution can affect every colleague who uses those instructions afterward. A job description that asks only for familiarity with ChatGPT leaves that responsibility unclear.

Our earlier reporting on Mintlify’s knowledge engineer examined the person maintaining the material an AI reads. This study moves the question upstream, into recruiting. Before hiring someone to join an automated workflow, decide what they’re expected to maintain after they start.

The assignment also belongs in the workload discussion raised by yesterday’s Basis survey coverage. An instruction that needs a marketer’s upkeep creates a responsibility the hiring manager needs to budget time for.

Write that expectation into an ordinary responsibility. A candidate could be asked to explain how they’d update approved product information after a launch, or how they’d correct an instruction producing the wrong kind of copy. The subject is marketing judgment expressed in a form teammates can reuse. A requirement to know a particular software brand doesn’t establish that judgment.

There is an earlier operating example in Kramer’s September 2 interviews with marketing teams. Buffer’s senior director of growth marketing and data, Simon Heaton, describes a division of responsibility:

“The subject matter expert owns the skills and context.”

In that account, the specialist writes structured knowledge, and Heaton reviews and adds it to the shared system. The company distributes reusable AI instructions through GitHub, with business information in Notion. This is an interview about one team’s process, not a second test of the job-ad findings. It shows how contributing can remain part of a marketer’s job while technical review has a separate owner.

Ask for evidence the candidate can explain

Only 8% of the startup posts explicitly asked applicants to show their AI use. Kramer’s proposed remedy includes aligning the job description with a ranked assessment sheet, then mapping interview questions and assignments to those requirements.

For a hiring manager, the useful change is to assess the shared-work responsibility directly. Ask a candidate to walk through an existing example they’re permitted to share. Establish what they contributed and what another person could use afterward. Keep confidential employer material out of the exercise.

If the example involves reusable instructions, ask what happens when the product changes. An answer about who updates them gives the interviewer something more specific to assess than a list of AI tools. Apply the same assessment criteria across candidates, and tell applicants what evidence will be discussed before they prepare it.

That is our recommendation for making the advertised responsibility assessable. The study didn’t test whether this interview design produces better hires. It also doesn’t establish that applicants who lack a polished portfolio lack the underlying ability.

Keep the omission in proportion

The sample covers 345 selected private B2B startups. Claude Code classified the posts against Kramer’s categories, with human spot checks. These are observations of written requirements, not a representative census of marketing employment or a measure of what interviewers ask privately.

An employer may assess AI use without spelling it out in an ad. A candidate may bring useful experience the job description never mentions. The findings support a conversation about hiring criteria; they don’t justify declaring most marketers unprepared.

Kramer also has a commercial stake in helping teams adopt shared AI practices. MKT1 sells advisory services and paid access to marketing tools and templates. Its analysis should be read as an advocate’s documented sample, with the method and that interest visible.

For the next opening, choose one recurring contribution the team needs from the new hire. Put it in the job description, then decide what evidence would demonstrate it in an interview. As marketing jobs change, make shared AI upkeep part of the role before the person accepts it.