Searching for your first job in digital marketing or making a career switch? This article provides comprehensive insight into the intricacies of preparing for a digital marketing job search, including understanding necessary hard and soft skills, developing a personal brand, and enhancing your portfolio with volunteer work or certificate courses.

Key Insights

  • Digital marketing jobs require a blend of hard and soft skills, including strong writing, understanding of SEO, adaptability, multitasking, and empathy.
  • Identifying your strengths and weaknesses in relation to necessary digital marketing skills is crucial before commencing a job search.
  • Building a personal narrative that summarizes your career goals and how you can benefit potential employers can strengthen your application.
  • Volunteer work in digital marketing can provide needed experience and serve as a portfolio for potential employers.
  • Developing a personal brand through blogging or regular social media posts can demonstrate your digital marketing skills and attract potential employers.
  • Enrolling in certificate courses, such as Noble Desktop's Digital Marketing Certificate or Social Media Marketing Certificate, can help fill in knowledge gaps and provide valuable feedback.

You’ve finished your digital marketing training, and it is time to look for your first job in the field. Perhaps this is a career switch and you have done job searches before but not in digital marketing, or maybe this is your first job search ever. Before you begin, take stock of your strengths and weaknesses, compose your story, clean up your social media accounts, get some feedback to help you feel more confident, and consider signing up for a certificate course. Here are some ideas to help you plan for and carry out a digital marketing job search.

Digital Marketer Skills

Digital marketing jobs require both hard and soft skills. Digital Marketers need strong writing and editing skills to create and manage content. Understanding how keywords, websites, and data analysis tools work is also important. Digital Marketers also need to know their way around social media sites and which ones will work best for a particular audience. They also need to know the difference between paid and unpaid ads and which works best for their company. Finally, Digital Marketers need to understand how to create persuasive emails that will bring customers to the website and get them to order.

Digital Marketers also need soft skills like patience because it takes time to see results. Plus, they need to be adaptable and able to change direction quickly to keep up with changes in search engines and social media platforms. Multitasking, or successfully paying attention to several tasks simultaneously, also allows Digital Marketers to stay on top of changes. Storytelling is another foundational skill for Digital Marketers to connect with customers. Finally, empathy, or the ability to put yourself in the customer’s position to understand what they want or need, also helps build and maintain that connection.

Read more about what skills you need to become a Digital Marketer.

How Do I Find a Digital Marketer Job?

When you are ready to begin the search for a Digital Marketer job, there are several steps you can take. Figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are, then decide how to promote yourself. If you don’t have any digital marketing experience, arrange to do some volunteer work or start a project on your own that you can promote. Get some feedback from instructors and colleagues to help build your confidence for your job search.

Many people find jobs listed on employment websites like Indeed and Glassdoor or social media platforms like LinkedIn. Others find internships through college or training programs. Networking is another successful way to find out about digital marketing jobs when you are starting out.

Assess Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Before you start to put together your resume or cover letter, sit down and figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are. It is difficult to tell someone why they should hire you if you don’t know the answer yourself. Digital Marketers need some primary skills directly related to the job such as:

Some secondary skills are useful too, and you can stress these if they are among your abilities, including:

If you find you are lacking in any areas that would help you as a Digital Marketer, consider signing up for classes to fill those holes.

Write Your Story

When you are looking for a job, you have to promote yourself. It’s a good idea to actually write it out in descriptive language, using detailed examples of times that you benefitted the company you were working for. In your narrative, describe why you chose a career in digital marketing, what kind of job you are looking for, what kind of company you want to work for, what you can bring to the company, and why you feel you would be a good choice for the position. You can summarize this for your resume and cover letter, and it will give you examples to draw on for interviews.

Volunteer

If you are looking for your first job as a Digital Marketer, it will be easier to get hired if you have some experience. If you have never worked as a Digital Marketer, arrange to do some volunteer work for a friend or an organization that needs help with marketing. Save screenshots and examples of your work and write up a description of what you did as a case study. This will show companies that you understand how digital marketing works and are ready to take on more responsibility.

Develop a Personal Brand

Another way to prepare to find a job as a Digital Marketer is to develop a personal brand and market it. You can create a personal brand through blogging, vlogging, or making regular social media posts and building a following. A website is a good place to practice digital marketing skills and test different techniques and is also an excellent place to put your portfolio.

When you are developing your personal brand, remember to be genuine and authentic. Honesty and integrity are important for your brand because people will find out if you are not telling the truth and that is devastating to a brand. Demonstrate your values and show why you are good at what you do. The foundation of a strong brand is trustworthiness, so be consistent with your principles and values, and your brand will flourish.

Give Your Social Media Accounts a Polish

Social media is another way to gain digital marketing experience. Open an Instagram account and post some content. See how people respond, both positively and negatively. If you want to learn to make videos, open a YouTube or TikTok account. Show companies you apply to what you can do.

Pay attention to your past posts. When you are applying for jobs, especially in digital marketing, it’s a good idea to go through your social media accounts and remove photos, videos, and posts that might make a poor impression on someone who doesn’t know you. You want to project a professional look, so get rid of pictures from drunken parties, Spring Break revels, and political rants. If you wouldn’t put it on your resume, consider removing it from your social media accounts.

Send the Imposter Packing

Many people suffer from a type of inferiority complex known as Imposter Syndrome. They fear that deep down they are incompetent and their employer simply hasn’t figured it out yet. This can be a serious barrier to a job search because you could telegraph that fear during an interview! Seek out feedback from colleagues, mentors, and teachers, and ask them to give you a realistic description of your strengths and weaknesses. You will probably find that others do not share your low opinion. Getting an honest critique from an instructor or peer can help you see where you need to improve and where you shine.

Get Feedback

As you prepare for your job search, you might find some gaps in your digital marketing experience. If you need to brush up in some areas, consider signing up for a certificate course to strengthen your skills. Many certificate programs like Noble Desktop’s Digital Marketing Certificate or Social Media Marketing Certificate include 1-on-1 career mentorship and a professional job search materials review. You get the chance to ask trusted teachers or professionals for feedback and help, and course assignments have been designed to give you examples of digital marketing to build up your digital marketing portfolio. Noble’s certificate programs also include a digital certificate of completion that you can post on your portfolio website or LinkedIn profile.

Learn the Skills to Become a Digital Marketer at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop offers many digital marketing courses that teach skills to help you switch to a career in digital marketing. Small class sizes and expert instructors help you learn digital marketing in in-person or live online classes. Plus, you can take a course over again for free at any time during the following year. 

Noble Desktop offers many bootcamps in digital marketing like Facebook Marketing, email marketing, Social Media Content Marketing: Blogs & Twitter, and Video Marketing: TikTok & YouTube. You can also choose the Digital Marketing Certificate or a Social Media Marketing Certificate course. Other Noble Desktop resources that can help prepare for a career in digital marketing include the digital marketing blog with valuable articles about social media marketing, SEO, and other essential tools for digital marketers.

Key Takeaways

Before you begin your job search, here are some things you can do to get ready.