Why Is It So Hard to Get a Marketing Job? Top 4 Reasons Why Employers Won't Hire You

Top 4 Reasons Why Marketing Employers Won't Hire You:

1. Industry Experience
2. Platform-Specific Expertise
3. Task-Related Experience
4. The Job Isn't Really Available

"There are so many Marketing jobs," someone said (they happened to be a non-Marketer). Some assume it must be pretty easy to land a Marketing job because of how many jobs are posted. When does it ever make sense to have one part of the equation without the other? For each Marketing job available, we'd need to know the number of people applying to really understand how possible or impossible it is to get it. That quantitative mathematical calculation would provide a percentage of the probability that an individual can land the job. The harder pieces to include are the qualitative, more subjective beliefs about you as a candidate as to why you will or won't get the job offer. In my experience, these are my top 4.

1. Industry Experience

Depending on how the hiring manager thinks there may be a question "Have you worked in ______ industry before?". Some decision-making personnel hire for specific Marketing skills, the actual qualities/experiences as a proven Marketer, while others may hire someone with lower levels of Marketing skills but compensate for that if the candidate knows the industry extremely well. Even if it's a hobby, a candidate may have immersed themselves in the industry -- I've seen it happen. Someone's personal background or interests can land them a Marketing Management job, which can be a powerful position overseeing the direction of the products or services that make up the company. Hiring a person with less Marketing expertise but with industry knowledge can be a tough pill to swallow for the rest of the Marketing team who may have spent years at the collegiate level obtaining degrees proving their worth or spending years of on-the-job experience to show their Marketing prowess.

On the flip side, many Marketers are hired in industries they know next to nothing about but bring their Marketing skills and thirst for learning to their new role in order to be successful. This is also where I personally think the existing subject matter experts (SME) already at the company should be a deciding factor in what's more important in a candidate: Industry vs. Marketing knowledge. If there are several current employees that have the technical knowledge of the industry, the Marketing folks can rely on their colleagues for help with the industry learning curve. However, if the company is lacking in SMEs, it may be better to hire for more industry experience.

Another previous industry experience question might be product vs. service. Either a product (a tangible, physical thing, a hard good) or a service (something someone does for you or a type of software) will be Marketed. I personally don't think it often matters if a candidate Marketed a product and then is interviewing for a role Marketing a service or vice versa. However, it's all about the person making the hiring decisions. To contradict myself, I can also see if the service is extremely complicated or technical, that prior experience with it demonstrates if the interviewee is likely to have adequate knowledge in order to perform well in their Marketing role.

Quite similar to the prior product vs. service and industry debates is the B2B (business to business) vs. B2C (business to consumer) experience. And let me add another to further complicate things, B2B2C (business to business to consumer). I've had interviewers show concern "Can you with your B2C experience be successful in a B2B role?". My answer is -- of course I can! Often it's the same activities (creating content, planning strategy, etc.) with an end-user consumer in mind compared to an employee who's at work with a business need. It's about knowing your audience and their pain points. We Marketers always have to learn end-user pain points with all of our roles and when we change jobs. If there's any confusion, an example of B2B experience can be explained by working at a Marketing agency where the goal is to reach other business owners or decision-makers as prospective clients of the agency. B2C is working for a company that is selling something directly to end-users/consumers of the item. And finally, B2B2C is a company that doesn't sell individual units directly to the public but sells in bulk orders to bigger box stores, like a Target or Petco, and those stores sell individual units to end-users. Amazon is an exception because many B2B2C manufacturers do sell direct-to-consumers (D2C) via that ecommerce platform in eaches, but their business model doesn't allow them to transact with one consumer without third-party involvement.

Some industries that stand out for requiring previous industry experience requirements are:

• Healthcare
• Hotels
• SaaS (software as a service)
• Financial
• CPG (consumer packaged goods)
• B2B/B2C/B2B2C

2. Platform-Specific Expertise

This could literally be a neverending list but I'll focus on some of the most popular. Platform-specific expertise requirements in job openings often mentioned are:

• CRM Platforms (Customer Relationship Management) -- Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk
• MA Platforms (Marketing Automation) -- Marketo, Eloqua, Customer.io, ExactTarget
• CMS Platforms (Content Management System for websites) -- WordPress, Drupal, Wix
• Email Marketing -- Klaviyo, Mail Chimp, Constant Contact
• Ecommerce -- Amazon, Shopify
• Social Media -- Facebook, Instagram, TikTok
• Project Management -- Monday.com, Asana, Click-Up
• Other Platforms -- Google Analytics, Google Ads, Canva, Adobe Express

And many, many more. Does it sound like a lot? Try becoming a Marketer ??

What's toughest about this is that candidates don't know which platforms companies they apply to are using (perhaps decided by someone who worked at the company years ago). It may be listed in the job description, but chances are the candidate is applying to several openings per day or per week. So if a job seeker wants to have a leg up, they could acquire different certifications for the various platforms, but they may also waste their time if the hiring company didn't choose to use that platform. In other words, if a job candidate goes ahead and gets a certification in HubSpot, there's no guarantee that a job they apply for will be using HubSpot's platform. Now, you've got a certification that's somewhat useless and a lot of time spent for nothing. These certifications can also be acquired after there's an offer and acceptance, of course.

3. Task-Related Experience

This is also an extremely long list. There are so many possible tasks one could assign a Marketing employee. From branding to product to SEO to more creative to more technical, it really runs the gamut. I don't know if there's a more varied job than Marketing, if there is please enlighten me in the comments. I love to hear out other perspectives and ponder.

Here are just a few task-related experiences Marketing job positions might require:

• Product launch/product lifecycle -- lots of project management or process documentation
• Ecommerce -- this is selling online
• Marketing Operations -- automation, analysis, optimization, efficiencies
• Affiliate/Partner/Influencer Marketing -- this is working outside the organization usually paying third parties for sales
• Consumer Insights/Market Research -- writing surveys, building out consumer personas, journey mapping, focus groups, etc.
• Content creation -- just about everything is content, some examples are copywriting (e.g., blogs, newsletters), collateral materials (e.g., print/digital brochures, sell sheets, presentations, infographics), or developing Marketing assets (e.g., images, photography, videos)
• P&L Management -- a strong financial background

There are also tasks that get thrown into some Marketing Manager job descriptions that are a standalone skill set, meaning in reality it's a separate job. It's really not owned by the same individual performing the many possible Marketing manager tasks. Although, Marketing management may be overseeing some of these roles so you'd want to know as much as you can about the functions.

Some examples of jobs that are above and beyond Marketing are:

• Graphic Designer -- making a logo and other graphics
• Paid Media Manager -- Google Ads, programmatic ads
• UI/UX -- user interface/experience needs, focused on interactions with design
• Web Developer -- website building, coding, and technical expertise

When thinking about all the previous examples from the platform-specific and task-related requirements, the bucket is overflowing on expectations for that one Marketing employee to possess, but then to also expect they are a graphic designer, paid media manager, or web developer? There are talented designers who went to art school, they are the best at the latest design techniques and they haven't launched products or email newsletters as a Marketer has. There are coders who have received a deep-dive education on how to code, not SEM. So, if there is no expectation for a graphic designer to run the SEO, or a website coding programmer to manage your social media influencer partnerships, why would there be an expectation for a Marketing professional to design art projects in Illustrator or to write code using Python, C++, or Java? As for Paid Media, this role stays busy optimizing paid ads for 40+ hours a week and nothing else.

4. The Job Isn't Really Available

There must be some benefits to forcing Human Resources to post open positions even though an internal candidate or referral has already been identified. I suppose that reason would be there is some sort of possibility an outside candidate can overtake the internal employee, however slight that it could actually happen. If the hiring manager already decided on the person they want, that can't be easy to change their mind. I think about all the wasted hours spent on everyone's time, internally at the company and externally for the candidates, on a job that really isn't available.

Another example of the job not really being available is when companies decide not to hire for the position after already posting the job, reviewing resumes, and/or going through rounds of interviews. It feels like a bad sign when the employer doesn't have their ducks in a row and this is another example of burned hours for all parties involved (employees and candidates) that they will never get back or any compensation. It's a reality of business that pivoting occurs if that is what to call this "Whoops! actually we're not hiring at all", but it's not an ideal situation for anyone.

One last scenario for this section is the timing and quantity of applicants. Often LinkedIn and other job search platforms show the number of applicants who've applied. If hundreds or thousands have already submitted an application, does it even make sense to apply at this point as if it were still possible to get an interview? If you're not one of the earlier applications, will they ever get to your profile if you're applicant number 1,001? This could be viewed as a non-existent job because there is probably no way the company is going to fairly and equally vet out this many people.

Perhaps some recruiting professionals or high-ranking senior managers could shed some light on the realities and whys of this scenario, I'm open to hearing the feedback -- post in the comments!

Conclusion

There can be many other standard factors I haven't discussed like years of experience, pay expectations, certifications or education, physical location versus remote, etc. that contribute to why you aren't offered the job. This top 4 list isn't all-inclusive but rather the more common, less written about, often subjective opinions. In my experience, these are huge and ultimately decisive reasons "why" a candidate won't progress in their job application. I recently came across an article Indeed wrote about why people aren't getting hired but it was very general and the reasons are more basic as if candidates are newbies at the job hunt and interviewing. In reality, lots of people are very experienced and going on interviews, changing companies several times throughout their careers. We need a deeper, more realistic explanation besides things like "you're showing a lack of passion, you didn't research the company, or you're lacking references". This is elementary stuff. Those reasons aren't helpful or realistic for many interviewees beyond entry-level.

Being an interviewer and interviewee myself, the question "Why do you want this job or why do you want to work here" is a common ask and evaluation of a candidate. However, I don't think it's among the top criteria or why someone gets the job. I wonder if that question does anything at all except rule someone out if they completely bomb it. Why do we really ask it? Nor do I think memorizing the company values or mission is the very top consideration surpassing the top 4 reasons you don't move forward. This can obviously be quite subjective depending on the person or company (such as Amazon where they really lean on their pillar statements) but visualize grouping all failed applications/interviews together and what would rise to the top as the most common reasons they're not considered for the role.

People like to say they hire for personality and attitude -- that does sound really good! But in reality, actually carrying out the hiring and interviewing activities, I don't think that's #1. It's somewhere on the list, sure, (and highly subjective) but it doesn't beat out the hard skills for many job openings. Let's assume more than one candidate can show a good personality for an hour-long interview, then what? In my opinion, it comes down to industry experience, platform-specific experience, or task-related experience (IF the job truly exists, of course).

Marketing can be a tough gig, it's overwhelming the long list of expectations that can be put on you to be an "expert" at. But also, Marketing is cool, you can pretty much change careers without really changing careers IF you can manage to convince someone to hire you.

Best of luck out there, Marketers! ??

#marketing #marketingjobs #thoughtleadership #pamthemarketer