We understand the struggle, and we want to help.
Writen by James Alderman
Over the past 18 months, you may have seen me and my colleague, Matt, posting about marketing graduates’ difficulties gaining industry experience via LinkedIn. In addition, I have been offering to look at graduates’ CVs and inspire many of them to create their own digital marketing portfolio.
You might have also viewed my thoughts about these issues on my Instagram feed on this topic, and maybe you’re wondering why? Why am I doing this?
A simple answer to your question could be the global Covid-19 pandemic, but this is not the whole story. Yes, it’s been beyond heartbreaking to see all these talented marketing graduates without any job prospects drop off the radar. Almost overnight the graduate job market simply disappeared without any indication as to when it will bounce back, although we’re seeing green shoots now.
And yes, it’s been bitter reading personal stories of disillusion and disappointment on social media. Three years of hard work at university to achieve that 2:1 or, even better, a first (!), eye-watering student debt and expectations of exciting graduate jobs – all wiped out in a matter of days by a global pandemic that has dominated our lives for almost two years…
Today without digital? Will you have a tomorrow
Digital marketing graduates are the future of my industry. We can’t afford to lose that talent. There’s a real concern that graduate marketers have and will continue to slip through the net, having to pursue other jobs or careers to make ends meet. But the global Covid-19 pandemic is not the root cause of all problems faced by marketing graduates. The pandemic has only accelerated and accentuated issues that were already there. And this is another reason why I care.
The graduate market has been saturated for years now. More and more graduates have been struggling to get the increasingly elusive marketing job. Having university qualifications, but little to no industry experience, many have also often found themselves at the back of the queue when applying for non-graduate marketing jobs: competing with more established and experienced marketers, but also some of their peers who have chosen the apprenticeship route instead of the university route. To put things bluntly, being a marketing graduate, heck, a graduate right now is not easy.
We understand the struggle, and we want to help.
There are many people out there, on LinkedIn and other social media channels, who try to inspire others, but I feel that many do this incorrectly, by talking about themselves… their achievements, their job title, and their gains. Rather than talking about myself, my successes, and gains (what little I have of them!), I feel that I and all the other marketers who have managed to carve out a journey in marketing have a responsibility to help, genuinely help. We need to help these marketing graduates: we need to create opportunities for them so that they can show off their skills, apply themselves in marketing, improve businesses and our local economies.
We need to empower marketing graduates into action and that’s what Matt and I are doing at Lead Kinetics.
Marketing graduates are the next generation of marketers who can bring huge energy and talent to the table, and if we can harness these people, our industry, the industry we love and claim to be so passionate about, will be in safe hands.
Let’s keep fighting the graduate's corner.
Please get in touch if you’re a marketing graduate and need some advice or guidance and be sure to check out Lead Kinetics, we might just have a few solutions that can help you.