How to Land Your Dream Marketing Job

By Laura Birch

Marketing is one of the most dynamic and growing fields in what is often referred to as "advanced services"--value-added professions that support business. And, because it is such a vital business function, good marketers with cutting-edge knowledge and a strong understanding of industry trends and best practices are always going to be in demand. It is a competitive field, however, and finding your dream marketing job requires doing a number of things strategically. Below are some tips on how to land that job.

 

Build a Solid Resume

Building a resume doesn’t just mean including all of your relevant skills and experience on a single piece of paper and hoping people call or email you back. There are ways to go about building and tailoring resumes for each industry, and marketing is no different.

You should also be aware that there are specific ways to structure a resume based on what kind of marketing specialization you are going after. If you are a social media expert, there are templates and formats to follow for that specialization, if you are a general digital marketing expert, there are formats for that too.

 

Spend Time in Places Where Marketers Gather

What this increasingly means is to spend time on places like Facebook and even Reddit. Facebook is the more important of the two because the marketing and SEO groups on Facebook are not only where industry insiders gather to discuss trends, issues, opportunities and to argue over techniques and best practices, but it is frequently where people look for employees and even post job offerings.

Many marketers have found gainful employment simply by participating in Facebook discussions and impressing with their knowledge on or insight into a certain topic. Oftentimes people who run marketing agencies will post open calls to reply to them via PM about job openings they are looking to fill. Many times these positions are freelance and/or remote and offer great opportunities to enjoy life as a digital nomad.

 

Stay Up to Date

There is a near-limitless supply of marketers out there working on out-of-date assumptions and information--about best practices, about what Google and the other search engines are looking for, about where to focus efforts and invest capital. While there are many companies that are even further behind the curve and naively hire out-of-touch marketers all the time, one of the best things you can do for yourself if you want to land that dream job working on cool projects for great clients and acquiring a wealth of information along the way is to make sure you are current.

You can certainly go to school for marketing, but the best way to stay on top of industry trends, changes and new opportunities is to make sure that you are constantly absorbing new information. You need to incorporate reading into your daily activities as a marketer, which means spending time curating an information diet using things like Feedly or another content aggregator that will allow you to collect important information from leading sources across the web. Feedly is great because it will also recommend complementary reading options based on what you search so that you quickly build a powerful reading list.

 

Conclusion

Marketing might seem like a tough industry to break into and it is true, there is a lot of competition. Marketing is a global industry, which means you are competing against a global workforce, with people in countries around the world vying for jobs and trying to ply their skills. But there are always things job seekers can do to give themselves a leg up in any industry, and marketing is no different. Keep the above tips in mind as you begin or perhaps even alter your search and you will stand a much better chance of landing that dream marketing job.

Laura Birch is a freelance writer covering digital marketing with a focus on building great content. She also writes about social media trends and pets. When she is not writing, she is reading or taking her dogs to the park.

 

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