Question
I am looking to advance my career in Marketing. I am currently doing Advertising Sales, which I’ve been doing for the past year and a half. I am pushing my resume out to all the employment sites and I am only getting responses for Sales jobs, which I want to transition from. I have attached my resume. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Answer
Looking over your resume, I believe that you are getting more responses from the sales side than from the marketing side because, even when you list “marketing” in the position titles, the descriptions of your responsibilities don’t entirely support that claim.
Since it doesn’t look like you have a lot of traditional marketing experience, there are a couple things that you should do. First of all, you need to decide what type of role within a marketing organization you would like to play. Given your background in sales and, to a certain extent, customer support and office administration, it might make the most sense to look at positions as a marketing coordinator or in account services.
Of course, even if you pursue those positions, you’ll need a resume that speaks to marketers. If it is too much of a stretch to re-cast your current or past experience as marketing experience, then you need to work on getting more actual marketing experience on your resume.
Since the marketing and sales groups in most companies either work closely together or are dependent on one another, you may be able to use your contacts in the sales organization to uncover contacts in marketing. Those contacts in turn can either help you get work that you are qualified for within the marketing organization, or advise you more specifically on what you would need to do to make that possible.
I would strongly encourage you to speak with the marketing folks you know or ones you can get to know within your current circumstances. Without the experience that marketing hiring managers will expect to see in applicants for marketing positions, these personal connections will be your greatest asset.
Matthew, T. Grant, Ph.D., Aquent