For the past 40 years, I have been a marketing and marketing communications professional and teacher. I have worked as a marketing executive in health care, in video production, in higher education, and in software manufacturing. In that time, I have had many successes and a few failures. I have learned from my mistakes and from the mistakes of others. I have also hired my share of employees.
I have been a Chief Marketing Officer at a Carnegie Mellon University for-profit, iCarnegie, and a VP of Marketing for a group of physicians, Allegheny University Medical Practices (AUMP) with over 280 physicians in over 80 groups. I have also served as a marketing and fund development consultant and taught at colleges and universities in and around Pittsburgh, PA. I have taught “Marketing the Social Enterprise” as a full-time Associate Professor at the H. John Heinz College of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie-Mellon. The Heinz College is one of the top-rated schools of public policy and management in the world and its students among the brightest. I most recently serve as Communication Coach for financial engineering students in the Master of Computational Finance program (MSCF) at CMU. MSCF is consistently ranked in the top five such programs in the world. My students come from China, India, Japan, Italy, and other countries and they are among the brightest in the word. I work with them to help them succeed at networking, interviewing, and communicating on the job in financial institutions in America, Asia, and Europe.
Throughout the years, I have hosted many college students, both in my classes and in my offices, as student interns and full-time employees. I have looked at many eager faces, many resumes, and an equal amount of cover letters. I’ve interviewed hundreds of people in job interviews and mock interviews. And, I’ve seen just about every bad mistake that can be made by someone trying to get a job, especially a first job. By the way, I have also been out of work a couple of times and had to scramble to find a new job to pay the mortgage and the car payment, as well as the food and credit cards. Yes, I have been where you are, on the outside looking in, wondering how in God’s name to get a job. I’ve read the job sites just like you, typed cover letters, sent e-mails, and waited for the e-mail to ping or the phone to ring, wondering why the heck it hadn’t. I’ve seen the problem from both sides. I know of what I speak. That’s another reason why I am so qualified to talk about this subject.
When I taught marketing, (and I have also taught public relations, corporate communications, presentation skills, negotiation, advertising, and professional writing), I included a session on self promotion. It was the most popular session of the classes and it helped me achieve good student evaluations.
In my teaching, many of my students are intrigued by what I say. Many are dumbfounded, a few are outraged, and a few more think I’m crazy. What I present to my students, and what isn’t typical, I hereby present to you in these pages—fundamentals about how to get a job using marketing techniques, the same techniques that are used to sell the beer you drink, the cereal you buy, the cars you drive, the clothes you wear, and even the doctors you visit. These marketing fundamentals and marketing techniques help you identify yourself as a great product, differentiate yourself from your competition, and then sell yourself to a potential employer, based on the benefits you offer them, the needs and wants that you fulfill.
In the next pages, we’ll look at how to use tested marketing techniques to get a job, even if you’re still in college, how to evaluate the job market, how to examine the job sites, how to write a good e-mail and a good cover letter and resume, and how to interview well.
Ultimately, you’ll see that this is all common sense, not some academic voodoo. You’ll find that you really do understand marketing from the practical level. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out, just someone who’s willing to stand out in the crowd and not listen to the tired, old clichés being force-fed by some people that you should “do what everyone else does and don’t make any waves,” or “don’t look different.” This is the very worst advice anyone can give you about getting a job. If Procter & Gamble worked that way, they wouldn’t have as many leading products as they do.
As you will see in the following pages, you need to be unique, different from the competition, and offering some benefit to the consumer (the company that you want to hire you). You need to understand and relate to your market! You need to use marketing techniques!
So, hop on for the ride and see what you think!