Gain Experience

Gain Experience: Marketing

For complete information on internships, student jobs, research opportunities, extracurriculars, and more, review our starter tips to Gain Experience in all careers as well as the specialized tips on this page.

Overview

As a multidisciplinary craft, successful marketing requires a fusion of creative, analytical, and enterprising qualifications. Your coursework from UCSB can provide broad preparation for some of these qualifications, but it is advantageous to build upon your academics by seeking applied skills and related experiences outside of class. It is never too early to begin.

To start planning, the best strategy is to read full-time job descriptions for the specific types of marketing positions that interest you, and identify any frequently mentioned experiences or skills you need to gain to become qualified. If you do this while you are still a student, you can pursue experiences which develop the needed skills and experience for your career goals and enhance your resume. 

Qualifications Worth Gaining

A significant step to break into marketing is to gain at least two or three related technical proficiencies. Though marketing professionals have different specialty areas, they also share many common tools and techniques that are worth learning early in your career. 

Here are some common qualifications you may want to seek exposure to as you build a foundation of experience in marketing (note that there are many others as well): 

• Adobe Creative Cloud: Though not all marketing professionals are actively involved in production, it is helpful to understand how creative work is produced using this leading software package.
• Email Campaign Software: Email is one of the most common channels in which organizations reach customers, and there are hundreds of different softwares used to deliver these messages. Once you learn how to use one application, you can quickly adapt to most other applications. 
• Google Analytics: Often seen as the “language of digital marketing,” this tool helps organizations study web traffic, marketing campaign impact, and the behaviors of a customer base.
• Powerful Copywriting: Showcase your ability to grab an audience with sample ads which demonstrate the value of a product or service. Any medium or platform is acceptable, as long as you show your prowess for capturing attention.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): This is the process by which organizations use analytics to optimize their content in Google search results, to be easily found by a customer base.
• Social Media Marketing: Utilize your familiarity of social media platforms to take on marketing efforts in those sites on behalf of an organization. Build yourself beyond the basic level of experience that most people have with social media as users.

Types of Experience

There are many manners in which you can develop skills and experience outside of class. Oftentimes, you can take initiative to learn relevant skills through self-study (e.g., engaging in online videos, instructional books, and guides) or personal projects (e.g., starting a website, blog, or social media account and using it as a means to grow an audience about something that interests you). All of these opportunities can provide a chance to build your resume toward careers in marketing.

To see a few formal experiential opportunities to create relevant qualifications beyond class, click the items below.

Be sure to check out Handshake for all of the latest job and internship postings for UCSB students, and review our starter Gain Experience pages as well as our Job Search Strategies page for complete guidance.