Applicants and interviewers see 'marketing job credentials' very differently
Hi there.
I'm Josh from 'Marketer Haven', an information blog for junior marketers 😃
There's a set of questions I always get from people preparing for a marketing job who don't have a senior marketer around them, or who didn't major in anything related. They're all about 'marketing job credentials' (what we call "specs" in Korea).
Most of them are agonizing over which of the many options to prepare and emphasize in their cover letters and portfolios: internships, part-time jobs, extracurricular programs, competitions, certifications, language scores, and so on.
But as I met people who have hired a lot of marketers, and people who are planning to hire them, I realized that their definition of a good credential is quite different from what job seekers imagine.
So today I want to go through the questions I hear most often about 'marketing job credentials' and my answers to them.
Q. Do certifications actually help you get a marketing job?
Let's start with 'certifications', the topic that always comes up in group chats for aspiring marketers.
The ones mentioned most often are Search Advertising Marketer Level 1 (a Korean certification), GAIQ, and Social Research Analyst (another Korean certification). To give you the conclusion first: 'nobody gets hired because of a certification.'
Of course, you learn the basic terms and concepts behind search ads, social ads, and GA, so having one is better than not having one.
But what hiring managers care about far more than a certificate is whether you understand 'why we should run ads' and 'in what context we should run them.' A certification alone is a poor way to prove that kind of ability or experience.
So if you're preparing for a marketing job, I recommend building the marketing-adjacent experience and track record of results I'll describe below first, and picking up a certification later when you have time to spare.
Q. Aren't Python, ADsP, and data analysis skills important these days?
Like certifications, paid online courses and academies have been selling Python and data analysis classes "for marketers," and plenty of job seekers are studying them.
I did the same while job hunting. I watched courses like "Python for Everybody" on NAVER Boostcourse (a free online course platform run by NAVER, Korea's largest search portal) and wrote them up on my blog.
But again, in practice there are many cases where you can't actually use it.
The reason is that unless a company is fairly large, data can be managed at the level of Excel and spreadsheets, and when something beyond that is needed, you use a dedicated solution.
And once a company gets bigger, there's a separate data team or data specialists, so the marketer often doesn't have to do it personally anyway.
Q. Do competition awards, and even failed attempts, help?
There are fewer of them than there used to be, but competitions are still a strong marketing job credential.
That's because they fundamentally require a combination of 'planning', 'research', 'logical thinking', 'deck production', and 'presentation skills.'
Winning any competition is evidence that among a pool of similar people, you were better at one or two of those abilities.
That said, if you entered as a team, actual skill varies enormously depending on how much each person contributed, so even if you pass the document screening you can get filtered out in the interview.
That's why I still encourage college students to enter as many competitions as they can. But from a job seeker's point of view, many are afraid of the risk that 'if you lose a competition, you get nothing.'
It's true that competitions are a structure where a handful of winners take everything, and if you don't make the finals it's hard to even know 'why you were eliminated.'
To be fair, the same applies to marketing work in the real world...
Back in college I found my own strategy to deal with this problem, and ended up winning six or more out of roughly ten competitions I entered.
If I get the chance, I'll turn that know-how into a post and share it.
Q. On internships, bootcamps, and extracurricular programs
These days it seems like a lot of people start building practical experience like internships and bootcamps the moment they enter college, aiming to get hired fast.
Most of the people whose portfolios I've reviewed had put together three or more such items before landing a full-time job.
Occasionally someone asks whether it's better to do as many extracurriculars as possible.
Honestly, I'm cautious about answering this, but I don't think the sheer volume of projects you've done automatically translates into quality.
Internships, bootcamps, and extracurriculars have become so common that in many cases simply having participated isn't enough of a skill to put in a portfolio.
On the other hand, people who went through a lot of trial and error during those programs and came back with results or insights nobody else could have, sometimes only need one or two such experiences.
When I look at what these people have in common, what stands out is that they took ownership and immersed themselves, even in an internship or bootcamp.
When someone treats these activities as just another line on a résumé for the "real" job hunt, I've noticed that their portfolio ends up without any particular story either.
This might sound like old-man advice, but I'd encourage anyone reading this to approach internships and extracurriculars not as one or two lines on a résumé, but with the goal of getting a 'full-time offer.'
That's hard to pull off in programs run by large or mid-sized corporations, of course, but at startups and small brands it's entirely realistic, and I've already seen plenty of cases around me.
Building 'your own weapon' for the marketing job hunt
According to one survey, 'marketing' is the role that receives the most entry-level applications.
But relative to the size of a typical company, marketing is not a role that needs a lot of people.
So to become a marketer, especially an entry-level one, you need to build a weapon that sets you apart.
As the points above suggest, experience and skills that everyone else has too can earn you bonus points, but they rarely become 'the reason to hire you.'
That's why I've been compiling, through Marketer Haven, projects you could take on yourself.
The main ones look like this.
I'll do my best to share these through the points I've actually experienced myself, and I plan to keep developing them by gathering input from people around me who have hired a lot of marketers.
Want to hear when something new is out? Subscribe to Marketer Haven and get the latest content.
I'll keep delivering information that helps with your job hunt and career growth. 😄
Thank you.
What is Marketer Haven?
A haven means both a place of refuge and a harbor.
This blog exists to share information with junior marketers struggling with job hunting and career management, and to cheer on their start.The goal is to publish at least one piece of content every week 😀
❓ Ask Josh a question 1:1 (KakaoTalk open chat; KakaoTalk is Korea's dominant messenger)
☕ Buy Josh a coffee (via Toss, a Korean payments app)
