How I Got A Job In Marketing With No Degree, Job Experience or Connections

Or; How thinking like a marketer got me a job in marketing.

Photo by Justin Luebke on Unsplash

“Entry level position: minimum 2 years experience.”

It’s a punchline that’s been plastered all over the internet since millennials came into the job market.

I was the butt of that joke when I graduated almost 5 years ago.

To make matters worse, Norway is one of the many countries where majors (and definitely the connections made while at uni/ a business school) play a big role in the job search, and I was trying to go against the grain.

I majored in Japanese(yeah, I know).

I was trying to do digital marketing in a country that has basically no business dealings with Japan(smart move).

Forget the experience, I wasn’t even in the right bracket to be applying.

Needless to say, I didn’t even land a single first round interview. For months.

I didn’t take it well.

I was already weighed down by the fact that I’d moved back in with my parents, and every ignored/rejected application seemed like the needle that would break the camels back.

I would wake up and spend hours to roll out of bed.

Barely able to deal with what my life had become.

When I mustered up the energy to read and reply to some job ads, I was left feeling as if I’d sprinted a mile every time I hit send.

Anxiety and guilt and bitterness and self-hatred seeped into cover letters and resumes, and made me seem even less hire-able than I actually was.

(I read back some of the resumes/cover letters that I sent back then, and I found a stray “I don’t even know why I’m doing this…money” in a resume that I had actually sent.)

Not exactly what an HR rep at a marketing agency would want to hear.

I made it out of this situation by the skin of my teeth.

I started applying to anything and everything, barely getting rejection letters and mostly just getting ignored.

Luckily my friend introduced me to a part-time Japanese teaching job, and because they’ll really hire anybody I worked in telemarketing for all of two weeks (selling radon gas measurement kits) and I decided “fuck the gatekeepers, I want to to do digital marketing, I`m just going to start doing digital marketing”.

But the fact of the matter was, I didn’t really know anything about digital marketing at the time, I just knew how to create websites.

I created a blog, blogged a lot, deleted that blog, created a new one, realized it wasn’t going to provide me a salary anytime soon, submitted a few article ideas to sites that openly advertised that they were looking for writers (and were going to pay them) and had 1 idea accepted.

The company that accepted my article would more or less go up in smoke due to a Google algorithm change and punishing members of its guest posting network only a few months later, but PostJoint got me started for which I am forever grateful.

I doubled down, focused on finding interesting case studies to include in each section of my post, it ended up getting accepted, and I was officially a “professional writer”.

100$ had never felt better.

Then, I landed another gig, wrote two articles about WordPress for beginners at Tuts+ (thanks Tom for giving me a chance with no experience) and the webmaster of a competing website later emailed me about writing for him.

I got a few more emails like that, and all of a sudden I was regularly making >$500/month from writing.

Digital nomad?

By this point I was involved enough in the “making money online” space that I knew what a digital nomad was, and I made the decision to just go to Chiang Mai, as the income of >$500 would actually be enough to support me for a month there. (Whereas in Norway, it wouldn’t even be enough to pay for rent.)

I needed to get out of the house, and as far away as possible from the nicest, most accepting parents on this earth (who tried their best to not make me feel like I wasn’t a failure, and seemed way to content to have me living at home).

I found a cheap one way ticket, and took a leap of faith.

I spent the next few months in Chiang Mai, learning to enjoy life again, building up broken confidence, and writing more articles about WordPress than I even want to think about.

Turning point

The drudgery of writing up articles about the same (or similar enough) topics began to bother me, but I really liked life in Chiang Mai and wanted to stay, so I got a job as an English teacher to get everything above board.

Fast forward 3 years, and now I`m working at a digital marketing agency in Tokyo.

How did I get here?

I didn’t make any meaningful connections in the industry, and adding “English teacher” didn’t exactly make me more hirable in the industry.

Through another period of extended job search, I learned to completely change my approach to applying for the job, and ultimately landed two positions.

Want To Be A Marketer? Think Like A Marketer

When I was failing in my job search, I was too focused inwardly.

I’m smart.

I’m creative.

I’m good enough.

I can definitely do this job better than a graduate with the right degree, because I`m just that talented.

Me. Me. Me.

I didn’t take the time to consider my target audience.

What does an HR rep/Director at a small marketing agency want to see?

What would be enough to offset the fact that I don’t have official job experience in an agency setting or even a degree?

Why do they want experience/a degree in the first place?

They simply want to see that I’m able to do the job.

Showcasing my experience in the right way

But how could I show that using my resume?

“2+ Years Teaching English in Thailand.”

Probably doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in someone who is hiring for a marketing position.

So I focused on my freelance experience.

I showcased my skill set and achievements in a way that better translates to someone who`s looking for a marketer than a straight up portfolio.

Instead of simply listing sites I had written for in the past, and websites I had created, I cherry picked a few and dived in deep.

I rewrote my resume from scratch focusing on accomplishments including relevant statistics.

I featured my best articles, under job responsibilities detailed the process I used to routinely create some of the most visited articles: using buzzsumo to do competitor research and analyze viral content/doing keyword research using different tools/ using Google Analytics to see bounce rates & other data to optimize content.

What does this show? Analytical thinking, dedication (I could have just turned in random articles that met the word count), and creativity.

I used statistics to demonstrate the impact of my writing. (Instead of “most viewed article” I listed it in % of total traffic, etc.)

But again, if I`m competing with people who have much more impressive portfolios, or a degree in a related field of study, I might be stuck in the same situation of not even making it to the first interview.

So I decided to go where there`s a demand for other skills that I have.

Language skills that I acquired through the bachelor degree that I cursed ever getting from January 2012 until fairly recently.

Follow the demand…

Tokyo.

With my Japanese/English skills, I felt I would have a unique profile in Japan that would stand out from the noise.

So first I came to scope everything out.

Could I really enjoy living in Tokyo?

During last year`s summer break (I was still teaching in CM at the time, yay for 2 months paid leave!) I decided to test the waters.

I took the train in the morning, stayed in a sharehouse, and basically went through what a normal day would look like (without the work).

I enjoyed it. A lot.

I also spent the time interacting with people I knew in Tokyo and asking them how they thought I should approach job search, and their advice was mostly to just show up and start applying (rather than applying from abroad) as 99% of Japanese companies won’t hire without in-person interviews.

Staying in Tokyo for that week left me with a feeling of “I could definitely live here”, and I decided to quit my job.

After spending a month back in Norway to sort out my visa and catch up with family after spending an extended time abroad, I went back to Tokyo, translated my new resume into Japanese and had it checked by multiple Japanese friends, and got the okay.

This was good enough to get hired, apparently.

Better distribution

Now all I needed was distribution.

And at first I failed again.

I searched for and responded to job ads, just like what didn’t work for me the first time.

While there’s nothing wrong with responding to job ads, it gave me extremely limited distribution with a lot of competition.

How could I get my profile in front of more “potential buyers”?

How could I get my “ad” in front of the right people?

Recruiters.

I searched out a wide variety of recruiting firms that dealt with digital marketing in Tokyo, and simply started adding them and messaging them on LinkedIn or by email.

I went from one interview here and there, to multiple interviews a week, and finally made it past the first round at a small digital marketing agency, as well as for a bigger game company.

I passed both final interviews, and had to choose between better money at the game company but a job description of translating mobile games for 10 hours a day, or a foot in the door of the career I`d been gunning for since I was 20.

Needless to say I`m working happily ever after at the smaller agency (Goto Brand Inc.) in Tokyo.

What I Would Do Differently Today

If I had the opportunity to do it over again, I would start from a lot more solid foundation.

Start From Market Research

The problem with my approach was that I based all my efforts on assumptions.

(Luckily, enough of them turned out to be right for me to get hired, so the end result isn`t all bad.)

But I could have started from solid data.

I could have simply reached out to some HR people at different agencies and asked to pick their brains about the kind of talent they are looking for.

If you are wondering how to find HR people for specific companies, you might have just had to cold call in the past, but in the linkedin age it is painfully simple.

Google this: “Agency name” + “recruiter” + “Location” + “linkedin” or “agency name” + “talent” + “Location” + “linkedin”

And you`ll get a lot of good leads.

The first piece of good news here is that there is almost a 100% of them accepting your request, since their job is basically having a wide network.

The second piece of good news is that for some recruiters, meetings/coffees are part of their KPI that needs to be met on a monthly basis.

While a lot of the results toward the top are “important people”, once you get to page 2 and 3 there`s usually people who will be more than happy to give you the time of day as a student or new graduate or whatever.

Meet them for Coffee, ask them questions about what they look for in a resume/profile, what kind of experience they prefer, or even, what you would need to do be an attractive talent for their agency.

There’s really no downside here, and plenty of upside.

This ties into my next step.

Narrow Down My Target Market

Look at what sort of work an agency is doing.

Research what their culture is like.

Befriend someone who works there and ask them about typical work days, client relations, career trajectories etc.

If a company can tell that you have gone the extra distance in terms of research, and that you’re invested in building a career with them, that helps you stand out from people mindlessly applying everywhere. (Guilty as charged.)

Work For Free To Get Experience In Various Fields

One of the mistakes I made when I first started freelancing was sticking to just freelance writing.

My goal was doing digital marketing, so how did I end up just becoming a freelance content writer?

The reason? It`s a lot more straight forward to develop a writing portfolio than it is to develop a portfolio of having managed digital advertising campaigns for businesses.

There`s a lot less hard/cold selling involved.

I would start with small local businesses and simply point out what they either aren’t doing at all that could help their business, or what they are doing incorrectly.

Social media management, Facebook ads, Google AdWords, you name it!

Throw away pride

One of my biggest flaws is how proud I am.

When I have the time and space to sit quietly and think and analyze, I am firmly aware that I am not special, that there’s no basis for pride, and sometimes I convince myself that I’m humble.

And yet, I’ve made a lot of big decisions based solely on pride.

Like not getting a part-time job when I arrived. (Not doing so cost me almost all of my savings.)

Like not asking for help from my connections faster.

If I was doing this again I would have thrown away my pride, asked for more help from the beginning and settled for a part-time job quickly.

Move faster

I would also have moved faster.

Getting a job should be treated with even more urgency than doing a job.

Hustle more

And last but not least, I would have hustled a lot more.

Gone to every kind of event in my industry, prepared business cards, and connected with as many people as possible.

Reached out to companies directly, both big and small.

Worked for free to build up a relevant portfolio.

Done a lot more and been a lot more consistent throughout.

Don’t give up early

I’m definitely not in a position to give detailed job searching or career advice, but the one thing I can say is this:

If you have career goals that you have half or even fully given up on, stick it out.

You are not competing against invincible geniuses with perfect resumes.

The competition is surmountable.

The only thing standing in your way is your own actions.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this mammoth of a post. If you got anything out of it, please leave a clap 👏👏 so hopefully a few more people will be motivated to keep hustling.