I recently had a conversation with a new grad who was having a hard time landing a job in the marketing field.
She was smart, enthusiastic, and ready to make an impact.
But she was experiencing the classic chicken and egg problem – companies were looking to hire people with experience yet she first needed a job to get that said experience.
My advice to her: go create your own experience.
Before I delve further, let me tell you a quick story of how I got into the marketing field.
How I got started in marketing
After graduating with an engineering degree in 2010, I started my career at an automotive company working as a Process Engineer. It wasn’t my first choice nor the most exciting work, but options were limited at the time with the world still coming out of a financial crisis.
To cure my boredom, I started exploring my passion for tech & fitness and started working on a side project in the evenings and weekends. It was a simple fitness blog built on a WordPress site.
Over time, I wrote new content, tinkered with new SEO strategies I learned, added a YouTube channel, and had some decent success generating traffic.
One day I randomly came across a digital marketing agency at a trade show I attended. I spoke with the people at the booth and got excited about this crazy idea of potentially trying my hand at a marketing career.
When I got home that day, I looked up the company online, saw they had a few openings, and found someone at the company on LinkedIn who was willing to jump on a call with me and help me out.
Eventually, I got connected to the CEO and we scheduled an interview.
The key here is that I had no prior (professional) marketing experience. I was still relatively fresh out of school. My degree had nothing to do with marketing. I had zero relevant work experience. On paper, I had zero qualifications.
But I had my side project to talk about.
On the call, I told the CEO about how I was building my blog, the strategies I was testing, the successes & failures I’ve had, and what I hoped to do with it.
The next day, he offered me the job.
Differentiation is Everything
I’ve seen thousands of applications. I’ve interviewed over a hundred interesting candidates. And I’ve hired some amazing people at Crossrope.
Here’s what strikes me with today’s hiring process: it’s way too easy.
You upload your resume to a job site and you’re suddenly a single click away from applying. So you play the volume game. You apply to every position you see.
So it’s not surprising how little effort people put into differentiating themselves in the application process. Most people do the minimum.
If you want to increase your chances of landing an interview and getting the job you want, you need to think like a marketer. You need to stand out.
Hiring managers skim through resumes like we skim our newsfeeds – we fly through them. But every now and then there’s a thumb-stopping one that catches your attention and gets put into an interview pile.
What you want to do is increase your chances of that happening. Here are a few recommendations to give yourself a better chance of standing out:
- Read the job posting and make sure your application has the right keywords. When I’m skimming through hundreds of resumes, I look for specific keywords related to the role. If I’m hiring for a digital marketing specialist and there’s no mention of ‘digital marketing’ in the application, I’m likely skipping it. So identify what those keywords are for the role and add them to your application and bold them so they stand out.
- Create a personalized cover letter and pitch your story. Most people don’t add a cover letter to their application so it’s a really easy way for you to stand out. But don’t add a general cover letter. Do some research on the company and personalize it. Tell me why you’d be the perfect fit for the role and organization.
- Reach out to the hiring manager or head of the department. Find out who the hiring manager is (or the head of the department for that role) and send them a quick personalized note on LinkedIn or via email to tell them how interested you are. I’ve moved people forward in the recruiting process just because they sent me a personalized note (while many didn’t).
- Reach out to other people at the company. Every now and then, someone on my team will forward me an application an applicant sent them directly. Remember that most people at an organization don’t get reached out to very often. If you can get in touch with them, they’ll often pass your application directly to the head of the department. It’s like a secret side door. This is how I landed my interview with the CEO at the digital marketing agency years ago.
- Stand out. This one deserves its own section (see below).
A Side Project: Your Ultimate Differentiator
If you’re looking to stand out, a side project is your secret weapon. A side project is how you create your own experience.
There are so many avenues you can pursue (way more than what was available for me ten years ago) – you can create a blog, host your own podcast, start your own YouTube channel, do Fiverr gigs, grow an Instagram page, use no-code to build a web app, write a newsletter, and so on.
I remember one candidate who applied to one of our digital marketing roles. She stood out because she had a poetry blog on the side that she was passionate about. It didn’t have much to do with the role itself, but it helped her stand out.
So what’s so special about a side project?
- It shows initiative and proactiveness
- It shows curiosity and a willingness to tinker and figure things out
- It shows your ability to solve problems
- It shows passion and a willingness to learn new things
- It shows proof of what you’re capable of (your portfolio, in a sense)
- It gives you something interesting and different to talk about
- It gives you a sandbox to run experiments and develop new skills
These are all signals we look for in great marketers (and great employees).
While it helps you stand out, it also serves as a sandbox where you can experiment with new tactics, run experiments, and develop new skills.
Currently, I’m working on a side project called Ecommerce Breakdown – I study other ecommerce brands and break down the marketing strategies they use for growth. Each blog post I write sharpens my marketing skills and gives me a broader understanding of what other brands are doing to be successful.
Here’s the trick – you don’t have to have a “successful” side project in order for it to be an effective tool for standing out and becoming a better marketer. You don’t need thousands of followers or millions of listeners or whatever. You just need to be able to showcase what you set out to do, what you learned in the process, and how you’re strategically thinking about your next moves.
This shows me you’ve got what it takes to take on any challenge. It shows me you have a high level of aptitude which is really important in the field of marketing.
Ultimately, it shows me more than any marketing degree on your resume will.
You won’t learn how to become a great marketer solely from a textbook. Yes, reading great books is part of the recipe of growth, but the marketing world changes way too frequently for every text to be relevant.
The best way to learn and grow is by building side project – it becomes your differentiator, your portfolio, your talking point. It will teach you things no book can and bring you opportunities you would never expect. It’s by far the best way I know for any marketer to truly stand out.
I hope this post inspires you to go build something.
✌
