Job Searching in the Time of Corona
For many of us, it’s sometimes hard to celebrate the victories when there is still seemingly so much work to do and goals for us to achieve. So, let me begin there – I’m employed again! After several months of job searching, I accepted a job at NBCUniversal, leading a team of marketers driving engagement and viewership of NBCU content across its suite of cable channel apps, including: Bravo, E!, Oxygen, Syfy, Telemundo, and USA.
But to be honest, the path back to employment didn’t happen how I had originally anticipated, and certainly did not happen overnight. Throughout my time at Warner Bros., I had worked to shift from a marketing channel specialist focused mostly on CRM & editorial, to a marketing strategy generalist responsible for building 360-degree integrated marketing campaigns in support of brand, original series, and product initiatives. In searching for a new role, my original intention was to continue this functional evolution; I focused on brand & marketing strategy roles within traditional entertainment studios, direct-to-consumer streamers, and technology media companies.
Applying was a learning process in and of itself. From identifying my own hard skill gaps, to developing my personal brand more clearly both verbally and visually, I’ve come a long way in the past 6 months. Interviewing was no simple task either – continuously refining my stories and personal positioning to best align with the role I was interviewing for. But, throughout all that, fully realizing my evolutionary goal of moving into a more marketing generalist role continued to escape me. And while my new role at NBCUniversal is a specialist role focused mostly on CRM, the process has taught me some invaluable lessons.
Most importantly, success today in the COVID-19 job market relies heavily on your deepest functional experience. For me, I began my career in CRM, having launched, scaled, and optimized campaigns across email, push notifications, in-app message, and app inbox. It’s the area I’m able to draw from the furthest back into my career and provides me with a multitude of complex stories to pull from during an interview. In a market where there are many applicants and limited jobs, functional experience is the leading indicator for future success when making that hiring decision. And with that number of applicants, finding exact comparable functional experience in a candidate is easier than ever before for hiring managers.
Secondly, growth is never linear. Because of the evolution I had made for myself at Warner Bros., I often times put a large amount of pressure on myself to continue that into my next role. That meant a pretty narrow set of roles and companies I was applying for. I took functional work and company brand name as the key considerations, without taking into account things such as: network growth, management opportunity, leadership, and organizational growth. While my new role may not be the exact functional match I had originally hoped for, it’s important to take the time to appreciate my success, identify growth opportunities, and execute at a high degree.
As others continue to search for new opportunities in this stressful time, I hope my insights provide recommendations in your own job search. Identify your deepest functional experience, whether it be a specific marketing channel, platform, or hard skillset, and focus your search on those terms. Refine your resume around that functional area, diving as deep as possible into your work history to pull out those story nuggets that best highlight the true value you can add. Broaden your job search criteria and consider work outside your traditional expectations, understanding that there is value in every role. Finally, give yourself a break; take the time to enjoy the moments in life today we can control, whether it be a personal project, social time with friends & family, or ordering in from your favorite restaurant. Know that putting in the work, your time will come, and you will land where you are meant to be next – and from there you can set out to find new achievements to reach that ultimate goal.
