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1/1/2008 - How to Promote Yourself Effectively to Find Your Next Marketing Job
By Sue Kunimune
Self-promotion is the key to getting noticed by hiring managers. As a marketing professional, you’re better equipped for this than other job-seekers.
After all, you’re disciplined to learn the essence of your company’s business and the market’s needs and opportunities. Guided by this knowledge, you’re a passionate, effective communicator to prospects in the market. You use a variety of channels to promote the company’s unique vision and the differentiating benefits of its products.
Here are some important steps for effective self-promotion, using the lessons of marketing:
- Know yourself. First of all, get honest about what you want to do with your life. Discover your passion and what you bring to the table. Try www.assessment.com for a free career assessment.
- Find out how others see you. Do others really understand what you do and what you want? Conduct a little research. Go to five people you know and ask them to describe you. Be open to what you learn.
- Express yourself succinctly. If your friends are fuzzy about what you do or want, you need to hone your “elevator speech.” Summarize what you’re about in a few clear sentences that people can remember.
- Focus your resume on achievements. Relate your experience and skills in terms of problems you’ve solved for other companies.
- Differentiate yourself. Match your achievements and skill sets to the hiring manager’s requirements. This works especially well when you bullet-point them in the cover letter.
- Research your prospects. Hiring managers admire the candidate who has researched the company and the job.
- Be visible in all channels. Google your name and see what comes up. Network with executive directors, membership chairs and other leaders at professional associations and industry events. Ask for an introduction. Then speak, present or write. Build your webpage and tweak your key words so search engines pick you up. Join social networking sites like LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook. Put your resume on Marketing Ladders – it doesn’t cost much and recruiters go there.
- Be organized and consistent. Schedule time weekly to work on your visibility, your active contacts database or your promotional materials. A career coach can help you focus and stay motivated.
In today’s global economy, there’s lots of opportunity to get noticed by hiring managers. Start today by tapping your marketing expertise to effectively promote yourself in person, in writing and online.
Sue Kunimune is a BMA member and president of Littleton-based Kunimune & Associates Executive Search. Her company provides placement services for emerging companies seeking to fill professional to mid-management positions in direct marketing, Hispanic marketing and integrated marketing communications, including product/marketing, database marketing, account management and e-marketing.
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How to Promote Yourself Effectively to Find Your Next Marketing Job
Marketing Mirror - How to Promote Yourself...