If you’re a marketing student about to graduate, a job-seeker considering the field of marketing, or someone who’s looking to advance in their marketing career, this report is for you. Marketing is an immense, growing, and well-paid field, and is one of the few where credentials and alma mater mean far less than quality of work and level of knowledge.
Over the last three weeks, 734 marketing professionals took a 10-question survey to help those seeking to enter the field. Thanks to their thoughtful responses (the avg. survey took ~13mins to complete), I’ve been able to assemble the superb data below, data I believe can help thousands of up-and-coming marketers be better prepared for the journey ahead.
Sections in this document:
- Where respondents work & how they started in marketing
- Hiring expectations for the year ahead
- Skills most essential to getting hired
- Activities with the most career impact
- Curated advice from the respondents
For those interested in a segment-able view of the responses, the kind folks behind Porter Metrics have put together a Google Data Studio document with filter options.
Where Respondents Work & How They Started in Marketing
The professionals who took the survey cover most broad segments of the marketing field: in-house, consultants, and agencies. Both B2B and B2C brands are well-represented.
The survey also asked about respondents’ role in recruiting and hiring. 42% are directly responsible for marketing hires in either a management or executive role, and the remainder work on marketing teams or have marketing responsibilities, even if they don’t directly recruit and hire.
Remarkably, a full 40% started in the field with no formal education nor employer-provided training. Only a quarter of marketers graduated college with a relevant degree!
This is especially remarkable when considered alongside the broader economic analysis (in the United States, at least) estimating that most job growth and especially job growth in professional fields (like marketing) will require a college degree at the least.
It may well be that marketing is one of the few professional fields where self-taught entrants can compete at a similar level to those coming out of a degree program. This should also serve as a powerful reminder to recruiters and hiring managers NOT to require degrees in your job applications, or you’ll cut out a significant portion of the field’s talent.
Personal note: I myself do not have a college degree, yet have found a relative degree of success in the marketing field 😉
