This is, sadly, the last part of my half-arsed attempt at writing my first book – the second part of how to get ino the field of marketing.
I know, it’s pretty pathetic that I gave up after less than 5000 words. But here it is anyway …
The route I used was by pretending that I wanted to go to University or Polytechnic, as they were called in those days, as a ‘mature student’, which is a bit of a misnomer really as the term really only means someone who is over the age of 21. Maybe things have changed over the past ten years, but in those days it was a great deal easier to get to Polytechnic as a mature student with very few qualifications than it was when you left school at 18. You were then entitled to a full grant from your local education authority, irrelevant of how much your parents earned. Armed with this knowledge I applied for, and was accepted as, a student of a bizarre course in Psychology and Communication Studies (whatever that is, I still don’t know) at a Polytechnic in North London.
Life as a ‘mature student’ was not very pleasant at all. I was living in a cheap bed sit in a large house owned by two half dead people in a bad part of North London and, within a week, realized that being a student was an even worse experience than I feared. I can understand that, when you go straight from school to university it could be great fun, because you don’t know any better and holding a sit in at the refectory in support of Nicaraguan freedom fighters could seem like a really fun and useful thing to do. However, when you are literally as well as academically a ‘mature student’ it all seems to be incredibly juvenile. Anyway, the one advantage of being a student for me was that I could get away with being in college for only eight hours a week and could spend the rest of my time job hunting. For reference, I used the WH Smith newsagents at King’s Cross Station, as I had to pass through the station quite regularly. For about an hour per week, I used to scan all of the interesting magazines in the newsagents looking to find any job that I thought I had more than a cat in hell’s chance of being remotely suitable for. Having to buy all of the magazines like Music Week, Campaign, Media Week, Broadcast, Marketing, Marketing Week etc. where there was a remote possibility of finding a suitable job would have easily cost me over thirty quid a week, which was more than my rent, but I could scan through the magazines for an hour for free, only buying a magazine when I found a potential advertisement for a job. Because of my dedication to job hunting, it took only six weeks to find a starting job as little more than a Marketing Secretary at Pickwick.
O.K., so I would be working with product from hot artists such as Jim Reeves and Richard Clayderman rather than The Smiths or New Order, but it was just the start I was looking for.
So, that’s how I solved the problem of living in the wrong place. Now let’s look at the problem of how to pick up a little bit of experience with a product when you are starting off with absolutely none. There are basically two ways of doing this. You can start off by working for a company involved with your chosen product in a very junior position, or you can build up a number of associations with the product through other activities which will give you the chance of applying for a slightly less junior position.
The first option of starting to work for a company at a junior level is probably the easier of the two options, if it is possible for you. This is actually one of the very few areas where women have more options open to them than men do, as they can make the sexism that is exhibited by the vast majority of men work in their favour. The two junior positions which are not that impossible to obtain without any real experience are receptionists and secretaries. The standard opinion in this male-dominated society is that these are definitely women’s jobs and it’s just not ‘right’ to have men in these positions, with the result that women have a much better chance of getting these jobs than men do. That’s not to say that men should not bother trying for these positions, as there are some forward looking employers willing to employ men in these positions. It is interesting to note that the two senior marketing positions in my last employers were held by a former male secretary and a former male receptionist. However, men just have to accept the fact that they are probably going to find it harder to get these jobs than women.
Many men and women looking to get on the marketing fast track as soon as possible might turn their noses up at the thought of becoming a receptionist or secretary, thinking that they will be immediately labeled as a Sharon for the rest of their lives, doomed to reading Chat or Hello and talking about nothing but their boyfriend, Kevin. If the thought crosses your mind, then try to dismiss it as quickly as possible. These jobs can be made into what you want them to be, either as an easy way to make a little bit of money with no effort, or a way of getting your first rung on the ladder.
Of the two jobs, the receptionist position is probably the easiest to obtain, as it really requires no qualifications other than being a little out-going, having half a brain and not having a bolt pierced through your bottom lip and SATAN tattooed on your forehead. Come over well at the interview, and the job should be yours. And there should be plenty of receptionist positions around as they usually have a fairly high turnover. The reason is that there are very few people who want to spend their life as a receptionist. Therefore, the people who are employed in this position tend to fall into two groups. Either they are completely incompetent for any other position, or else they, like you, have only taken the job as a stepping stone towards something better. Companies that are growing fast and look to recruit internally should get through receptionists quite quickly as they are promoted upwards. This is something that you should definitely check at the job interview. It’s always a good idea to ask what happened to the last receptionist. If the answer is that she was promoted to some higher position within the company, then the signs are good. If you receive an answer that the last receptionist, after five years with the company put arsenic in her Pot Noodle as the only way of ending the tedium, then I suggest that you stop wasting everyone’s time and leave the interview as quickly as possible.
When you get your position as receptionist, take a while in order to get to know the ropes. The length of time this takes will depend upon a lot of factors such as how quickly it takes to pick things up and also how practical your education has been. At my school, it was thought to be far more useful to learn how to conjugate irregular Latin verbs than how to change the paper in the fax machine, so it took me quite a while to get to grips with the basics of how an office works. The litmus test as to when you are ready to move on with your marketing education is to ask yourself whether you are bored yet. When you are, then it’s time to start working on your hidden agenda.
The next step in the operation is to find yourself a friend within the marketing department. The friend does not necessarily have to be the head of the Marketing Department. In fact, this could actually work against you if you are not careful, turning other members of the department against you. As a result, it is probably better to choose someone a little further down the ladder that is working in the department and actually understands what it is that they are doing and is enthusiastic with it. Without being a complete nuisance, take an interest in their work and ask questions about what it is that they are doing. After a while, you should be able to develop a rapport with your chosen person, at which point start asking them whether there is anything that you could help them with. Unless the company which you work for is an overstaffed dinosaur, chances are that it won’t be long before your chosen person does get very busy at some point and needs a little extra help with some of the more mundane things that every department has to do, as marketing departments tend not to have a steady workload. The jobs that you are likely to end up doing are unlikely to be that exciting – you’ll be find yourself much more likely to be stuffing envelopes than developing advertising campaigns, but you’re only looking for a start at this stage. From then on, it is really just a case of continuing to offer your help and waiting. What you are waiting for is something to happen in the marketing department which will lead to some kind of reshuffle, which will lead to an opening for you.
So, to quote Bugs Bunny, “th-th-that’s all folks”.
For this bit of the blog anyway. I will be back tomorrow though with some fresh content (now that I have thought of some new to write)
3 Comments
September 27, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Despite the stats, I see so many high paying jobs posted on employment sites -
http://www.linkedin.com (networking)
http://www.indeed.com (aggregated listings)
http://www.realmatch.com (matches you to jobs)
I see 75K, 100K and 125K marketing jobs
January 20, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Hilarious and frightening.
I wonder if it means “all marketing is bollocks” or whether “most marketing is bollocks.” I hope the latter.
Or maybe it means “marketing” can be boiled down into “don’t be a dumbass.” If you can manage that, you’ll do fine.
January 20, 2009 at 8:09 pm
No, it would be wrong to say that “all marketing is bollocks”. Marketing serves a useful purpose in some instances. If you see some marketing for a product or service that the purchase of which would make your life better, then it’s been of benefit to someone.
It also seems as if the world economy growth is based upon convincing more and more people to buy stuff that they don’t really need. In the past few months, people have stopped buying stuff and the world is going to spiral deeper and deeper into recession.
This is what the world needs. Marketing people to make people want to buy stuff they don’t need and bankers to give them money they don’t have to buy the stuff!
No, the whole ‘marketing is bollocks’ theory just came from time in marketing myself when it appeared to me that most marketing was little more than ‘common sense wrapped up in bullshit’. It probably still is, I imagine.