The Most Important 60 Minutes of Your Marketing Job Search

and the most advice you've been hearing possibly out there in the market is about getting your resume ready for the applicant tracking system so you can get it viewed and have the right keywords that shows up so that you get selected and it's easier for easy apply you can you can apply to hundreds of jobs with a click of a button garbage absolute garbage. Hey fellow marketers welcome to another episode of the marketing career is podcast presented by the marketing help dot CO alright so I'm recording this episode as a result of conversations I've been having with with marketing job seekers and the struggles that they're having you know so you talk to to marketing job seekers and you hear about not knowing where to start I'm hearing that that they're focusing too much on the resume they're getting no responses are getting ghosted they feel like they're wasting time on interviews with their own company. But it's also the impact that I'm hearing about losing confidence losing motivation the stress is increasing because they want to find the right job not just any job. So I want to take time in this episode and reset expectations for all you marketing job seekers out there whether you're a marketing undergrad a marketing intern ready to look for your full time first full time job or maybe your entry level marketer and you're ready for your next move or you're even a season marketing manager or executive this is all relevant to all of you marketers out there looking for your next job not next job but for the right job. Now I want to share some insights on how to have a more successful job search and and that's the episode today and this episode today is about the most important 60 minutes of your marketing job search. And no I'm not going to be talking about preparation for your interview although that is important but I think there's 60 minutes that's even more important than preparing for interview. And those 60 minutes are going to be spent on planning the most important 60 minutes of your marketing job search is spent in the planning phase. Now most advice you've been hearing possibly out there in the market is about getting your resume ready for the applicant tracking system so you can get it viewed and have the right keywords so that shows up so that you get selected and it's easier for easy apply you can apply to hundreds of jobs with a click of a button. And garbage absolute garbage if that's your number one approach to finding your next marketing job now I say out there the path to an unsuccessful marketing job search is way too easy. The path to an unsuccessful marketing job search is way too easy that's my point if it's easy everyone's doing it what your chances for standing out no matter what keywords you're putting your resume. So if you take just 60 minutes and you follow the steps I'm talking about today I'm going to give you the right guard rails guidance you'll have the right guard rails to get the right guidance and clarity so that you can avoid being frustrated rejected to press all those things that we don't want any market to experience. Now what you could do I recommend listen to the episode let it sink in let the steps sink in and kind of wrap your head around them then at some point set aside 60 minutes to follow the steps to the tea. And therefore those 60 minutes like I say will be the most important 60 minutes you'll spend in having a successful job search and finding the right job now you will feel more clarity at the end of those 60 minutes you're going to be energized. And actually probably cautiously optimistic but definitely more confident in the approach you're taking you're going to feel more in control you're going to feel that the process is more realistic in terms of expectations. And you're going to be ready to make progress so here you go 60 minutes there's going to be five steps that you want to execute within a 60 minute timeframe it will be the most important 60 minutes of your marketing job search now let me preface all this by saying. If you're successful in executing what I'm about to go through in these steps over the course of a 60 minute session and you get some results or you struggle at some parts I want to hear from you so I want to make sure I can help you. So just email me Eric E R I K at the marketing help.co and include the subject line of 60 minutes so I know that you heard this episode and let me help you or want to hear from you and what your experience was all right here we go. So five steps over 60 minutes most important time spent in your marketing job search for step one for 10 minutes set aside 10 minutes and all you going to do in those 10 minutes for step one is prioritize your career factors. Now you heard me mention these before career factors I believe in them because they they work when you when you think about them and why this is important to do is step one is because you want to get a sense for what is most important to you right now in your marketing job search what's the best what's going to be the best work environment for you based on what's important to you right now so the career factors exercise is to rank from one to six. The six factors and then whatever appears whatever's priority number one two or three for you that should shape the type of company you want to get to and I'll cover that in a couple more more seconds here. But the six factors that you want to be focusing on one is balance how important is a work life balance to you the second is challenge how important is a challenge to you meaning you want to work in a place where you can be. Constantly learning something from either the environment itself or from other experts in the company. The third factor is company meaning you're looking for a company that that shares your same values maybe a company that's that has a lot of connections with nonprofits or charities or sustainability again everyone has a different passion or interest in terms of the type of company they want to work for next is salary. How is salary important to you meaning you need to make X per year not because you want to because your friends are but because you need to and that that's why it should be a top three priorities if salary meaning you have to make X number of dollars. Next is title maybe your manager and you feel you're ready for director level responsibilities so if title is important to you that's another career factor and then the last career factor is location. So maybe need to look for a role or your you need to have a role that's remote we need to have a role that's based in the same state that you live in or city that you live in again everyone has different needs. So these six factors balance challenge company salary title location you need to rank those in turn from from one to six in terms of what is most important to you. Now the outcome of doing all this is you'll have a sense for knowing and you'll be able to identify if you want a fast or slow paste environment if you want to remote or in office setup if agencies were a good fit for you or maybe you've identified that you want to work for mission driven companies only will guess what that helps to identify a small list of companies that you should focus on right as opposed to blindly applying to jobs. Now check the show notes for a worksheet that I provide for you is going to go into more detail. But again the career factors it's the number one thing to do in the five steps. But if you have any questions about how to do it or deciphering what your factors are you can just email me again Eric at the marking help. All right step two now step one was 10 minutes step two for another 10 minutes I want you to think about the marketing path the marketing career path that is right for you. And I don't want you to think about five years from now or even three years from now want you to think about what is the next best role for you. Now and I'll give you some examples so in the next 10 minutes for step two think about which environment which path of which company makes the most sense for you for example agency. Do you want to work for an agency and the answer is yes if in those six factors maybe challenge and company where your top factors where you want fast pace learning. You want to gain some experience in your specific core skill or you want to be surrounded by experts that maybe agency is going to be the path for you in your next role. Or is it client side and that could be yes if maybe balance and company were top factors for you because you want a structured learning environment that offers an opportunity to experience. Then understand how a business operates if that's a focus for you and you want to make you want to impact change within an organization and then maybe working client or brand side is the path for you next is freelance. Some of you out there feel like hey I've got a skill at the scale maybe it's time to do my own thing well maybe you want the balance of working for yourself and maybe you want the challenge of running your own thing and those were in your top three factors and maybe freelancers the path for you. And working for yourself is the next logical step for your career. Or maybe last late startups right startups you know Bdb software tech startups there's a ton of them out there got again got to make the right choice in which one you want to go work for but maybe challenge and company were top factors for you. But not balance if balance wasn't in your top three and you're just looking to give your all and be a sponge and go into a fast pace environment where you'll be asked to do a lot of things. And you don't mind working 60 to 70 hour weeks because you're invested in just learning and making connections and growing your skills. Well then maybe a startup environment could be the path for you now document the path that you feel is right for you right now. as part of that 10 minute exercise. And based on that company that you identified agency, client side, start up. I want you to document 10 companies in that category where you want to work. Again, you're in control here. You decide where you want to work. If it's a start up, start thinking about what kind of startups, if it's an agency, what kind of agency is it social media? Is it SEO, is it full service? Is it remote, is it local? But you can document those 10 companies right now and you're in control and you can pick. I don't care if there's jobs there or not, that's not the point. The point here is you want to identify where you're going to be a good fit and where your skills will be appreciated. So that's step two, that's 10 minutes. Now, the outcome of doing the step two of identifying your path is you have the clarity and the focus on the right types of companies, right? 'Cause when you document those 10 companies, you now know exactly where you want to be putting your effort and it's a little bit more structured. Step three, for 10 minutes, I want you to take inventory of who you know and what you know. We call this the career profile. So, documenting relevant experiences you've had in every role, every role. I don't care if it was Berista or customer associate at CVS. What accomplishments did you generate there? That's important, document it. Then start documenting the people you know in your network within your marketing sphere of influence, not just your coworkers, but think of those influencers, maybe those thought leaders, former clients, start documenting all those people who you know. Then I want you to document your primary marketing competency. What's your core skill, right? And it's all relative, right? 'Cause if you have three months of experience managing a brand social media account, the social media is your core skill. And it's the skill where you can provide value tomorrow. And again, it's all relative. So whether you had three months or three years, what's the one skill that someone would want to hire you for? So document all that. Again, this is a 10-minute exercise so it shouldn't take that long. Again, for this process, check the show notes again. I have links to guides that help you in fulfilling and documenting all your career profile stuff too. Now, the outcome of doing this step, as you can imagine is, now that you've identified what you know and who you know and what your core skill is, you're probably gonna realize that you know more and you've done more than you thought. And you're gonna be really confident about knowing your core skill is the value and the specialty that you want to be looking for in a specific role. And you definitely should start feeling more confident about those skills that you can bring to a company. Again, it's all relative. Whether it's, you know, you had a few months of hands-on experience in an internship or even if you're a university marketing student and you just have a couple of those projects from some of those courses, that still counts. So, after step three, you've taken inventory on who you know, what you know and your core skill set. So here we are, after three steps, we're about 30 minutes in. So think about in those 30 minutes, all the clarity and confidence you've built. And maybe it's 40 minutes to be safe, but at this point, the most important thing you have right now is clarity. Now, you should start being excited about, oh, wait a minute, I know, okay, this makes sense that I should be looking for jobs here as opposed to here. And you're getting excited about the types of companies you may want to be working for because you've thought through it. Now, like I said, the best 60 minutes you can invest. So about 30 minutes in. So where do you do it the remaining time? Where's the next 30 minutes go? Let's move on to step four. And the step four and five are probably going to be the most critical in you being successful. So this is where you wanna really dig in, right? Step four, let's say it's gonna take you about 15 minutes. And what I want you to do is develop a job search plan. Now, I've said this before in other episodes, you gotta treat your marketing job search like a marketing plan. And here's how you do it, right? Every marketing plan for those out there that have done a marketing plan has the following components, right? It's no surprise or it's no secret. Every marketing plan has an objective, a goal, a target audience, a strategy, a tactic, or tactics, key performance indicators, KPIs, and targets. Every marketing plan in the history of everything has those components. So why not translate those into developing your job search plan? So I'm gonna go through here and we're gonna fill out each of those sections here based on what you completed, right? So think about your step one, step two, step three. Whatever you document in those steps, you now have what you need to develop your job search plan. So follow along here in terms of how this could work for you. I'm just gonna use some examples. So when you're developing your job search plan, you gotta set an objective. Objective is your wish future position. Where do you wanna end up? So your objective could be to get paid for my social media skills or to work for a top 100 digital ad agency or it could be to work for Google or Meta or wherever. And that's your objective and that's what you're gonna be following as you're where you want to eventually end up. Now the next is the goals and we all learned smart goals in our marketing careers. So you wanna set some smart goals, specific measurable, attainable, realistic time-based. So for example, you could say as your goals, I wanna secure three interviews with my target companies. Remember, you made a list of 10. I wanna secure three interviews with my list of 10 companies within 90 days. Hmm, that sounds pretty specific and realistic and attainable and time-based. But think about what that does to you when you say, I wanna secure three interviews, not with anyone, but with the target companies that researched within 90 days. So now you have maybe some structure in terms of okay, now I know what I need to do week over week over week. Next, who's your target audience? Who are you trying to get in front of in order to secure those interviews with those target companies? Here's an idea, your target audience should be hiring managers at your target companies, right? Makes sense. So now you know exactly who you're targeting at those specific companies. The HR person, maybe it's the VP, the CMO, the director. Now you have a finite number of names of people you can research and start crafting content and messaging specific to them. Next, is your strategy? Okay, what's my approach when it comes to securing these three interviews in 90 days with hiring managers at those target companies? Newsflash, it is not apply, apply, apply, apply and cross my fingers, right? But rather, how about this as a strategy? Direct outreach. Let me contact them directly through email, through LinkedIn, that's my strategy. Next, what are your tactics? Your tactics could be sending emails, sending connection requests, sending LinkedIn messages or email messages if you have that capability in LinkedIn, your LinkedIn account. So the tactics are specific around sending emails, maybe a tactic would be to engage with their content in LinkedIn. So you get the point. Next, what are your key performance indicators? How do I know this is actually working? Okay, well let's identify KPIs of, if someone replies to my email, or if I get a booked call, that's a, those are two KPIs you can identify. Now, we have to have targets otherwise, we don't know, having given ourselves a target to hit. So why don't we say there's a minimum? Again, I want three interviews in 90 days. So my targets could be, I want to send, I want to get a minimum of 10 email replies and five book calls. Again, I'm just using this as an example, but you have to think through this yourself to see what makes the most sense. Now again, in the show notes, I'm going to provide you a template on how to document your job search plan the way that I just went through it. So it'll help you organize and collect your thoughts and I'll put in some examples there too, just to help you define something because if you can just hear through the detail of setting up a marketing plan, ask job search plan, you've got the clarity. You've got the structure. You know how you're going to utilize your time. You know what's a good result. You know what a bad result is. And you have guidance, not just when to do it, but who to do it too, right? You have your target audience. So now that you have your plan document, like I said, that was a 15 minute window of time to document that. Now again, you use my template. It'll take you 15 minutes 'cause I'm going to give you some, it's going to be easy just to kind of fill in the blanks, but you have to make it specific to you. Which means you're ready for the last step. Step five. Step five, for about 10 to 15 minutes, all you need to do, and this is this again, this is a critical step. You have to protect your calendar. Protect your calendar. So you have your plan. You know who you want to work for. You know how are you going to manage your effort over the next couple of weeks? You know who you want to connect with. You have metrics, you have targets. Now you got to make sure you're giving yourself the chance to succeed. This is where most marketers fail. Because they have all the great ideas, they have a little bit of motivation, and then they go sideways when they don't realize that they haven't protected their time. So the last step here is protecting your calendar. And the reason this is a step, and you should dedicate 10 to 15 minutes to look ahead, weeks ahead, protect your calendar. Because to take the action you need, you need time. And to get the time you need, you have to protect your calendar. So block off dedicated chunks of time over the next 30 days right if you want to do 60 days up to you But I'm just giving you some guidance here on us getting started Block off dedicated chunks of time over the next 30 days now here's the rule you want to follow Because I've seen this fail before where I give this recommendation and then a marketer blocks off 15 minutes Not enough time to make make significant progress So the rule here for blocking off time is you have to block off chunks of time that have to be at least 30 minutes Long Now another tip here would be okay block off 40 minutes or 45 minutes So that gives you a chance to do 30 minutes of work Towards your job search plan and then 15 10 to 15 minutes of context switching back into to reenter your day to day right so if you block off 40 minutes from noon You know 12 to 12 45 Well, you do your effort from 12 to 12 30 then you take 15 minutes to get acclimated back into and prepare for your next meeting at one o'clock See what I mean So give yourself the respect of knowing that it's going to take you some time to context switch back into your whatever you're doing And again if you respect your calendar it will respect you back and give you the time you need Now realistically right so the other rule here is you got to be realistic and where you set your time right You know for some of the things you're going to set it at two to three o'clock midday and a Wednesday Knowing that you have a ton of meetings that happen all the time may not be realistic So think about where those those those those pockets of time that are more realistic for you to actually follow through on For example early morning on a Tuesday and Thursday Just just giving you something here Or maybe it's weekends Yes, you can look ahead and know what you're going to do on Saturday and say hey from 12 to 2 I'm going to block out time and start getting this done Um Or maybe it's early evenings when kids are occupied or maybe you have downtime before you Your workout or whatever it is Find the time that makes the most sense for you And this time when you dedicate this time to execute your plan Uh, and this is giving you the time to execute your plan uh preparing your resume when that happens Uh, but basically give you a chance to create positive habits imagine if in 60 days You've identified that Tuesday Thursday 7 8 to 8 a is your most productive time of the week To to get something done and and you're cooking after 30 days you know a couple weeks in a row and you've created a positive habit Every Tuesday Thursday 7 8 a.m You're knocking out um messages out to those hiring managers Uh, you're updating your resume and you're feeling really really productive guaranteed So that's it. There you have it. I give you five steps Each step equating to a time dedicated to do certain effort, but collectively It's the most important 60 minutes of your marketing job search That will transform your marketing job search for one of frustration which we've all had To one of celebration where we're going to be celebrating More confidence more clarity the right guidance that you will gain in helping you to be successful Like I said before it is about finding the right job not just any job Now the beauty the job search uh the beauty of the job search plan that I revealed here and I'm not sure if you noticed But like I said before notice I did not include anything here about applying online I want you to maybe challenge yourself To go 30 days or 60 days in this plan of attack if you're actively looking for a job And not to apply to a job online And and and rather consider the tactic or the strategy and tactic I mentioned earlier Find the people find the hiring managers Connected to the role of the company where you want to work remember you're in control now Connect with them ask them for a call 15-minute call give them a chance to meet you your personality Let them hear your stories because they're going to ask you tell me about yourself Walk me through your resume. What kind of experience have you done? And you're basically giving yourself a platform to to Give them a chance those hiring managers a chance to meet you um Because they also give you a chance to show how well you can prepare to show your critical thinking to show you have great questions And let's be honest, you know people hire people they don't hire paper or profiles So give this person a chance to meet another person and that's you And I can guarantee you that your future self that's sitting in that the right marketing job that you want at the company that you've selected That person will thank you Well, thank you for not easy applying and getting frustrated and and constant rejection Now like I said before I want to help you Execute these 60 minutes the most important 60 minutes Check the show notes. There's going to be links there to get guide you to templates to make this easy for you Uh, but again, you've got to do the work the templates here just to kind of give you some guidance So that you can keep your thoughts organized And like I said if you're successful in executing these 60 minutes and you get some results By following your plan or if you hit a struggle point and you're not sure what to do or how to decipher your factors or what have you I want to hear from you. I want to help you Send me an email again Eric erik at the marketing help.co And use the subject line 60 minutes. So I know you heard this episode So that's five steps the most important 60 minutes of your marketing jobs are to find the right marketing job And again, as always, this is your host Eric harvesting and I will catch you on the next episode [BLANK_AUDIO]