Career Viewpoint Assignment: Future Planning To Become A Successful Marketing Personnel

Question

Task:
This career viewpoint assignment involves preparing a report to demonstrate an awareness of the knowledge, skills and experience required by a recent graduate to enter a chosen area of graduate employment.

OVERVIEW
Prepare a report demonstrating an awareness of the knowledge, skills and experience required by a recent graduate to enter a chosen area of graduate employment. The research required to prepare the report will support you in your future career planning and decisions. This report will provide the basis of the information for your self-reflection and career action plan report.

THE TASK – WHAT YOU ARE BEING ASKED TO DO

• You are required to identity an area of graduate employment that you would consider for when you leave university. This could be EITHER a profession (for example marketing/Finance/Accounting/HR) OR an industry you are interested in (for example retail, sports & leisure, public sector, not-for-profit, travel and tourism.) Your research should be either in an area you aspire to work within or maybe an area that you want to understand more about.
• Your research in your chosen profession/industry should include likely future trends in graduate recruitment, and should equip you with the knowledge to write a summary of the key skills, knowledge and experience expected from graduate applicants.
• You are encouraged to use both primary and secondary research for this assignment. Primary research might include attending events run by the careers team, and/or events run by the professional bodies, or else through personal contacts. It might also include information from the guest lecturers for the module. You could consider talking to managers at work, if you have a parttime role, or else friends and family to enhance your understanding. Include in the appendix a log detailing who you contacted for primary research.
• Having identified the profession/industry, you are then required to identify one current job being advertised that you would be interested in applying for in the future. This will form the basis of the second assignment. The advert should appear as an appendix, which you should refer to as necessary within your report. It is important that this is a graduate level job, and not one for an individual with many years’ experience.

Answer

Introduction
Understanding and being aware of own skills, knowledge and experience is of utmost importance for recent graduates like us for venturing into our chosen employment industry (Jackson, 2016). The career viewpoint assignment aims to identify my chosen area of graduate employment that would help in my future career planning and decisions. My professional plan is to become a successful marketing personnel working in the area of both advertising and campaigns in the near future. For this purpose, I have discussed about the general trends impacting the marketing profession, identified the skills, expertise and knowledge required for being a marketing personnel and further recognized an ideal job position in the marketing industry.

General trends influencing the chosen industry or profession
The marketing industry has been experiencing various changes in the recent years with the advancement of technology and rising internet penetration in different regions. It is facing the increasing pressure of innovation speed for responding effectively to various market changes and fluctuating consumer behaviour. In this regard, the concept of innovative marketing in this fourth industrial revolution has come into play. The innovative marketing has been classified under three categories of horizontal integration, vertical integration and integration of engineering support (Ungerman, Dedkova and Gurinova, 2018). Horizontal integration of value chain has coordinated all activities related to marketing in an enterprise, while vertical integration focuses on machine control in real-time. Lastly, integration of engineering support has helped in research, development, scheduling, prototyping and others. Thus, these strategies have been useful for bringing innovation in the marketing industry.

The fundamental purpose of marketing is comprehending customers’ motivation for using such insights for creating campaigns, promoting brands and encouraging them to buy products. In this regard, technology has transformed the way brands communicate and engage with the customers (Benady, 2014). Digital technology has changed three areas of marketing, namely, reach, speed and relevance of the marketing campaigns. Brands can now communicate messages through digital marketing faster and to specific target groups, thereby increasing the reach of the campaigns. Besides, people spend most of their time on laptops, mobiles and tablets, thereby making it challenging for the brands to connect with them in real-time through all these devices (Foroudi, et al., 2017). It also becomes difficult to develop campaigns that would be displayed over social media, e-commerce and advertisements.

The outbreak of the pandemic has made it essential for the companies to undergo rapid digital transformation that has impacted the marketing areas as well. Two of the most significant marketing opportunities identified in the year 2020 are developing better digital interfaces for the customers and creating go-to market business models (Moorman and Shkil, 2021). Other trends associated with this digital transformation in the marketing industry include building partnerships, investment in automation for enhancing virtual communication with customers, expanding into new geographical regions and improving market research and experimentation. Thus, marketers have been shifting from defensive to offense strategies for enhancing brand value and retaining existing customers.

The rapid growth of internet, mobile apps, social media and digital communication technologies has become an indispensable part of human lives. This increased use of internet and social media have further transformed consumer behaviour alongside how companies devise their marketing strategies (Dwivedi, et al., 2021). Social media and digital marketing have further provided various opportunities to the brands in attracting new customers, lowering costs, increasing sales and improving their brand awareness being constantly connected with the customers. This shows that digital and social media marketing have become the current trends in this industry, thereby enabling companies to reach their marketing targets at lower costs (Tiago and Veríssimo, 2014). Individuals spend considerable amount of time over online platforms for searching information about brands, products and others, which have made these technologies major part of marketing plans.

The required skills, experience and knowledge
Marketing professionals constantly stay connected with customers, partners, sales persons and other executives of an organization. This makes it essential for these professionals to possess effective skills, knowledge and experience for being successful in their work. Various personal skills that are essential for being an efficient marketing associate are basic soft skills, analytical skills, customer insight skills, ethical skills and core marketing skills. The requirement of these skills has been identified from both secondary and primary research. While the secondary research data has been gathered from different journals, articles and others, the primary data has been collected from the interviews and job advertisement (Appendix 1; Appendix2). Basic soft skills such as adaptability, taking initiatives, flexibility, motivation, verbal and written communication skills, team-working abilities and stress resilience are required for enhancing employability in the marketing industry. These skills are of utmost importance for building relationships, expanding network and work with others in the organization (Di Gregorio, et al., 2019). Furthermore, analytical skills consist of different capabilities and knowledge of graduates that enable them to undertake data analysis, effective presentation and interpreting critical data. These skills are essential as marketing professionals are often required to deal with data-informed marketing, suing statistical knowledge and problem-solving techniques for synthesizing information into meaningful data (Saeed and Rashidi, 2017). Digital and technical skills are related to various technology-related capabilities, digital market knowledge and other specific skills required for carrying out regular marketing activities in this rapid growth of digitalization and technology advancement. These skills help in meeting the current and emerging job requirements of marketing industry (Chowdhury and Anon, 2021). Besides, core marketing skills involve creative thinking ability, understanding customers’ touch points, time management, precision and attention to details and planning effectively for achieving the marketing targets. In addition, customer insight skills are also important for understanding their tastes and preferences, analysing their purchasing behaviour and building long-lasting relationships (Bacon, 2017).

Furthermore, two specific areas of knowledge and expertise required for a marketing professional as evident from both primary and secondary research are developing local marketing campaigns and devising effective marketing strategies. It has become essential for marketing professionals to understand and develop suitable marketing campaigns for reaching out to the local people of the target markets (Paley, 2021). Besides, formulating suitable marketing strategies is another required expertise in any marketing professional for achieving the desired objectives within a stipulated time. Such effective strategies are required for not only retaining existing and attracting new customers, but also keeping competitors at bay in this highly competitive business environment. Moreover, forming local marketing campaigns prove to be beneficial in reaching out to large number of prospective customers that is otherwise not possible for companies in lower costs (Kotler and Keller, 2016). Thus, knowledge and expertise about developing local marketing campaigns and formulating effective marketing strategies are important for being successful marketing professionals.

Evaluation
I found the job advertisement of entry level marketing manager at Legion over the digital platform LinkedIn. The company has emerged as a leader in outsourced sales and marketing industry that focuses on generating businesses for its clients. The first reason for which I was interested in this job is because of its entry-level position requiring no prior experience as a graduate. The second reason for applying to this job was getting involved in the daily logistics and execution of local marketing campaigns, which would provide me with first-hand marketing experience. The third reason that got me interested in this job was its management training program being offered for enhancing my knowledge, skills and expertise.

The job position at Legion is in accordance with my future vision of becoming a marketing personnel and eventually climb up to the position of a marketing manager. I will be responsible for various in-store and local marketing campaigns, setting and distributing promotional collateral, working closely with the CEO, strategizing marketing and advertising and developing promotional staff. All of these activities will provide me with the exposure to the marketing industry and consequently, provide me with the opportunity of building skills.

Legion being a market leader in its outsourced sales and marketing industry will offer me the chances of growing my career and enhance both personal and professional development. In this organization, I will not only come across various critical and challenging situations but also be able to apply my skills in resolving them.

In addition to this, the importance of marketing managers is rising with increasing number of firms entering the industry. I will be able to work in the front line as a representative of the brand to build relationship between the consumers and corporate clientele, which will provide me with high exposure to the professional world. Thus, this will be beneficial for my future career growth and development.

Conclusion
The report aimed at identifying a suitable professional area for my future career. In this regard, my vision is to become a successful marketing professional in the near future. For this purpose, I first explored the general trends affecting the marketing industry in the recent years with special emphasis on technology and digitalization. Then, I came across a job advertisement of Legion on LinkedIn about an entry-level marketing manager, which made me interested in applying for the job. Besides, I also interviewed two personnel connected with marketing profession. Thus, these primary and secondary researches enabled me to identify the skills, knowledge and expertise that I need to develop for my future career.

Reference list
Bacon, D.R., 2017. Revisiting the relationship between marketing education and marketing career success. Journal of Marketing Education, 39(2), pp.109-123.

Benady, D., 2014. How technology is changing marketing. [online] The Guardian. Available at: < https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2014/sep/29/technology-changing-marketing-digital-media > (Accessed 11 March 2022)

Chowdhury, T.A. and Anon, N.Z., 2021. Exploring skill requirements of local and multinational companies for entry level marketing professionals in the apparel industry in a developing country. Journal of Global Fashion Marketing, 12(4), pp.359-374.

Di Gregorio, A., Maggioni, I., Mauri, C. and Mazzucchelli, A., 2019. Employability skills for future marketing professionals. European management journal, 37(3), pp.251-258.

Dwivedi, Y.K., Ismagilova, E., Hughes, D.L., Carlson, J., Filieri, R., Jacobson, J., Jain, V., Karjaluoto, H., Kefi, H., Krishen, A.S. and Kumar, V., 2021. Setting the future of digital and social media marketing research: Perspectives and research propositions. International Journal of Information Management, 59, p.102168.

Foroudi, P., Gupta, S., Nazarian, A. and Duda, M., 2017. Digital technology and marketing management capability: achieving growth in SMEs. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 20(2), pp. 230-246.Jackson, D., 2016. Re-conceptualising graduate employability: The importance of pre-professional identity. Career viewpoint assignment Higher Education Research & Development, 35(5), pp.925-939.

Kotler, P. and Keller, K.L., 2016. A framework for marketing management (p. 352). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Moorman, C. and Shkil, B., 2021. How COVID-19 Changed Marketing. [online] CMS Wire. Available at: < https://www.cmswire.com/digital-marketing/how-covid-19-changed-marketing/ > (Accessed 11 March 2022)

Paley, N., 2021. The manager's guide to competitive marketing strategies. Routledge.

Saeed, K. and Rashidi, Z., 2017. Essential employability skills for marketing careers: gap analysis of education and profession. Pakistan Business Review, 19(2), pp.302-319.

Tiago, M.T.P.M.B. and Veríssimo, J.M.C., 2014. Digital marketing and social media: Why bother?. Business horizons, 57(6), pp.703-708.

Ungerman, O., Dedkova, J. and Gurinova, K., 2018. The impact of marketing innovation on the competitiveness of enterprises in the context of industry 4.0. Journal of competitiveness, 10(2), p.132.

Appendices
Appendix 1: Primary Research Evidence

Appendix 2: Relevant job advertisement