How To Get A Digital Marketing Job Without ANY Experience

Hello and thank you for taking the time out to read this short Digital Career Tactics article – the tactical career advice articles that are all about getting the best job prospects – FOR YOU!

In this article, we will be exploring how to get a job in digital marketing without any experience.

Now, having just read the above, you’re probably thinking ‘that is mad’, we’ve gone away with the fairies, but bear with us because you can get a digital marketing job without any experience – and this is how. First of all, you need to self-reflect, grab a pad of paper, pick up a pen, and start jotting down the things you think you’re good at with digital.

What Are You Good At?

Ask yourself these types of questions… ‘are you good at constantly making Instagram stories or TikTok videos?’ If so, good – get them written down.

Ask, ‘are you good at streaming games from your Xbox and whacking them online?’ – if so, jot it down. How about, ‘are you good at image editing on Adobe photoshop or writing your opinion about something for your blog?’ If so, good – get it written down. Keep exploring areas that you think you are good at with digital.

OK, so you have your list. Now, more than ever, you’ve got to be a realist about this – some of you might have long lists, other might have shortlists (oh err!) but, that’s not the point – the point here is that list will help you determine what you could offer an employer right now. Don’t be discouraged, there’s always something you can offer, you just now need to look at how to transfer these digital skills into something that can work for businesses. In truth, it’s not that hard.

It's Who You Know

So, we’ve just looked at what you already know, but now we need to look at who you know and what to do if you’re a billy no-mates (like us) and you desperately need more friends. GET ON LINKEDIN! I repeat – YOU NEED TO GET ON LINKEDIN! ( Yes, we’re shouting this in capitals!)

If you’re already on LinkedIn, well done – but I suspect you need to work harder on it. For those of you that haven’t got a clue what Linkedin is, or you think it is a platform for crippled old GEN Xers and Boomers (like us… well, you’re right partly right) but also very wrong too.

When you’re starting out with little or no experience, who you know can be just as important as what you know. In this article, we are not going to tell you how to set up a LinkedIn account if you don’t have one – you should have enough about you to research that for yourself, and there are bucketfuls of tutorials on YouTube to explore.

Following and connecting with companies and individuals on LinkedIn in the field of digital marketing is where you want to start, just type in key phrases in the search bar such as ‘social media manager’, loads of results will come up. Once you have done that, send a little message with your connection request saying that you’re ‘just starting out’ on the platform and that ‘you’d be delighted to connect because you’d be keen to read their content and learn more about their job role’ – it doesn’t have to be a love letter, just keep it short and sweet!

Time To Show Off!

Finally, with LinkedIn, we recommend that you start posting your own content – show off your blog posts or your photo editing skills with a little description looking for feedback or tips from the LinkedIn community – more often than not people WILL help you out and check out who you are too – it’s a powerful platform. It is also worth remembering that it’s not unheard of for students and graduates to be offered a job off the back of their social media profiles.

You never know when these contacts might come in useful.

You can also comment on posts on your timeline, follow hashtags that you’re interested in, and comment on those posts too – build up an online presence.

So, you now have a list of transferable digital skills, you’re beginning to network and build relevant industry-related relationships… There’s a couple of things left to do.

Adjust Your Attitude!

We promise we are ‘not having a go’, but you have to change your way of thinking about looking for jobs, right now – it’s painful, but adjusting to the reality that job hunting is super hard at the moment will help you. Again, it should go without saying that the job market now is super-saturated and hyper-competitive – there are loads of people out there with shed-tonnes more experience than you – you need embrace that fact at the moment and get comfortable with it. Securing work is not as easy as it was 6 months ago – be realistic.

It is not ALL doom and gloom, far from it. In fact, not having that experience can work in your favour too – I know… you’re thinking we’ve floated off with the fairies again, but we promise you, we haven’t. Businesses actually want fresh ideas and fresh talent, they want to invest in people for what they can potentially do for them in the future – old GenXer’s like me with loads experience tend to demand more things such as a massive starting salary, a big car, and personal assistant and even a company credit card. Businesses don’t typically want that, they want new energy and the ability to get a return on their new investment (you) quickly.

You are almost at the last section of this article and this next bit fits nicely in with the ‘attitude adjustment you’re gonna give yourself later tonight’ – are you ready, are you sure?

Work Experience

Like it or not, at this current moment, work experience is a vital ingredient for getting a digital marketing job with no experience. Let’s first address the elephant in the room – typically with work experience, you will not be paid – you might get an allowance for expenses but on the whole, you do not get paid.

But be honest with yourself, right now you might not have an income – so all of a sudden work experience becomes a sound and solid option – a SMART option!

The reality is that businesses really value candidates that go above and beyond with work experience. It shows supreme dedication, a real hunger to want to do the job – businesses get all tingly and warm when they get someone who is willing to do work experience – they are a rare breed.

And don’t think that businesses see ‘work experience’ as a cheap option for them – they don’t. Taking someone on to do work experience requires hard work their end too… there’s training, support, staffing considerations, equipment, and all sorts of other considerations businesses have to think about. Yet, more often than not – those that do a month or so of work experience, get a job at the end of it, or at least get many more opportunities for an interview.

You might be wondering how you can get work experience in digital marketing…. well, funnily enough, we have a program called the Career Accelerator and when you join the Career Accelerator (which is totally free and easy) we work to place you in a work experience position (more often than not it’s remote/work from home) with a business that needs help with digital marketing. And, to add to that, at the end of your experience, you will get a very valuable employer reference, and potentially, you could land yourself a job with the business.

So there’s your edge, there’s your way in – that’s How to get a Digital Marketing Job without any experience. Thank you for reading, you’ll be pleased to know that these articles are numerous and daily, and most are accompanied with a podcast and a video, depending on how you like to consume your content.

Please do check those out and subscribe. We would very much appreciate you sharing them with your friends and people you know that could be looking for work in digital. Well, that’s all for now, see you soon in the next article.

Tagged: Digital Career Tactics

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