Career Research Assignment Analyzing Employment Area of Marketing Profession
Question
Task: Prepare a report on career research assignment 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.
Answer
Executive Summary
The main purpose of the career research assignmentis to analyse the knowledge, skills and abilities requires for enhancing employability in the employment area of marketing profession. For this purpose, the report has first identified the general trends of the marketing profession. In this regard, various secondary sources have been used, such as, journal articles, published documents, internet, reports and others. In the next section, the personal skills, knowledge and experience required in the marketing field have been explored. For this purpose, both primary and secondary research has been used, where data has been gathered from various first hand sources. Furthermore, the skills and abilities present have been analysed with the help of reviewing a job advertisement in this area. Here, such skills are matched with the advertisement provided to understand the emerging roles and skillset in the marketing employment area.
INRODUCTION
It has become essential for students to understand their own strengths and weaknesses for developing valuable skills required for personal and professional development. The report here aims to display my knowledge, skills and awareness about the graduate employment area of marketing. My vision is to become a successful marketing manager within the first seven years of my employment. In this report, I have carried out both primary and secondary research for identifying general trends in the marketing career and understand the required skills, knowledge and abilities that I need to develop for my vision. The primary research has been helpful for gaining information from university seminar, guest lecturers, professional body and networking. In addition, i have collected secondary data from scholarly articles, newspapers, journals, internet, published documents and others.
Methodology
The researcher has undertaken both primary and secondary research for this career research report. In this regard, the primary research consists of various activities and events that I have participated in during the entire university course. These include University seminar, guest lecturers, professional body and networking. On the other hand, the secondary data has been collected from different sources like scholarly articles, newspapers, journals, Internet, published documents and others.
Analysis:
Heading 1: General trends which will impact on my chosen profession/industry
The marketing industry has been undergoing several transformations in the recent years with the changing consumer behaviours and rapid advancement in technology. There has been a growing dominance of customer in this industry as companies are now focusing on fulfilling the needs and wants of these targets through various products and services to gain increased profits (agarwaland wu, 2018). The increased use of marketing research based on both scope and quantity has been evident as it helps in understanding customers, competitors and key industry trends, thereby enhancing the quality of marketing output. Furthermore, the rise of computers and other electronic data-processing equipment has been evident for reporting data and management planning and control in marketing (budikova, 2014). Marketers have also been using test marketing for reducing errors in making any marketing changes.besides, global marketing planning has become essential with global customers of multinational brands. In addition, the strategy of field-selling is now shifting towards profit-oriented marketing efforts.
Various other trends have been identified in the marketing industry that will be affecting its future. It is expected that complexity will increase in consumer purchasing decisions. Furthermore, companies will be focusing more on customization in both product design and communications because of big data technology, social media advertising and flexible manufacturing (turpin, 2016). Communications through mobile have emerged as the heart of marketing because of users with accounts on different social media platforms. Transparency will underlie the success of brand and customer relationship, personalized and data-driven marketing will become more prevalent and efficient metrics for measuring marketing performance will emerge (turpin, 2016). In addition, the marketing organizations are also shifting from digital silos to more integrated and coordinated teams. There are various marketing trends observed in 2020 include posts for direct shopping, virtual reality and augmented reality, interactive content, shopping on social media, focus on customer experience, search engine optimization, google ads smart bidding, personalization, video content marketing strategy, strategy of content marketing, and serp position zero (thomson, 2019; british council, 2021). It has also been observed from the primary research and job advertisements that social media marketing and tracking performance over these platforms is also an emerging trend in marketing. Besides, online campaigns, newsletters, marketing communications and content of marketing are also playing significant role for ensuring quality marketing tactics undertaken by companies (appendix 1; appendix 2). Thus, it is evident that digital technologies along with focus on customers have emerged at the forefront of current marketing trends.
Heading 2: The skills / knowledge and experience required
Various skills and knowledge are required for becoming a successful marketing professional in the competitive business environment. The five personal skills that must be developed in this professional are communication, interpersonal, empathy, networking and creativity (Appendix 1; Appendix 2). Marketing requires constantly interacting with the customers, building relationships with them, solving their queries and thinking of innovative ideas for retaining and attracting them. These strategies are essential for differentiating oneself from the competitor brands in the market. It has been observed from participation in various guest lectures, university seminars, training and other sources and reviewing the job advertisement that these soft skills have become of utmost importance for being more employable in the marketing profession (Di Gregorio, et al., 2019). Communication and interpersonal skills enable the marketers in staying connected and understanding the customers’ tastes, needs, demands and preferences. Empathy enables them to address their needs on an emotional and psychological level. Networking is required for gaining more customers and acquiring skills from experienced professionals in this industry (Di Gregorio, et al., 2019). In addition, creativity is also essential for enabling marketers to generate innovate ideas for reaching the target customers and building relationships with them through different tactics. Furthermore, two specific areas of knowledge and expertise essential for marketing professional as observed from the primary research and job advertisement are competitive analysis and research and social media marketing(Appendix 1; Appendix 2). It has become utmost important for marketers to gain knowledge and expertise in understanding competitors’ offerings, industry trends and customers’ demands and needs through proper marketing research and competitive analysis. These concepts should be understood for effectively formulating marketing strategies to keep competitors at bay and attracting customers. Besides, social media marketing is essential for marketers because users of these digital platforms are now readily available for communicating them about the brand and its products(Appendix 1; Appendix 2).In addition, knowledge about this marketing is required for enhancing the brand presence over the digital media platforms and further stay connected with the customers.
Evaluation:
Heading 1: Identified vacancy from marketing profession/industry
I came across the job advertisement of particity over linkedin about the requirement for a junior social media and digital marketing assistant. Particity is a b2b saas platform that works in the industry of automating manual tasks present in user and market research. The job is looking for an ambitious and self-motivated individual with an extensive focus on customer.
Heading 2: Why this job role is of interest to me
This job particularly interested me for various reasons. First, it is an entry-level role in the marketing team where I will not require any prior experience and instead will be able to help in developing the organization’s marketing. Second, I have a knack for writing which I will be able to utilize for generating interesting, useful and helpful content for customers and prospects of Particity. Third, this job opportunity will enable me to challenge my existing skills and knowledge and consequently, acquire new experiences as it is a start-up company. Fourth, I will be able to work with diverse set of individuals and work on my teambuilding skills that will be required in future career.
Heading 3: Relation to my potential choice of industry/profession
This job advertisement also related to my future passion for becoming a marketing manager. I will be involved in supporting to formulate marketing plans for the company for product evolvement and customer growth. I will also be able to learn more about brand awareness, customer acquisition and retention and come across essential strategies of doing so in the practical field. I will be involved in running and managing campaigns and measuring the marketing performance through key metrics of email, social and advertising. This will enable me to learn more about various aspects of digital marketing techniques. Furthermore, I will also be working in teams and that will improve my coordination and teamworking abilities. Besides, I will be handling various social media channels for the company that will help to further enhance my marketing knowledge that is essential for current marketing professionals.
Heading 4: Personal suitability for this position
I prefer this job opportunity to others because Particity being a start-up company will enable me to learn various things. The employees and managers are lesser in number as compared to other MNCs, which would provide me with the opportunity to working closely with such experienced professionals and gain more knowledge from them. Besides, I will face various challenges in enhancing the brand awareness of the company as it is new, which will help me to develop my problem-solving and critical thinking skills. Working with this company will enable me to learn new experiences through real-life difficulties. Alongside acquiring technical and theoretical knowledge and expertise about different marketing concepts, I will also be able to improve my soft skills that are essential for enhancing my employability in the professional life.
Heading 5: New/emerging job role within this profession/industry
In addition, this is also a new emerging job role in the marketing profession. This is because social media and digital marketing are the current marketing trends for attracting and retaining customers and establishing brand name in the market. These trends have been growing rapidly in this industry with technological advancements, increased use of Internet and large number of customers being on social media. Working as an assistant for social media and digital marketing area in the company will help me to build such skills and experiences.
Conclusion
The career research report focused on understanding the skills, knowledge, awareness and expertise required for key marketing professionals in the business world. In this regard, I studied about the marketing industry as I aspire to become a successful marketing professional in my future career. In this regard, I conducted both primary and secondary research for understanding the key current marketing trends and skills and knowledge required for achieving my vision. In addition, I evaluated such experiences by reviewing the job advertisement that I came across over LinkedIn platform
References:
Agarwal, J. and Wu, T., 2018. The changing nature of global marketing: a new perspective. In Emerging Issues in Global Marketing (pp. 3-11). Springer, Cham.
British Council, 2021. Five essential marketing trends. [online] Available at:
Di Gregorio, A., Maggioni, I., Mauri, C. and Mazzucchelli, A., 2019. Employability skills for future marketing professionals. Europeanmanagementjournal, 37(3), pp.251-258.
Thomson, C., 2019. Top Marketing Trends For 2020. [online] Forbes. Available at:
Turpin, D., 2016. Seventrendsthat will affect the future of marketing. [online] IMD. Available at:
