So you want to be in marketing…

The other day, a friend asked me if I’d look at the resume of the son of one of her friends. He’s a relatively recent - a couple of years out - college grad, who’s been marking time in a dead-end-ish job, taking a few courses, and otherwise doing the type of scratching out a living idling that was pretty much de rigueur at one point in the history of civilization, but which has pretty much fallen out of custom. Instead, it (sometimes sadly) seems that young people have to be born knowing what they want to do, and start building their c.v. in pre-school.

In any case, on paper Nathan seems like a bright and hard working young man, who is making the most out of his dead-end-ish job - but who now realizes that time’s a-professionally-wasting. And now - since he likes to write - he’s looking for a position in marketing or in market research.

Nothing wrong with that. I’m a big believer that being able to write is one of the pillars of being and becoming an effective marketer.

In fact, I got my first marketing job precisely because I could write.

The circumstances of the start of my marketing career were these:

Although I had concentrated in something called “applied marketing” in business school - which, since this was at MIT, meant analyzing data - my first post-B-School job was not in marketing at all. It was, however, somewhat quantitative in nature: I developed forecasting models. From there, I segued to product management where, aside from working on data sheets, serving booth-time at an occasional trade show, and giving tons of client/prospect demos and presentations, I didn’t really do much by way of marketing.

Then my company - a squirrelly little software firm - downsized. And with the downsizing, so went the entire marketing department.

The CEO, who was familiar with my work on business plans, said (verbatim), “You can write. You’re the new director of marketing.”

O-kay! Career born….

And now, 20 years later, here’s Nathan, who can write, and who “gets” that marketing might be the place for him.

Unfortunately, other than being an English major who’s taken a couple of post-college adult-ed creative writing courses, there’s very little evidence that he is currently offering a prospective employer that he can actually write - which is the point that he’s staking his marketing claim on.

Here’s my advice to Nathan:

First off, if he had any even tangential experience in college - on the newspaper or the literary magazine or writing keg-party flyers for his frat, he should reference those. He’s only been out of college a couple of years. He can still call out extra-curriculars if they’re relevant.

Are there any opportunities to write anything - memos, proposals, etc. - or research anything at his current job? If not, maybe he can invent a couple. How about, “researched opportunities for increasing dead-end-ish job company’s presence in banks in Boston” or whatever he wants to sling, and “presented market research report to management.” Bingo - he’s demonstrated his writing and research skills. He also might want to pull together a couple of data sheets that talk about the features and benefits of his company’s services. No, they probably won’t use them, as they’re a mega-corporation with collateral that comes down from on high. But he can still make some nice looking marketing-ish pieces to strut his stuff.

Since Nathan could really use a couple of “portfolio pieces”. I also suggested that that he think about doing a blog that demonstrates his craft - or find some blogs for 20-something professionals starting out their careers (there are plenty of them) that he might want to suggest a guest post on. Also, if he has any interests - like being a rabid Red Sox fan - he should be able to find a blog that will publish him. It doesn’t have to be in the Atlantic Monthly. The beauty of the net is that he should be able to find places where he can get a few things up quickly. (Obviously avoiding topics like ‘last night I got trashed….’ and focus on topics like starting off in his career; things he likes about work; travel; sports.)

An approach he may also want to try on his resume is having “purpose-built” objectives: e.g., one for high tech marketing, one for research, one for an advertising job, etc. that, within the objective section, calls out those of his skills (interests, enthusiasms, experience) that are perfect for this type of job.

Any other advice you’d offer to Nathan at this point?

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