With the current labor shortage in the US, where there are nearly twice as many job openings as there are job seekers, it is a great time to set your sights on landing your dream marketing job.
And according to the US Census Bureau, business creation has gone up about 20% since the pandemic. This means there are even more new companies that need marketing to gain visibility and a foothold in the market.
While there are more opportunities than ever before for marketing professionals, the field remains quite competitive. The prevalence of online training courses and marketing tools means that today’s marketing professional is skilled and experienced.
So, you will need to take advantage of tips for developing your marketing skills if you want a place in this lucrative but competitive field.
In this short article, we’ll take a look at some actionable tips to help put all the chances of finding and landing your dream marketing job firmly on your side.
How To Find Your Dream Job
1. Target companies instead of positions
Traditionally, it may have been a worthwhile strategy to comb job boards looking for the ideal position to apply for. However, in today’s world of high employee turnover, where companies are going out of their way to make their open positions appealing to top talent, it may be worth choosing a different approach.
Consider targeting companies you’d like to work for rather than open positions. This tactic may not lead to as fast a result as the more traditional approach, but it could prove beneficial in the long run.
Here are a few ways how you can do this:
Targeting companies rather than open positions can work in your favor for the following reasons:
- Keeping track of a company will better prepare you for the job interview
- Tracking the company will give you a better idea of its marketing strategy and philosophy (which will either confirm or refute your notion of them being a good fit)
- You are more likely to find a company and a job where you will fit in and will want to stay for a long time
2. Always be networking
The chances of landing your ideal marketing job are greatly increased if you’ve made a personal connection with the company. Today that is easier than ever, with companies and their employees continuously making efforts to reach out and engage.
Don’t limit your networking to social media platforms. As a marketing professional, you should be active in marketing forums where like-minded professionals share their insights and experience.
These forums provide an excellent opportunity to stay up to date on the latest trends and tools in the industry. They can also give you insights into what companies could be interesting to work for, and they can help establish connections that you may need to call on once you’ve found the right fit.
Additionally, even if you don’t make personal appeals to any connection you’ve made networking when it comes to drafting your CV, your participation in industry forums shows prospective employers that you are dedicated and interested in the industry and in learning more about it.
Training courses are also an excellent way to expand your professional network, provided you take courses that target groups rather than individuals. When you level up your SEO copywriting skills, you will undoubtedly meet other like-minded professionals whom you should add to your network and stay in contact with.
3. Take advantage of AI technology
Combing through the thousands of job offers, evaluating what jobs you are qualified for and what jobs you are over-qualified for can be incredibly time-consuming (not to mention that it often comes down to a hit-or-miss prospect).
The good news is that you don’t actually need to do all that menial legwork. Advancements in AI have reached such a point as to free up the job seeker to conduct a far more targeted and personalized job search.
Job portals, such as Lensa.com, use AI technology to match job seekers with their dream job, filtering out positions they are highly unlikely to get or those in which they are not likely to thrive.
It’s worth being as precise as possible when setting up your profile. You can even set up multiple job alerts based on how specific your criteria are.
How To Land Your Dream Job
Finding your dream marketing job is only half the battle (though not as easy as it may seem at first).
Once you’ve found the company you want to work for and the job you want to do, you need to make a special effort to ensure you’ve stacked all the chances of landing it in your favor.
1. Do the research before the interview
When you go into a job interview, you need to show the recruiter or prospective employer the following:
- That you understand the goals and challenges the company faces
- That you understand and appreciate the ethos and/or culture of the company
- That you understand and possess the skills they are looking for
Although hiring managers will almost always try to gear the conversation toward you, what you’ve done, and what you’ve accomplished, your role is to steer the conversation toward the company.
Frame all your answers in the company’s context and its needs to show that you are in a position to provide actionable value for the company.
Going into the job interview, here are a few questions you should have some notions about:
- Who is the company marketing to?
- What are the main points in the company’s messaging?
- What platforms and techniques are they using in their marketing efforts?
- What accomplishments have they made recently?
- What challenges are they currently facing?
2. Follow up
Always follow up on a job interview within 48 hours. In your follow-up message, make sure to thank the recruiter for their time, express your enthusiasm for the opportunity the job, and the company represents, and always keep a positive and professional tone.
Conclusion
Now is a great time to be looking for a marketing job. There are more opportunities than ever, and fewer job seekers are trying to fill those roles.
To ensure a better fit in the long run, consider targeting companies rather than open positions. It is exceptionally rare that a company doesn’t make any changes to its marketing efforts (either through hires or outsourcing) over a 6-month span. The chances are that you won’t be waiting long before one of the companies you’re targeting is seeking to boost its marketing efforts.
There is no substitute for preparation. So, when your dream marketing job comes along, if you don’t manage to land it, that won’t be due to any lack of preparation on your part.
