Career Tips Today From an Old Timer?

Would my career tips be worth a jott in today's app and big data driven world?  Or are my generation a weak link between the semi digital, nine-to-five past and the cloud sharing economy of the very near future?

Well the fact is that a career will still exist, although there is now a lot of pressure for the form of that work-employee-contractor status to change, really much of this is reinventing the wheel and mediating it via mobile phones. Essentially, value will still be created in its significant form via organisations, and those will still need intellect and management.

I choose a route I regret a little now, having a portfolio career and becoming a consultant, now finding it quite a lonely place with obvious uncertainties. The nature of employment and corporate law is that the world is becoming more uncertain as the Neo Liberal era goes through its dieing throws and reinvents itself as something which democracy will probably overthrow. Hence Brexit and Trump, and watch this political space because it will affect your ability to earn and have a work-life balance. Organisations will always need talent, but in my experience very often those in management are there because they had luck or pushed a little more at the right times to get up the ladder.  That ladder is a rarer thing as we go into yet more flat structures and what used to be departmental becomes compartmental ie single layer of workers use the tools of IT to manage and take responsibility for operations with a shorter chain of command.

How do you perhaps get on and what advice (take it or leave it) do I have ?

1) Experience Can Count for Qualifications , but often Not At All.....

It is really that the RIGHT experience can count for a mountain of qualifications. That is an experience which is highly respected or puts you in a position of power. The best example of course, is starting your own company - most of the Billionaires in computing, software and apps didn't start with a PhD or an MBA, they had an idea or two and found customers. In fact several never finished their degrees.

2) Get in Early to Something Big

This is what quite a few of the entrepreneurs above, like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and laterly, Mark Zuckenberg had the fortuity to be in - on the cusp, riding the crest of a wave, on the brink of explosive growth. There was a lot of fortuity in what they were into in a nerdy way, and what the market wanted in a latent sense.

Ok we all can't be Richard Branson but we can find those companies which are on the cusp of something new and exciting and get in there at the right time. Too early ? Well you may not get any pay back if you are in too early but then again you may be able to use that to get out to a competitor or move into another high growth company. Investors act like this, investing via venture capital in a spread bet over several companies in a sunrise industry.

Think of your time as a young person as investment from which you will get a greater return, and those 12 hour days and weekend hours  you put in then, will pay dividends in getting up the ladder with this as your launch pad. However you need to get the right type of job which is of above average value, and that means either being involved in creation (R&D) where you can put your name on something so to speak, or being a person who becomes a people manager early on.

3) Don't hang Around Too Long Sometimes< Other Times Stick Like Glue

I have experienced the downside of being in Tech Start ups where I have either been a dropped in consulttant or discovered as a 'hire' I was very much outside the A team. Most of all for the first three years out of my masters I tried to hold onto rubbish opportunities and work 'that year on the CV'.

Eventually I worked for a really interesting full service technology marketing agency, but while there a couple of years I noticed that I was the employee in project management and new clients who stayed on, the others fell away after less than a year very often. I felt I had to make a go of a job after three years of false starts, and enjoyed the work. The others got less interesting positions and clients and they got out very quickly. Two of the many who left, got much better jobs which I believe they stayed at for many years.

It is very much a feature of successful people be they employees or entrepreneurs, that they admit their mistakes and cut their losses getting out early. A lot of people take a first graduate job in one or other also ran, unknown branded companies, and treat it just as work experience and a spring board to the next job. Zuckenberg wanted a kind of on line girl rating, beauty pageant and dating app and when he saw the light of 'political correctness' became a multimillionaire on a year's work and making the right connections - he dumped his first, unlovely idea.

Which brings us to....

4) Always be Applying for Jobs and Looking for New Opportunities

There will be less job security in the ongoing political climate across the west, because the right wing want to reduce costs and make us work harder via insecurity rather than positivity. So if you work for an insecure, pushy boss culltured company or department, get the hell out! Many companies don't subscribe to fear makes work, they know the real motivation and productivifty comes from engagement and employees who have a work-life balance.

Job security is really a figment of the imagination nowadays for we of the mere mortals, and even chartered accountants are quaking in their boots as the new generation of leaders finally seek to automate much of what should have been automated in the 1980s when it was first possible!  We are all subject to take overs, cut backs, customer volatility, exchange rates and the whims of bosses and investors. Jobs then are just RELATIVELY safe, and if we see an environmental pressure on a company then it is time to get out early, that is where the smarty pants will., This is true of industries, with many of my former colleagues in Oil and Gas smooching their way into unrelated industries before the death knell tolled.

Always looking for new jobs has two other effects on promotion. One you can find opportunities to get promoted outside your company, and two you can use a job offer as a lever to get promoted. As I blogged on before, employees usually think they have a poor set of cards in the poker game of getting a job and a salary rise, and it seems that the risk of withdrawing their labour lies predominantly on their shoulders. Hence in the deunionised western office world, employers hold their poker face and will call you before you call them. In reality, very often you have very specific qualifications and experience which got you the job and the knowledge and experience you have of working there makes you uniquely productive. Bosses have targets for turn over, so as I found out when I was emmigrating anyway, they will offer quite a lot suddenly to keep you on when you resign.

Open applications with a personal follow up call are a really effective way of moving job either externally, or if handled correctly, internally. It is no mystery that interesting companies and exciting opportunities are often never advertised, while those positions which are are either hard to fill or they are looking for the cheapest in the trawl.

Companies are increasingly run on quarter-capitalist lines, and when they are buzzing away in a growth phase, then is the time to get a job offer as a lever to promotion. Alternatively when a company is struggling, then it is a great time to spot this early and have a plan B, which may become your plan A very shortly. When you are an employee then it is understood by the prospective employer that there will be a period of cessation under contract, and they may want to look at the open market of ready to go first, so it can take up to two months or more to get an offer from the outset of first interview. It can be wise to refer ' I will need to check my contract' on cessation such that you can keep your options a little open.

5) Recognise the GOOD opportunity from the BAD

This really applies to all the above scenarios and the ones below by in large. It is my greatest weakness in working life as an employee, yet a strength as a consultant now because I see my earlier failings. All jobs have some shit in them, but it is really how doing the whole job, dotting the i's and crossing the t's as well as the more interesting stuff, builds your position as in standing and respect in a company contra just being an eager beaver minion.

I have been a victim myself of 'imposter syndrome' where in one job I had with a multi national, I had a great level of responsibility as a project manager with upto 13 poeople working for me at anyone time and me conducting the orchestra, yet I felt it was all a bit scary and almost an out of body experience. I was treated with loads of respect and  that made me more nervous for crashing and being shown up as an imposter. I tackled it really pretty well, with only one minor fiasco which was mainly on the part of the client. After that I setteled a little more into my shoes, but had decided to move to be with my girl freind unfortunately! I should have stayed, because the girl went bad!!!

A good situation would include being trusted with incresing levels of responsibility and tackling the job with a minimum of overtime. A bad situation would be drowining in tedious operational work, and like a labour of Sysiphus, you work more overtime for diminishing producitivity. Worse, you get recognised by the users above you as a nice little work horse for doing their menial work. GTFO - get the fuck out- is the course of action for all but the masochists. Renegotiating your work load can be an option of course, but you need to have somethingn to bargain with and that is often just withdrawing your labour ie nuclear war. You never know, moaners often get their own way with those neurotic bosses concerned about staff turnover or productivity gains acheived via experience on the job. If you dont see it is crap, and ask for change, you will get more of the same!

A bad situation is usually typified by a company losing customers or struggeling to find more. This also applies to start ups, because most tech start ups fail not because of lack of investment, but because of lack of income from customers.  Essentially that is the difference between the also rans and the Facebooks, Microsofts and Apples of the world. Soft capital is a bad place relative to this because as I have seen several times, where the drive to get income from customers is lost in bullshit and doing R&D with 'partners' rather than delivering a product nbased on entr5epreneruial savvy.

Good situations are driven by a variety of factors. Firstly companies with a healthy economy, or the right reshaping opportunity for your skills to play a part in. Customers, markets and investors are important too, as are then the core offer and R&D pipeline., Very much though it is down to who 'buys' you and works with you above and around you. Which brings us to

6) FInd a King Maker or Be a King Maker

Internally to companies you are promoted not by some mysterious personnel assessment or a computer algorythm, it is your boss or some other boss you work with who gives you the nod. Sometimes you of course have to ask or you won't get, other times you get asked in for a chat in 'my office' with a smile and get offered promotion out of the blue. Conversely Many line managers will be little bitches who want to keep you down in your hole, and take the glory for themselves, and they are easy to spot, you never get a profile via them and are kept out of interesting / important meetings where your work is on display or of high relevance. How do you get round the little pricks when you are really performing? Well you make sure that other bosses know you are actually the one doing the work and get integrated into the chain of information and instruction, take ownership away from your boss over time.

A boss who recomends you for promotion, or puts you in a positiion you can shine in further outward in the company. They recognise your work, praise you and give you enough latitude to be visibile in the company. Part of this is just getting on with them, but mostly it is on your ability to cooperate and be productive in your own right. Kinbg makers then trust you and want to shove you forward - often they have a safe job and a family, and see you will be able to move on upwards in a company.. Sometimes they may be retiring.

More importantly, they may be moving company to an exciting opportunity and take you with them.  One thing to realise, is that there is no lack of investment in the world, and all my cynicism of thye rich owning property over for choosing industry is not to be overplayed, there are philanthropic investors all over the place who want to create value, jobs and return on outlay in a patient way, or with some strings attached. Following an experienced boss out to a new start up can be great if they are the right personbaoloty or have been there in the growth phase.

Being a king maker is maybe a much rarer opportunity for the older manager, who can then follow that King into new departments or ventures. It couold be also that you are tightly together with an entrepreneur when they go big, and get the recognition as an A team player. It can be worth swallowing your pride and allowing a more energetic person to lead the way, with in fact you  and others carrying them on your shoulders. Of course you can be following after an egotistical nut who will dump you without any recognition or payback.

7) Go Ugly Early

A lot of the above I have talked about the fast careers in start ups or glamerous corporates. very many leaders in those companies have been there in the big growth phase, and had their own little ling makers and so on., However the majority of people managers I have worked for  directly have had one thing over me and that is experience of peoplke managment per se in something vaguely related. And very unglamerous.

Going ugly early is a terrible kind of disco strategy from the 1980s, made redundant by Tinder swiping. It meant not bothering to seek out a particularly attractive girl or boy, rather going for the sure bet of getting interest and potential 'escalation' shall we say towards a one night stand.  In corporations there are thousands of small business to business brands and suppliers  no one outside that supply chain has really heard of, or which you see on the side of lorries or equipment, or office blocks in public. They attract their own stream of anonymous MBA 'europyuppies' in the EU who take early management positions at different locations upin the beck and call of their masters. By the time they are thrity they are highly experienced line managers, often with 'change management', 'Lean' and 'six sigma' on their CVs and they become the well paid middle management we love to hate in the EU. Often egotistical and rather uncharismatic. So there are lots of ugly, faceless businesses looking for expecially MBA candidates, but also people with relevant operational experience to put into fresh management positions.

These companies themselves are not very profiled or 'charismatic' and so they can often have a pretty rapid promotion to middle management too, as someone coming in with other operational or junior management experience.

8) Go Public Sector

One thing I note amongst a great deal of the very politically Neo Liberal inclined, is that a great many of them either work in public service or are paid pretty much solely by the government. And they are doing nvery nicely on it too.

The public sector is bound to have further rounds of privatisation and deunionisation now in the US and the UK, but there are always new areas to get into either side of the fence which are promising and offer a better degree of job security for managers than the usual corporate world.

Very often though the public sector demands the exact right set of qualificatioins to get in, such as in teaching or environmental health for example, but they will invest in keeping you qualified more than the lean and mean private sector.

Privatisation actually breaks this need for the right set of qualifications down a little too, so all is not bad for the indifvidual looking to shape a career with a smidgeon more job or career security

9) Be Super Qualified

Although there is often a bad side of being percieved as over qaulified, for a good graduate career you need to be super qaulified.

The ticket to being a manager as I have said, is the MBA, but that has to be from a school recognised by your employers of interest. However there are other more specialist or modular routes which gain a lot of respect. For example some ( and mostly they are self serving) marketing directors demand that you have a chartered inst. of marketing diploma and participate in courses. Other industries havbe 'chartered' status of course> engineering, architecture, accountacy, surveying.

In outset many companies now 'demand' a higher technical qualification than a bacherlors with honours. Sometimes these are specific to skills and areas of research nut bvery often in my meeting of people, a masters or PhD is arbitarily demanded or part of the culture. I wish I had ten quid for every PhD twit who I uncovered as having actually spent four years researching something tedious and unrelated to the tech company

I dont regret not being an MBA or PhD but it would have helped a lot with the culture when I was an also ran and not in a king making situation.

Maybe I should have just gone ugly early, instead of going ugly ratherr late in my middle age after working with a lo9t of excitign companies before!

Five Years on My Advice to MSc Marketing Students 2014

I had blogged a lot before with my best advice for graduates and prospective successful MSc students at Strathclyde Uni on the Marketing 'post grad' masters.

Now I will radically alter my advice to much of my earlier pointers.  First a historical perspective and how you may fit into this.

The MSc course full time is I hear still made up of many local students from the region previously known as "strathclyde" and Scotland as a whole. Most of you are lower middle class and have lost interest in the content of your first degree and the limited career options you had.

Now here is my take: When I did marketing way back when in the early 90s, we had seen a generation just before us do extremely well thank you very much from a career in marketing. Indeed in the 90s you could get on a career path into traditional brand management and so on, but the vast majority of us didn't and that is for two reasons- firstly we wanted to stay in Scotland, and secondly brand management was then and probably is now, a plumb job for Oxbridge graduates and those from the better BSc courses with first class honours, and those with MBAs.

As a marketing master candidate, you are actually not as competent a marketer as someone from Strathclyde with the four years under their belt, and you are up against the best from the oxbridge and ivy clad uni debating societies. Most of my course did continue with careers in sales and marketing loosely, most of those in the core worked in public sector marketing and some in SMEs, while me and others worked in Ad' Agency land.

Now here is the other historical point of view in Scotland in particular: I blogged on my  "growing up on the firth of clyde" that the Middle class made scotland, the working class did a grand job of following their vision, their plans, quality management and their orders. The Middle Class also then saved Scotland in the recession of the late 70s and most of the entire 1980s also, by adapting and transferring their skills to the service economy, becoming consultants, going into offshore management and starting new SMEs. The working class by in large did not adapt so well and became in many areas, the unworking class, with chips on their shoulders about pit and steel closures, which although lamentable, have happened and cannot be reversed.

What has happened thereafter is that the middle class got all the good jobs and started businesses and the new "graduate class" of the 1990s, when education to degree level was vastly (and wastefully expanded) , these  graduates became the new working class. Only this time they had no unions, they had no bargaining rights, they had no overtime payments and they had no job security. In computing, call-centres, finance, business-ananlysis, junior accounting, communications and marketing the workforce had become a commodity, just as workers had been in the 19th century.

What this means is that graduate salaries and the career ladder will not deliver what it proposed to  in the 1980s and in that great killer of common sense "hope" took over. We all hoped that the qualifications we had would be an automatic ticket to a well paid job with a good career ladder, and that our first couple of positions were hard work and poorly paid, as they should be. We woke up thinking we were well enough paid, and that wee flat on the dodgey side of town was a good first property investment. We were deluding ourselves- we were shop floor workers. This came to a head in the early 2000s when it became apparent that train driver's basic pay was 26k before the extortionate overtime payments and antisocial hours allowances plumped up their above-our-wage earnings.  This is the other thing that happened- the unionised and skilled working class in the UK and Europe became damn well paid! Off shore salaries for  skivvies and painters into double that figure!

So my radical departure in career advice is this: make your goal twofold- a rapid rise into marketing management AND the potential for self employment and being an owner-director of a start up or growing SME.

In fact it is the reverse order: you should be looking at being entrepreneurial all the time and trying to meet people to whom your marketing skills are valuable and your personal drives or interest are in line with.

You may get a shot at marketing management and that means being in a large or fast growing company or department where you have very soon the chance to manage other people, such as internet programmers, writers and external marketing and PR agencies.  You should have a clear career ladder in the company or you should be in an industry which is new and fast growing, like micro breweries or the like, where you can choose to cash in your two years initial experience for a better job. As an MSc or BSc Marketing graduate then you do not want to be in a grunt job at the bottom of the feeding chain for very long, six months max.

However as I blogged before the "shot at marketing management" in Scotland is extremely limited and highly competitive. So go south early.

The main reasons people do not get involved with new start ups or becoming self employed is the perceived risk, fear of hard work and uncertainty of income. These are both true, but the stupidly low perceived risk of having a good wee job and a mortgage and the lack of both security and a share in the capital and profits you build up over the years mean that please do consider being self employed or getting early into a start up with possibility to buy shares. Your income is actually not all that certain and also you have levered yourself to hell on the first-and-worst wrung on the property ladder.

Considering "hard work" avoidance -In agency land in particular you will work damn hard and not get any overtime- you will be expected to work at least 48 hours a week and probably do some 60 hour weeks if you are in London and the home counties. Plus in your first job in agency land or in marketing in the home counties or dearer parts of Englandshire, you will also no doubt go deeper into debt as your cost of living with your first car, a few frills and visits home, will be higher than your salary- for a long time.

If I had my time again I would go headlong into entrepreneurial studies, management accounting and networking to the technical leaders of new SMEs post MSc. That is with hindsight, and would have been a successful approach in the 1990s with the explosion of internet SMEs amongst others. Today there is even more focus on all this in terms of opportunities for young people to get on that bus!

Simply put, the long term rewards of going down this route for you as an MSc graduate are far better on average than continuing as a marketing employee in a medium Scottish organisation. Why? Well despite the risks and set backs you will encounter, you will be at some point able to :

1) determine your own salary or profit related income
2) share directly in profits from the business / businesses
3) build capital ownership and ability to sell and buy capital
4) To some extent, be able to choose who you like to work with
5) To a large extent by reaching your mid 40s, you will be able to determine your own working hours, and along the way you will have had the ability to choose "lifestyle" hours which to some extent allow you to indulge in hobbies, sports and personal development while also working many more evenings and weekends.

The latter cannot be played down, but the preceding economic arguments are enough given that you have to slave away in an office anyway. The latter two points are often taken as compensation for those long hours- you may start a business with a friend or evolve a fun working relationship, while on the other hand you may well like my pal who went into the Reserve SAS, be able to be flexible and put in training afternoons and clock off early to train some times.

 As a case in hand in fact, this pal of mine started a cleaning business doing all from houses, windows, wheely bins to jet washing forecourts and oil spills. He did it with a guy he knew quite well, who only went in if he could get a 50:50 share (wise guy!!!) He took Tuesday nights for barracks training, Wednesday afternoon for training for SAS "selection" in the hills, and refused to work Saturdays, doing paper work if the weather was bad (as it is in W. Scotland) on Sundays. He is not rich yet, but at 42 he is much better positioned to be rich and still has all the private pension and so on you would get as an employee.

I am lucky and in a small band of my type, who have worked both in technology Start Ups, SMEs and large multinationals (Global Enterprises as they are now called, I show my 1990s business education vintage!)  I would say that I never got the right job in a start up / SME and that was due to lack of self confidence and nervous communication skills, which is a personal thing I confronted and overcame in my early forties.  The thing about getting into a small end or high growth SME, or a start up is that you need to get in at the right level EARLY - and that all with the right responsibilities and authority defined.

For me I found out that I had better judgment and could make better strategies and game plays for three small technology companies under 15 employees, but I was never in a position to have the authority to do this, and although this was a bit to do with me as a person, it is more to do with the type of attitude they had about my usefulness and position I would be offered in the company.

If a company won't play ball and you will be a grunting employee, then review their technology and use your position as a six month to one year learning tree if you think that there are competing companies you could move to at a higher level.

This brings me to another point: marketing is seen as a very soft skill and you should consider building on your hard skills, or specialist knowledge.Marketing and communications has a skill set which is often perceived as dependent more on personality than education per se by management who decide who gets on in marketing. In fact in larger corporates, I really on average did not like marketing types especially not the arrogant dog-eat-dog women managers I locked horns with inn most of my positions.

What I would say is that you may, like me, have a set of hard skills from your previous degree: you may be an excellent grammatical writer if you studied English and Literature: you may have a computer language or have used a particular database, CRM or ERP; you may have some other hard skill.

As I went on in the malaise of mid nineties graduate employment I went back to Uni and worked as a trainee in the data center, and did this to get hard skills in databases and the internet. This "apprenticeship" was going to be too heavy in programming and I did lack a bit of initiative in maybe picking up how to make decent looking web pages with database back ends, but these new hard skills on the one side gave me the edge on my CV and in interviews, and on the other hand, gave me management knowledge into the black box of what programmers and data admin' types actually do. I still use these skills today in various ways, be that getting new functions out of an ERP system by knowing what is possible, to hot-wiring around a supposedly pass word protected area on a web site for valuable information.

This actually doesn't help a lot in marketing - not as much as it should do. In the last start up I worked in, an Internet consumer opinion web crawler company, there was no real marketing dept, I worked as an analyst, and the function was referred to as "fluffy in marketing". The soft skills are more important than being able to understand the technology and often those "soft" skills involve native cunning, raw ambition, power hunger and control freak-ery!

Where hard skills are valuable is in start ups and SMEs where you are closer to the core and can be involved directly in the technical side of the company, or in extending what you can deliver by virtue of your hard skill. SMEs will be wanting people who can multitask as well as understand their technology. A hard skill on the table, may mean also that you can learn the technology or system to a high level, and maybe even develop it further or take your knowledge and implement it in another enterprise where you are valued higher.

There will however be set backs in going down an SME route: but believe you me there are set backs in corporates- office politics, down sizing and being overlooked for promotion in favour of annoying MBA graduates amongst the worst. SMEs go bust more often than bigger companies and often they do not pay employees very well. Both of the internet developer agencies I worked in went bust and I came out with a bitter taste in my mouth a little unnecessarily and went back to "client side" for a few years. Also some start ups just fall apart due to personality and ambition clashes, or because the feel of the company is lost when the investors, especially VC, come in hard with their own ways of wanting things done and their chosen managers.

Do not despair, a group of venture capitalists were given an anonymised business plan and CVs of the founders and they all rejected it: the company anonymised was in fact Apple. More than a skill set around the market and technology the start up or SME is in, you will also equip yourself with a thick skin and the ability to realise value and be "nimble" in moving quickly on to the next opportunity in a competitor or in your own new enterprise.

The key amount of funding you need is to give your company enough "cash"  in the bank to be able to survive on the one side, a three to six months period of costs and R&D which then bridges the gap to being paid by customers, or as if often the case in technology start ups, reaching the next milestone in acheivements such that more investment follows to cover the next and bigger period before you get paid by customers - in a nut shell. So instead of maybe a year of job security and any money you invest in your pension being safe, you have 3 to 6 months and a very high risk on any monies you have placed into shares in the company!

I think that is about all I want to say in this little ditty about getting your head up as a 22- 24 year old as on average you will be, and maybe actually realising that the path to having a better life with a decent big old detached house, a boat, a chalet, early retirement and so on, is no longer by being a non owning employee and that you can use your marketing in a direction which will pay larger dividends long term.

Job Interview - a middle aged man !

How can the experiences of a middle aged man related to a new graduate from MSc Marketing?

Well I am in the same boat; for me in a foriegn land with too many marketing graduates, it is hard to get a stable job with some future! SO I am not really on the ladder here. As on old fart too.

Now I happened to have an interview yesterday and it was pretty much front-loading to an actual offer, despite being purely speculative. Here is how I did it:

1. I had contacted their investment-management firm before.
   
2. Being curious in the area helped in 1 and lead to the contact
3. I held off until after paternity
4. I went back to the investors and got shoe horned a little, and good mouthed seemingly from their business developer
5. I then sent a very, very short form post enquiry from the actual company's web site just with a couple of key words and followed this up with a phone call.
6. I still had to send a CV and not present it myself, but this made it a little more formal.
7. I was curious and motivated for the position
   
8. I am open minded on what form the job takes
   
9. I used a state- assisted training grant as an extra closing bait
10. I was curious....

So what shoudl you do? 60- 80% of first time jobs for you are going to be through unadvertised sources. Curiousity will be the key, and using your nose to come up with several ways into the company. This spurs your motivation and overcomes your distance and shyness to the firm.

Firstly, lose any idea of geographical restriction. Maybe there is a firm in Scotland who you are interested in your chosen sector - add them to the list and be prepared to get a K-B but keep the door open while you are working elsewhere- in the english speaking world if it is so specialist!

Secondly find different ways into the company- contacts. Try to shoe horn in through some route or just go in for an investigation on what they do, or a work place shadowing type day. Also investor companies are a good source or route, because anything coming from them is taken seriously! If you get a recommendation " chat to this guy" from the VC or incubator boss then it is a huge amount self- brand equity you have earned without doing very much.

Maybe you go in from the bottom up otherwise- find a really tarty brand manager or what ever and get in on her back - the marketing director will be more open to her charms ( or "one of the flirty girls" from time to time them being a Sit-Pee)

It is only a minority of positions which are advertised, in fact 60% are not and this is even higher in some business sectors or for certain particular levels in management. Hard to believe isn't it?

Conversely the average strathclyde marketing graduate probably uses about 90% of their energy on advertised positions.

Further to this, if you subtract the public sector positions in marketing, at say assistant level, then you have even fewer. You bet your ass that most of these jobs in the big cities are filled with either the sitting temp or by nepotistic means. I would guess that 70% of entry level marketing jobs are 'secret'.

About a third of positions are filled through recruitment agencies

per se, but this is much lower in terms of entry level jobs and probably they are less advertised by them. As said before, you as the new graduate probably have little or no appeal to a greedy consultant looking to get their 10% on a fatter 30K plus candidate placing. However it is worth using the Michael pages and even some of the better temp agencies like Adecco, as a source of a potential foot in the door, with or without them actually placing you.

Often they will be a barometer of new recruting in a company or whole industry ( remember, coushy jobs like in whisky marketing tend to be in 'dead mens shoes' - you are awaiting a raft of retirals from middle managers who moved into marketing in the 70s and 80s) or the smoke signal that a new department is opening in your chosen field or geographical area. They are of course by this time quite well known to some of the customer managers and the managers they have recently placed and can offer you at a cheap fee, on trial, or just as a favour. So they are a source rather than a means to an end.


It is well worth worming your way into a friendly consultant. I recommend writing to them and then door stepping them! This shows your motivation is really high and often they have a little procedure for doorsteppers which is very positive. You may be asked to come back later but it is a lot pyschologically harder to turn you down. Once you are in a temp job, a first marketing job or a project "you are working in" then they become a little more interested. But only a little and positive attitude and determination counts for more. If they ask you to send your CV in then use that as the excuse to visit them - "can i drop in present it in five minute meeting and come back with any more details you might think relevant?" . Never use e-mail as a first introduction method. If they ask you to register on their web site, print out the on line CV and doorstep them anyway with it in hand.

The non marketing consultants will fight you off with poison tipped umbrellas but the marketing specialist should at least see you after some of the tactics above. Also you have a chance to show your USP and this may be relevant to all sorts of recruitment consultants in terms of their clients.

Finding clients can be the reverse of what you think- often it is best to find a company you want to work for and establish if they use a recruitment firm. Then go both through the firm and the make contact with people at the firm.

At Least a Third of Jobs are Filled Through a Network


This statistic is possibly higher for some grades of marketing jobs in SMEs and fast growing companies. These are both formal networks, and informal. An example of the former would be say the arts marketers association, where the latter would be say a five a side team ladder!

Networking as an exercise has never worked to well for me because I was too upfront and focused on selling myself to the direct person. THis is not how it works as I found out. It is much more subtle. It is actually about just mentioning what you want to work in to all and sundry, or even before that finding out what your cousins boyfriend and his mates do or what your neighbours grown up daughter does for a living and at which company. Network appointments give a little bedrock to recruting a stranger. It is a shoe-horn method where the contact go between is the horn which eases you in. This is especially important in Norway where I live and has got me jobs even by just a vague name drop early in a networking phone call.

Plain old nepotism, old school tie, pals and people who fancy you are all immediate sources in marketing.

Enough on that, suffice to say it is the go-between contact who must know you or be trusted by the potential employer who gets you in there and not much to do with you.


A Surprisingly Large Amount of Jobs are By Open Application

Over half of the non advertised fulfillments remaining, if you like, are by direct contact, including companies own web sites BUT not the on line CV databases which as yet are probably too general and spam filled to elicit general useage.

In the last couple of years the work market in much of the western world has become so tight in some sectors that employers have taken far more proactive methods. Theses include more outward networking but also more non position specific marketing and PR. These lead to direct contact most often.

Like all effective direct marketing of complex products or services, open applications need to be treated with some degree of quality over quanitity- you need to build a good contact list and have a good message, and also follow the 'mailing' up or preceed it with a courtesay call.

On outset you want to establish who you could send your CV to and what they might want to hear. A personnel manager may need more customer service agents or sales people, so talking of your general skills in temping and your interest in the company may get you in the door where after you can establish a route into marketing immediately or thorugh a temp job in another department. Whereas a marketing manager may be looking for extra leg work and may get you a couple of weeks free from the dole or whatever, or they may need someone with your specialist first degree or career experience. You have only really hard work, enthusiasm and knowledge so far to offer, not the industry experience which will make you a good decision maker, project leader and people-manager.

It's a wise move to make up a mini cv which is a sales statement about you with bare details. This will have contact details and i recommend a photo, and a summary to be written in prose about what you are as a person, what you can do and what you are motivated to take on in your next job. No details on your actual experienc or lack there of. I had a terrific response to interview from about 40 e-mails I sent out and just about every single one replied at least with a polite "no thanks", pnly one being an asshole. I got about four interviews, but I had completely oversold myself in my little paragraph! If I had toned down the message or been a little more vague then maybe I would have had even more interviews and a successful blind date.

Advertising as Smoke Signals

So now you can see that advertised positions should only take up about one third of your effort. For public sector marketing jobs at the entry level, do apply by all means, but expect to even get to 'final' interview only to have your hopes dashed by Mary McFinbar the cooncil directors niece getting the job she was promised a year ago.

I'd say spend only about 10% of your time on the actual effective method of successful networking. Shoe horning in on reputation of a go between depends very much on how many good links you have. My seemed terrible at first hand, but it is often the second link in the chain, that cousins boyfriend or neighbours son, who have the foot in the door for you.

You should spend a great deal of your time on quality direct marketing or telemarketing yourself. This would also include the few relevant recruitment agencies you find. You want to be ahead of the qeue when someone decided to appoint a marketing dogs body, sorry, executive or APM.

Preparing a campaign means appreciating you are going to hit the individuals several times and you are going to make many of these contact points in target companies. So researching a list from the web, talking to contacts you find and snowballing out your list is the key. You will also get some good contacts out of the blue on the web these days, aiming at marketing director levels or manager and the odd personnel manager or CEO even.

It is worth doing both quality in terms of totally 'wrap round, follow up, tight targeted' hits and also some quantity from a list of contacts. use the Mail merge fuinction carefully with maybe a line in your excel source for the different companies products or business areas etc which slips in nicely to your mail merge paragraph two. Quanitity in e-mails or letters are quick to execute but spend time on formulating them and cleanign your list and data source so as to personalise each letter autmatically without gramatic mistakes or obvious blah-blah spam terms.

Following up means following up each and every one of your key targets in the telephone. It may just create a snowball to the next person or a polite no thank you. But you will be surprised that some of these will bear fruit and some of the actual contacts will want to interview you.

The key thereafter is getting to the bottom of what they need in terms of entry level marketers or how else you may need to worm your way in. A full Cv at this stage is as I have blogged earlier, the kiss of death. You want to uncover what they are up to now, which positions are at the entry level and how they fill these. Get people talking on more along the lines of what they do at the company and how the department is structured, then quickly go in after their entry level area. People move in and out of this banding very quickly so they may establish in fact a need they didn't know about- to have someone replace jean with the nice tits asap when she gets promoted to group product manager by the MD.

So after som digging about you will probably send a short half page, elevator pitch resume rather than a CV and only send a CV upon getting in on their needs. Out of say 50 such initial, well groomed and followed up open applications you will get about 5 interviews believe me.

Also some of the out of the blue replies asking you to interview from the other trawls will come through with or without a follow up CV.

Be wary. Don't go to an interview without a good idea of what job they want to see you about. Often they will have some crap or a sales job with no "in" to marketing but just call you in anyway. I spent 14 hours on trains to be told I was being interviewed for a bloody sales job post Marketing MSc! Any far flung interviews, which are dubious or don't pay travel by all means agree on the interview and then qaulify what the job actually is. If it is a bit of a 'well maybe as a stepping stone' then do the initial interview on the phone, and keep it short. If it is quite a tasty job in Truro, but you can't afford the 150 quid and they aren't paying, come up with some excuse the night before and change to a telepone interview.

Out of about ten interviews, procured from which ever source, and screened to be bone fide jobs for your career move, you will get one job offer which you should always take "in principle" while then trying hard to push others to interview you again or drop you.

Good luck!

Job Hunting While on the MSc Marketing Course at Strathclyde University

This is a lecture I'll probably never ever make, but it's one I've had in mind for a couple of years atleast.



As an exercise it is aimed at preparing the strathclyde university marketing MSc graduate with some advice, approaches and even tricks in the job market. Further the student should get a grasp of setting goals and planning their career.


It is worth pointing out though that throughout the text these are the highly personal and possibly idiosyncratic views held by DF.



Why do this talk?



Guilt is often a motivator in my life....... as is sheer boredom! The eagerness to share is also there. But mainly it's the guilt of knowing that you folks from the MSc 2007 and 2008 will face not only a tough time getting jobs, but a hell-ride in progressing your career and even occiasionally holding onto a job. No one came and spoke to us way back-when I did the MSc.



I sit here thinking of all the mistakes and false hopes you will go through and the guilt pangs force me to use an hour in an otherwise fruitless week, to someone elses benefit.



The "Real" world



The harsh reality for you is that you have all chosen what is probably THE most competitive business career area in terms of securing a job and advancing your career within any given company.



Just think- you want a job in scotland ? right..the majority of the class are still local or like it so much that they wanna become a jock!



..and you don't want to condescend to work in sales first? And you want a job with training and career progression, early responsibility and strategic input that really uses your MSc??


...okay. Firstly there are not that many jobs in scotland, a theme we will revist of course. But more unfortunetly there is a huge supply of eager would be marketeers.



On the one hand there are what, three or four undergrad degree courses supplying in any year say 100-200 graduates into the local market. Then you have the two or more MSc courses. Okay. Now take a look at the marketing jobs pages in the herald for a monthy or two. Pretty thin on the ground for new graduates.



BUT wait...your prime time focused degree does not only compete with others who "read marketing". Think of all those general business courses at the uni's and colleges. They have to study years more to become an accountant, and let's face it most areas of "business" are er, dull! So you will find yourself working with lots of people from shitty colleges with shitty marketing content who whangled, flirted, thigh-flashed and nepotised their way into a plum wee marketing job.



Finally you have the hoards of those in work, often sales jobs, studying the good old CIM diploma in marketing. An organisation which does not practice what it preaches in my experience with their sloth like customer services.



tough? yep! I'll do a slide on the statisitcal chances to convince you how thin it is. BUT i offer to help you getting your first job and more importantly setting career goals and communicating with prospective employers



GO SOUTH YOUNG MAN AND WOMAN!!!



The trouble is that there just aren't many marketing departments in scotland, and in general it has a lower level of investment here. Maybe the English like showing off more, or companies like to be near the bigger markets or seats of power with their marketing function.....

You need in my advice, to work at some point in a really big company, and that's going to be in England or elsewhere. In a large company it can be like doing an MBA on the job because there is so much to learn and then all the stats, reporting, analysing, presenting, researching etc to do. Most of it hot air, but you learn to support your arguements fully and also not to be precious- to give up on your ideas when they fall on stoney ground and move on§!

even considering SMEs , there are thousands of good opportunities in England whcih come with more early hands on and better career development or chance to change company quickly down south. Scots are naturally conservative with a small "c" and often are very retentive with their marketing personnel...and the personnel tend to change job LESS OFTEN than people in england. They like it here and are less eager to show ambition.



Jobs there are a plenty in the home counties. But wait, youy don't have to succumb to the commuter rush and all that is negaitve in London. Some people grow toloveit. And of course there are the really rather wonderful home counties and south coast, with woods, country pubs, beaches and nice weather.



Then there's also the M4 corridor, slough to cardiff and even swansea with some real rural lifestyle possiblilties.



Still too far away fra home and ma's cooking? Try the leeds-manchester-liverpool corridor. There are more jobs for firts time graduates and better career development than in three years advertising worth of jobs of the whole of scotland. Umbro, addidas, astra zeneca, henri lloyd to name but a few all had large marketign departments there when I lived there. Thats what i did. I had shitty jobs in scotland after this course and needed to get a proper career boost.



SO take the plunge now and come back later- you will find that jobs in scotland which look for 1-2 years experience are often filled by folk who have grabbed the first job they could 'darn sarffh' stuck it for 2 years, got some brownie points and now want to move home. Jobs looking for 3 or more years are often filled by much more experienced professionals looking to "down size" and 'live a little' back home here- or they just like scotland.



That is not to say don't try to get a job here, just be aware that you most likely will need to get on the career ladder by some other means...for example working in sales for a company with a marketing department in scotland, or doing project work through socttish enterprise and the LECs.



It's all in all best to take the pain of relocation now while you have no kids and are used to living a bit erm out of a suitcase, or you need to break with the whole local-yocal thing to build your indpendence.


Now how are you going to get your first job, where-ever you choose, without any experience??


Experience is Not Everything!!!



Most often graduates get all hung up on their lack of experience. Now all of you have ONE YEARS experience in a very practical subject which uses the real world of marketing as it's reference and not academic tomes. That's enough for you to apply to any job looking for a years expereince!! Don't be afraid! You may offer far more than an internal sales person applying for the job for example



For many jobs the MSc course will give you some of the tools you need in researching the market, understanding the strategy, presenting ideas and managing products. But this or any level of years experience is NOT ENOUGH to secure a job through the application and interview process.





I'll introduce you to a little acronym which all readers of crime or followers of frost, lindley,cold case and John Nettles will know and have to heart already



MMO



Now can you tell me what it stands for?



Right- Motive, Method and Opportunity.



Most applicants focus on the Method...their experience realistically, we are not talking joinery certificates here.



so it goes like:



mMO



How will I do the job? what have I done that is similar? There will be hundreds of really experienced people applying!! Oh dear oh dear, I will never get that job!



Most people totally down grade the Motive element and forget completely about the Opportunity.



I have been pipped to the post by far less expereience candidates in quite senior meaty jobs around PM level by far less expereinced candidates..because I forgot to say and keep on saying why I really wanted to work in this job! Other jobs which I was not all that bothered about but could have been good stepping stones, just went to first interview and the inevitable rejection letter.



No real motivation came across..nothing to convince them that I woudl come and learn their company and be keen and work most of all in marketing, bloody hard to do a bloody good, precise job. You are the holder of the company's image and comms' so you under under a lot of (undue) pressure and livign in a glass house!



So how should the acronym look on a 20 by 60 bill-board for you , given you are apllying for jobs which are within reach..i.e. up to one years experience, maybe related to your first degree or previous work life?



MmO



MOTIVATION is not all that you need, but it is the single most important element in the application & interview process. Your letter should reek of it, you should be phoning up to find out more about the company, leaving your name. You should be thinking of showing how motivated you can be as a person and THEN thinking of how your MSC, other knowledge and work experience will be the METHOD for this one job.



Also note the large "O" . As i said this is often forgotten. The opportunity. You had no alibi not to bloody start first september!!!!!!!!! You are mostly above all else avialble and relocatable TOMMORROW. For a marketing assistant or say business analyst job for example, your availability can be decisive. make sure you make the em0ployer know you can start at the drop of a hat!!!! Once again, in letters, initial phone calls, interview and follow up phone calls.



Given a much more experienced adversary in the post interview discussions, you being able to start september 1st can swing it. WHY?

(1/9/2007 for example at time of wriitng and becusiae so many graduate trainng rounds begin then)



1) the other candidate may be playing them for an internal pay rise- standard tactic of the "wise money"- find another higher paid job, threaten to leave, get a pay rise you do or do not deserve!!



2) if they don't start SOMEONE ASAP they may loose the budget for that position- marketing managers are wee empire builders and all know that career development means managing more people



3) they don't want to be otherwise pissing about waiting on relocation or termination periods, and given your very high level of motivation for the job, you win!!!





The second I have put in retro-bold becuase it is really important and something you will never hear as a recruitee but will hear often once you are in management.



Okay so now you know to present your motivation and availablity, not forgetting to place your skills against what they are looking for. But wait, motivation is easy enough to lie about in a letter but are YOU REALLY MOTIVATED?



Focusing, setting goals and planning your first career moves



To BE motivated you have to have a goal - which is both inspriring and high while also being achievable. Then you MUST be able to make smaller goals which you believe will take you towards that goal.


So you want to be a group product manager ? advertising account director? start your own consultancy? That will take you between say five to eight years to get there. That's your first step- the goal.

Now go and find out what it takes..speack ot someone who works as this. ( you may to your chagrin uncover that 90% of PMs have worked for some considerable time in sales, shock horror!) Ask them what their first job or two were and how they got onto that particular career ladder and how they got promoted!



( To job agencies and career advisors this type of thing is part of networking....not directly appklying for jobs but gettting your face infront of people , asking some questiosn adn lookig for a netweok of people to mayeb do the same or maybe, just maybe get a proper interview with....generally I think Networking is a pile of pony-- in fact it's embarressing, parading yourself about asking some useless questions and trying to get more leads. But habing a specific career goal researfch path coudl just put you infornt of someone who decideds to call you up and interview you!!)



Armed with this information you will be able to see that you either need to get into a particular industry career path, for example sales first, or just bloody well get a couple of jobs under your belt with a range of the experiences you will need - be that hands on PR, managing ad budgets, writing marketing plans or building web sites!
You may set a goal which requires a good deal of people-management and admin relating to this. It may be best to take a job in fast food outlet you have been part time in, to get say six month management experience in real people pushing! Or you may duck out of a very glamerous, competitive company and industry to get more senior, hands on people pushing somehwere where it's a lot easier to get into.



It is likely that your first job will be quite crappy! Either a junior marketer, an assistant account executive, a 'telemarketer', a direct markeign IT plod or the likes. This is your foot in the door and first job on the CV, but you want to actually get more out of it than that!!! which Brings me to my next headline relating very much to MMO.



YOU DO NOT NEED THE "MAGICAL" ONE YEARS EXPERIENCE



This is the biggest lie told and the biggest fib people tell themselves. It's "percieved wisdom"- mum and dad and big siss' tell you "must get a year under your belt" . Everyone knows you have to stick your first crumby job for a year. Well that's crap!



It's spun about by parents who have goen up the outdated career ladder in heirarchical companies which no longer have heirarchies! Maybe they were "general graduate trainees " in on of the big names and made tea, typed or photocopyied for a whole year! Now a lot of the big companies have down sized and look to take people at the first rung with some experience from elsewhere rather than have them being a burdon as a new graduate.



Also of course it is spun by recruitment consuiltants who are goign to most often be no help to you at in makreting, until you get atleast in your first job/rung of the ladder. They spin the one year thing and then they just go on ignoring your calls and e-mails, taking better cnadidates until one day you are that better cadnidate and they are never off the ruddy telephone!! I hate dealing with them to this day, although they can get you a first sales job. They area lways justa filter with their own hidden agenda and prejudice about holding out for the best candidate and all others being also-rans. They will only "sell int he best" and will actively use you as a comparison- keen but green, etc to sell up the one or two people out of six they sent to interview. Above all they need bodies for interview, so being a bit skeptical and maybe talking with hom you are to be interviewed with can be worthwhile. I usually try to work around them and even use them to get good leads, asking that my details need not be sent to this company. If they send your detaisl they can claim you were from them. Workign around them by guessing hte employer or saying you have already been rejected by that one then scurryingoff to apply, means you get to market yourself in your way and also saves the employer up to £5000 in fees if you are sutiable MMO for the job!!



There are the LEC and Scottish enterprise placement shemes or one-off opportunities or just networekring to SMEæs. Also there are far more marketing jobs with SEMs now than ever, which can offer you broad marketing funcitonal experience, if indeed they may lack the budget of the big departments. A lot of these are never advertised and your own first degree or previous ( or new found) work experience can cause them to create a wholly new position in marketing, rtaher than say nother accountant or field sales punter.



You are armed with a business masters from business school which will open doors. However many of those will most likely want some experience and to be seen to be recruiting people who are on the career ladder already. THIS DOES NOT mean you need to stick out a crappy job or one of these LEC projects for a year.



If you get a first job with an SEM or as a junior within a bigger organisation, get a project to do. Market research is often a good one, because it is a strong point of the MSc course and not everyone has hands on experience with strategy in mind too. Make any project achievable in say 2 to three months and keep yourself away from falling into making tea and doing menial tasks. Now use this to sell yourself into a really much better job- the type or company or general industry which you have identified as your first real step towards your main goal.






There is very littel point in photocopying for a year, which does happen! Dont let yourself get pulled into all that junior-assistant/trainee-marketer crap...get something out of your first job if it's a buit crappy and then get the hell out of it!!!





I have seen many, many people come into or get jobs infront of me with just a few months experience in a 'starter job' THe lecs used to run a very good local 'graduates into business' ..you may need to strectht he truth on where you live or are maybe "moving to" but what the hell!





Sales as a first career move



Most of you proibably hate the idea, but Sales for you guys is an excellent way into large and flashy companies. In many 'agency side' roles you will be selling at some point anyway and in any marketing job you always have to convince a skeptical internal audience of sales managers and accountants that your ideas will make money!



As i have touched on, in my experiecne over 90% of PMs have worked in sales and it is really useful- if not a complete prerequisit-e to have been in the same sales force or at least the same inductry for some roles.



Remember your MSc never goes away and you will be able to use it intellectually within a sales role- on both gnerally understainding the business and it s strategy and makeritng itself, as well as appplied in your won job. Think about all the communciatiions and segmenting, competitor positioning, customer personality and prioducts being managed AT you. Before I had even done my MSc I was making messages up which were being used on a national basis!! I was aguniea pig for new saels tactics and they were a it pissed when I left to do the MSc- my boss got fired for losing too many staff!!!!!!!!



sales comes often with a nice company car, extensive training and after some time int he field a how should I put it, 'flexible life style' - experienced sales people know that 80% of business will come from only 20% of customers and with some experience will know to nurture the current ones and focus on those new ones they realistically klnow they can win. Often this means extra work in one period ofset with "working from home" i.e takingit easy later!!



You will get taught and groomed in presenting and arguing in an assertive manner which will stand you in good stead for any career in business what so ever! Even if you go back to the labs or engineering side, this will be good . You didn'dt choose marketing because you are a shrinking violet!!!



Back to first job, it is pretty easy to get a temp job doing some form of sales or customer services which involves handling potential sales, or just working in a shop which has some sales training. This can help immensely while looking for your plumb career sales job.



You probably picked your industry and maybe related it to your first degree- medical sales for the biologists, estate agency for the surveyors and so on. Remember your uSp and the research you need to do to evaluate your career path. You may have to take an internal telesales job, a customer services job or a job at a competitor before you get in the door.







HOWEVER you face an near insurmmountable problem...one which I am going to solve fo ryopu at no expense!!



You will be interviewed by sales management, for example the scottish area and national sales managers. What they really hate is people coming in for a year and going to a marketing job, or worse just waiting longer without being at all motivated for the job. They want long term customer relationships and immediate access to present deals across the terratories. What they don't want is trainees all the time leaving the job for marketing. They want someone they understand and can influence, not new people all the time.



It took me about 6 months to be an effecti ve seller and I could/ should have stcuk it but I came back to do the MSc here and then I was stuffed! I'd shown my hand and no sales manager in the country would give me a job! The average is probably a year to be an effective seller from scratch, and then pay-back for the company in sales growth and profits takes another year or more- I heard the average cost of a traiing up a pro-seller in b2b or medical sales is £60K all in for the first year alone.



So it's a dilema- you know you need to work in sales for only 12 to 18 months before you can move into say an APM role but you now know that sales management don't want you to do this- and they call the shots!



You have over me, the advantage of not having already worked in sales and also a "tight" labour market. Now lets use tactic number 1-



1) The papers always have a "sales and marketing " section- use that name and say you wanted to work in that field and wanted a related business qualification. Say this is as against a general business graduate, S&M is your personal focus. marketing is the closest degree to this aim and will be very uiseful , will it not, to a career which is in this area....the next thing will be they immediately ask when you actually want to move into marketing, and you can answer if you want as follows in 2-



2) say you believe that PMs are chosen from successful sales people with around 5 or more years experience with a track record in sales...which is kind of true for some, but maybe not what you are going to do. This is a realistic time period to be employed in sales from entry level in the eyes of a SM- now you can aslo say that you will be still part of the team, influencing and selling on ideas with say 5 years experience infront of individial customers under your belt.



3) now remember your MMO in the short term- you love this company and it's products, you feel you could really sell them. Offering bloody long hours of hard work is both method and motivation enough for anyone who can hold a conversation to get on in sales. Leanr about the company and seloloing in general on the web- a huge amount of free stuff is out there now which I never had any access to - it just was never published on paper but now it's all cut and pasted on the internet from varuious (dubuious) internal sources!!!



4) PHONE UP for more information ont he job and prepare four or five questions for them before you send an application. Make sure you leave your name and don't offer too much information at this point. Refer to the fact you will send an application to them. This is a big, big tick box in their wish list and will get you interviews believe me, even if all you ask is four easy questions. Stay off salary and cars - focus on what type of customers, how many products at one time, geographic area, type of person they are looking for, type of motivations they expect, how many hours it is etc choose a sleect few which expand on the job advert.



later, phone up the guy who inteveiwed you- get his/her business card - you never know you may have someothing to offer them in six months even if you don't get the job.



5) Be a good listener in the interview- & ask quite a few questions using the open ended answer often but not always. Stop in your speils about yourself and ask questions about what they think of this in terms of suitabliilti a) for the role b) for the team/working for them. Be consious about stopping in your speils and be focused on your message to them..basically they are looking for someone who is self aware and confident, motivated in their acadmeic career , able to tell a stroy in a convincing fashion and can ask open ended questions in an intelligent dialogue. If you can convicen them you really want to work for that company and in sales for several years building a succeessful trakc record then you will have our pick of jobs!!!!





Strategy in Going thorugh sales



Now you have some tools, remember your career goal. Once you get second or further interviews you will probably get a one to one with the personell manager... you can ask them about becoming a PM eventually, and you don't have to lay it on so thicky. They are the internal poachers helping take people out of sales to fill new and open PM postiioins, anmd often for the reason of head-coutn (see "O" baove) they are pretty keen to take someone like you with even six months in the field into sales. If you are really lucky you may meet some PMs and the marketing director at lunch- get away fromt he SMs and talk candidaly about thei r expectations of promoting people from the sales forve, their own background, It may be worth not mentioning your MSc- many of them will not have a marketing quilaification and will, belive you me, find you a threat!! Charm them and keep on being pally walley with them if you get the job in sales- they may phone you up if they have an APM oppening and as they are wee empire builders looking for ,man-management experience, they need to fill it asap! use it or loose it.



You may find that an initial interview opens you up for a wider graduate training programme or fast-track programme becuas of your masters, with the expectation being say 18 months in the field. Often you will get maternity cover or a high turn over terratory or be part of a commando sales force- these roam the country on empty terratories or bolster exisiting sales with more calls on new products or new er, bribe methods to get in with customers. This is all good for the company and the SM's becuawe you are better than nothing and they may be able to get their teeth into you for a long term sales career anyway.



What is very wise is relocation to the part of the country the HQ is in- this means you will get called in more often, have the chance to drop by and also be a guniea pig for new marketing or just the mandatory 'field visits' PMs are expected to do. This is one area where it is important to be realistic with yourself- it is fairly unlikely that you would go to a competitor with a say socttish HQ as a PM directly, so you may have to think hard about your location and career route. You don't want to be doing 2 times 2 years in two companies or more years in sales if you know it is not your main amibition. If say moving to scotland as a PM is your goal then it may take you quicker to go through say 6 to 18 months sales in the "home counties" and 18 months again as a PM than having to start again later with a company which 'promotes' from the scottish area- that is to say most often you need to take the pain of relocation as soon and as short as you can to get up the career ladder to be in an excellent position to CHOOSE your job back in scotland or wherever.





NEXT ACRONYM PLEASE............



USP



Anyone tell me this?



Yep, unique selling point or proposition. Should turn it on it's head to be a unique buying point! Hee hee, customer cetnric approach.



Everyone here has a USP for any given marketing job. Most likely it will be to do with your first degree, previous work experience, second or other native languiage, hobby or maybe MSc Project.



Also it can be your availability as above, your willingness to relocate or ability to work long, long hours which make you ,abvove other candidates, unique.



Also it can of course be your personality....and this can be determination, communication, caring/listening and above all Motivation of course.



For a job you may find you have two apparent USPs....no longer a usp? well as I say it is as mucha single over-rdigin reason to buy or at least a JND - just noticeable differenec given there are four identical candidates or a confusing picture with no otherwise clear winner. Listen to them, probe what they want and then postition your best USP. You may findout that this is what all the other candidates have, so use no.2 in the same way later. Also rememebr MMo, perhaps they will find their own UBP without you knowing .



Above all elese a USP can make up for a lack of general marketing experienceand place you a little unfarily even, above the competiton!... especially when it relates to language or a technical degree



Thinking of USP will now open up quite a few more jobs for you and allow you to choose a USP as you apply and go throught e interview process. Find out their weakness or taste...fidn out when they need to get someone in place and why. FocYou can dare and try a littel bit of SPIN...i.e. if they don't get someone like you then they risk having someone who does not understand the product or market or language! SPIn is risky but the best business people use it- finding hte weak point and over-emphasising the risk or ratehr escalating the implications should I say ....





Quantity or Quality





This is an age old dilema in job hunting. Do you get as much market air-time as you can? OR do you target market yourself and add the personal touch?



In my experience, quantity of applicatiosn is NEVER a winner. However, quanitity of research, lead finding and company information IS worth while. But in applications, realistically you have to be able to present a very clean , tidy application whitha very plausibel MMO using your USP



Phone up for any job ad' with a name on it and be preapred with a few simple questions as for a saels job. Be also prepared to drop it - if theyt are busy or seem harrassed. Note their name but maybe don't leave yours unless you are asked.



Also who do you go to? Most often personell people are actually not the best to send an open application to. they can be good to network to...get information from or perhaps a temp job "in the door" . But they struggle with budgets and wnat to make their own mark on recruiting so often are a hindrance. You want to go direct to the marketing manager or director or in an SME it is best to go to the managing director- in fact you may even replace a marketing manager who is no use!!! Remember your MSc is a threat to many unqualified Marketeers or those who struggle, so going to the top means you don't face this kind of petty jealousy. The personnel or marketing managers under the 'big boss" will now bend over backwards for you to arrange interview , becauase keeping el cheifo happy is their number one priority in the working day



Your goal in applicatiosn should be at this stage and later in career to get your name noticed and talked about internally to the company before they read your CV in any depth. You need to break thorgh the 'outisder' barrier to be the nice new freindly person, motivated specificallyt to talk to this company about opportunities. This means, like a little coke advert on the subway, you wnat to pop up surreptioscloulsy maybe three times before you actually get your CV read. Once in the door and taliing to them this personal feely approachg will win you the emotiuonal battle...you are a person and no longer a straneger...you have got them to see you and meet you!



Phone personell, ask about the company In general- marketing can be a turn off for personnel with no jobs there buit 100 in customer services to fill! then maybe get a name in marketing to speak to at the end of the general conversation. Always offer to call back later or come in in person for a 5min chat and maybe an introduction. When you get a lead lawys mentuion you had a nice chat with the persn in name and they said it might be okay, if you had some time to talk to you more abot the career in this type of general role...two threats down- you have an IN from personnel and ytou are looking for general uinformation and not applying in your face right now.



I once had a 1/8th page in t he herald with my name on it and do you know how many people called up for further details? None got through to me anyway!!! Think thorugh your questions and remember ytou are interviewing the company as muych as they you- it is the sutiablitiy of the company to your own motivations as much as the other way around!



Job hunting while unemployed can be a pretty thankless task, sending out anonymous applicatiosn and on spec letters. But using on it as an extended information searhc and focusing on finding out about companies and careers and wondering yourself if it suits you reduces the streess level, gets you used to persinal contact and gets you plucked out of the pile of other applicatiosn who didin't go that extra mile. Time is used a lot more constructivly in OPENing doors rather than hoping and getting them closed on you.

Getting a foot in the door can be a double edged sword- okay a customer services, tlelmaerkting or any other old job in a company can seem like a good foot in the door- a chance to mingle - but you may be tarred with the brush of being "them" from the "us" of the marketing department at war with customer services. Or they will be a bit snotty when they get an application from you, the temp! Once again not a lot of epople in marketing even have a BSc in the subject so you are quite threatening. So getting some exposure to your industry it can be wise to find out IF your no.1 company prospect DO advertisie internally and DO take internal candidates from themps. Otherwise it can be wise to work for a COMPETITOR and come in with knowledge from that angle. Foot in the door jobs are a bit challenging like sales as the more direct line to marketing rols

Your Letter



I take this before the CV because it is often what is read first, not just out of curtousey but to check you are applying for the right job and what plausible story you may or may not have.





Often in fact, I have noticed that they haven't really read your CV- they are so impressed by the letter- this is a bit problematic and recently I completely over-sold myself in a spec mailing, attended two promising first little 'chats' and got sent home to think again on that count!



But your letter is going to of course go through the different screening and be read for MMO! Most people themselves will be looking for method in everything because that is what appeals to the 'level headed' but I reckon most people actually recruit on the emotional- that is why Motivation is so big a part and needs to shine through.



Motivation should be in most paragraphs of a four to six paragraph letter. Which job and why you are apllying of course. Then maybe a little on the industry/ market appeal and why you conisder yourself suitable. Then maybe throw in your USP in relation to this and the specific job on offer and that company



Finally a more general "work, hard, acheive' paragraph and a bit about yourself in this light and generall y people ability is to come before the usual "look forward tro hearing from you regarding this exciting opportuntiy' slips in.



remember to be abkle to back up all that you claim with practical examples- more on that in STARS later



You probablyu have USP, you definetly have MM now some O- remembver Opportunity to rlocate and start at short notice or immediately even. Be keen!



Pre-letters: it can be worth, even for an advertised postion to write an open application on spec anyway. You don't need to include your CV and you can write to several people at the same time without annoyuing anyone with loads of bits of paper. Some bright spark in marketing or personnel should put two and two together and contact you in regards to the actual position. This means you have had air time already. Follow the letter up with a brief call to personnel and then get a name in marketing to speak to. Hold back on your details, deflecting questions on your experience to 'i'll send an application, but would like to know more about the role'



These days people no longer have junk flyers and telesales- they have endless junk mail and a full inbox! So when applying it can be more noticeable for a job with many applicants to send in a quality paper Letter and CV, in a non fold envelope to several people- mark it private and confidential, addressee only- this gets you past the cheeky wee secretary jealous of university types! Your CV or any application is a very private matter! People now will get only a handful of envelopes per day with maybe just one external with a hand written adressing and licked on stamps i.e. clearly NOT juynk mail.





Your CV



The CV for most of you is only important in the manner it presents information. It should also present motivation to reinforce your letter in a more fomral way. It should explain as much about ytour presonal qualities as it does your first degree work, your part time jobs and your masters course.



Also it has to stand out- putting a colour photo on the top right corner in line with the address details can get you picked out. Do this!



The other practical thing is that people always like to write in the margins and spaces so make them large. Use prose for the introduction, what you achieved in jobs or in projects and any paragparh on hiobbies if they are rleevant or show more about you in terms of this role and MMO.



the first parpagraph can be - "An outgoing and hard working person, actively looking for roles within x industry. Has relevant education for this industry/career ...has a usp... currently completingmastersat business shciool in marketing with motivation to have a career in xxx. Available for interview and can commence work immediately/short notice"



this can run to maybe even three paragraphs with sub headings like 'personal qualities' 'lifetime achievements' 'Acadmic Record Summary'





You can also blend in project work and achievemnnets with work in a chronilogical career summary or just 'experience and achievements' . this forces the reader to think about you and ok, it hides your lack of work experience in amongst other interesting and RELEVANT experiences. Now e need to finish off with STARS becuase this is the final impressive technique qwhich will get your abilities noticed and understood.





STARS



situation, task, actions and results



I have a mate called James Hosea who is always goign on about what "we did" and what " we acheived" . He is a clever bloke and good at getting other people to do stuff, and also at taking praise when maybe he doesn't deserve it. He does howver avoid the "i" a lot.



Now in an interview situaion this is the kiss of deatrh. Personnell are good at using this as a n attach point to throurghly discredit you or puyt you on the spot. Think about the situation and rsults in terms of the team but the task and YOUR actions personally.



It may be that you did something quite minor but it shows you understood a team problem, you got a task given or defined it yourself and you did something and you understood the postiitive impact it had on the team.



Think of all your project work and work ecperience in this light. Choose some which are just you and some which are a team, some where you just followed on and others where you took the lead. Put a littele note on the acheivemnent or general task in the CV and be prepared to talk about it. You can also of ocurse use a as star in your letter, or even a couple, to support your personal abilitieis in rleation to this job.



Other than STARS I think the Career setrvice at strathclyde offer an excellent intervirw coaching service which is of really international clibre in my experuience! SO they can prepare you for the ype of quesitons and general way interviews work. STARS will help you a lot in answertinbf some of those hard " give me some examples" questions.



You know, that really ends all I have to say in this first badly spelled draught of the talk to be erm published. Personally I hgave undoubtedly had more interviews than the whole of your class put together in the course of 20 years in the work market, widest possible sense of course at my still tender age!

I hope to give this talk one day, and use the stats I got hold off and the more clever reducing the odds pyramid

Myself I had a hell career in many ways , with lots of hours many of which wasted! My ny biggest failing was not to set career goals ..."any road will take you there if you don't know wher eyou are going".....now I am excluded from many jobs by being too old and just too capable to go back and start in a new direction.
ALso I lack any concrete man- management line reporting to put on the CV for positioins which actually fit my bloody psychographic profile and general attitudes!
If I had been more serious about doing what I said I would, makerting genetic products, then I would have gone and spoken to more people about it ...maybe I would have chosen not to go in becuase of the percieved need' for aPHd . Certainly it is a habit to get into in phoning up and getting known, and it gets TOO easy now...too easy to presume and ask the tight questions which dont' expand the pososibility. Too easy to lean on my many years experience and too easy to forget my motivation element.

There must be many interviews I went away from leaving the interviewers unimpressed by my lack of real interest and real motivation to work for them rather than just thinking aout the job as a pay cheque each month. Motivation is not all about jumping up and down enthusisatically - it is about focusing on what you want and if you do this, following a path which will get you places


good night and good luck!