Question

Topic: Career/Training

Entry-level Career

Posted by Anonymous on 5/1/2009 at 11:37 PM ET 75 Points
In regards to a marketing career, should a candidate take a entry level position in a good company for a low salary that wouldnt cover personal expenses or should a candidate keep looking for other opportunities, given that the first option has a decision closing date?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by telemoxie on 5/2/2009 at 8:59 AM Accepted
    keep looking.

    If you continue to have difficulty finding a job, send me an e-mail (my e-mail address is on my profile) and I will help as much as I can. Take care.
  • Posted by mktgcbb on 5/4/2009 at 12:25 PM Accepted
    If you can't cover your expenses comfortably on the salary offered and you have enough savings or support to keep looking, do so. In my experience (from looking for work and hiring), your future pay will be paid based on what you make going in. And if you go in at entry level, that's what you'll be seen as. If you accept 30K, it will be hard for anyone to see you in the $75k position no matter how long you've been there or what you've done. Not to say you won't get promoted but you've set your employers expectations of you. That said, if you don't have the experience beyond entry level, you should probably consider an entry level positon and tough it out for a year or so--learn something and then move on with a bolstered resume. The best way to get a raise is typically by bringing your experience to a new company who needs your skills.
  • Posted on 5/9/2009 at 5:01 PM Author
    Thank you all for ur comments. They proved to be very helpful.
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 5/11/2009 at 11:57 AM Member
    Hello, whoever you are.

    Read this very carefully.

    If you have an offer in hand, take a job wherever you can find one and work hard.

    It's what you "do" for the "good company" that will set you in the best stead for your future, not what you might do for whoever else might be there to catch you in six months time, which could be no one.

    You're probably way too young to remember Randy Bachman.

    But with BTO, he sang about love with the words "Any love is good love, so I took what I could get!" It sounds cheesy I know, but the same rule applies with your first job out of college.

    If you're a recent graduate, get used to this one point now: in college, you learned theory and how to pass tests for a grade.
    In the real world, with real people on real projects, your mettle
    will be tested in ways you would never have dreamed possible in the classroom.

    The brutal reality is that a good 50 percent of the people studying marketing, and who then go out into the world to "be marketers" have, in my opinion, no business doing so.

    I say this because for many marketing types, they simply want the flash car and the fancy suites, and because they see themselves as having a great chance with some good looking office "hottie" because they work in marketing, with all its mystery and pizzazz.

    That's not marketing, that's a fantasy.

    Marketing's role is to drive sales, to turn prospects into customers, to turn shoppers into buyers, and to make the sales curve defy gravity by ensuring that what goes up stays up, or at the very least, that it's kept aloft by meeting people's needs.

    As a marketer, your job with this "good company" will be to help solve people's problems, problems that can only be solved by the application of the product or service the "good company" is supplying or offering.

    Which means?

    Which means forget the money. Screw the expenses. At least in the short run. If you work hard and do a good job for this "good company" you will be rewarded.

    Most recent graduates expect the wind, the stars, and the moon, plus a huge salary and a corner office.

    Hello? Knock, knock? Anybody home?

    There are other, way more talented and far more experienced people in line ahead of you, so take a number. First, BEFORE all that, you, my friend, have dues to pay. Which means working your passage, proving you've got what it takes, and impressing people, your new boss, and your new coworkers by doing your best, and then by giving even more.

    For this, you will be rewarded. But it takes time. Slow down.

    Good luck to you.

    Gary Bloomer,
    Wilmington, DE, USA
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