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Early Career Shift
Context: After graduating college, I was excited to accept a role at a fast-growing unicorn company. The title I accepted was "Growth Operations Associate."
Upon starting, I quickly began to realize the direction of my team began focusing specifically on organizational culture and employee/people strategy. While this provided lots of learnings and invaluable experiences, when I accepted the role I was excited to use this position as a kick-starter for a marketing position.
Now that I'm no longer in that position or company, I'm looking to pursue a true Marketing position. That said, I'm now finding myself already pigeon-hold into HR/employee experience type roles.
I've catered my resume and profile to display overlapping responsibilities between my position and a marketing one, but am finding that when speaking with prospective employers, they're opting for more "experienced" people with "skills that more closely align to the position."
Can anyone offer any advice or similar experiences that I can use to help navigate this career pivot? Appreciate it!
Kelley Shields, Career & Professional Development CoachWork shouldn't be a 4-letter word.
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09/24/20 at 8:23PM UTC
Hi Lauren, have you connected with any marketing professionals who are in the types of jobs you are interested, or marketing professionals more generally, outside of applying for a job? They might be able to make some specific recommendations for what they'd like to see - and they might be more open to considering you for a future role when they aren't also looking at a stack of others who have held previous marketing jobs. It also might be useful to get some help on rebranding yourself more effectively - lots of people have to deal with this in a career change, so don't get discouraged! Also, are you working right now, or solely looking for a job?
LaurenMarketing & Comms in SF or NYC
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09/24/20 at 8:52PM UTC
Hey Kelley! Thanks for your response. I'm on the job hunt full-time right now, so I've been networking quite a bit with people in my desired profession/target companies. A lot of them have looked at my resume and it seems to be in a pretty good spot - I've been catering it to specific roles I'm applying to as well.
The networking/catered resume has been paying off and I've been landing interviews from it, but ultimately when hiring managers are choosing between me and another candidate who had the "marketing" title, they go for the safer option...which is always a bummer.
Still not discouraged and remaining hopeful that there will be a company/person willing to take a little leap of faith. :)
Lynne CoganCareer Coach for Realizing Professional Dreams
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09/23/20 at 9:51PM UTC
The best way to do this is to get marketing experience. You can find temp assignments or volunteer work in this area--at least, you can during "normal" times.
For today's world, I would suggest offering your services to local/new businesses. There are bound to be Chamber and other networking opportunities posted on Meet Up, EventBrite, and local resources for scheduled events. Prove how valuable your services are. Put that on your LinkedIn profile and your resume.
LaurenMarketing & Comms in SF or NYC
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09/24/20 at 4:29PM UTC
Thanks for your input! I'll definitely look into getting direct marketing experience through volunteer opportunities.
Lynne CoganCareer Coach for Realizing Professional Dreams
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09/24/20 at 4:39PM UTC (Edited)
Great. Non-profits are still using direct marketing as a big part of their marketing campaigns.
Oh, that's speaking from experience--from receiving the mailings not from research data.
Rosie MouaProcess Consultant | Project Management
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09/23/20 at 4:06PM UTC
Hello! This is tough! Sorry to hear. I think volunteering for a marketing type position that will help you build those skills may help! There are many opportunities out there, in-person and virtually. That could be a start.
LaurenMarketing & Comms in SF or NYC
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09/24/20 at 4:28PM UTC
Thanks for the response! Love the idea of volunteering and will look into it.
