By Guy Williams, Early Career Tech Marketing Recruitment

Is it me, or are a much-higher-than-it-should-be proportion of internships for Marketing?

Most of the updates I see on Linkedin, or on job boards such as Indeed, seem to be for roles to do with content, social media, seo and so on.

These opportunities promise great exposure to tasks not normally seen at the entry level, and in return you’ll find it easier to apply for a bona fide marketing role further down the line. This is  because you’ll have the experience those jobs require – neatly sidestepping the perennial catch-22 of not having the entry-level experience required for an entry-level marketing job. Unless your own Instagram counts. Which often it does. 

It’s odd though, because I would say there are roughly ten main functions below the management level of most white collar organisations, eight of which are listed below in alphabetical order:

  • Administration
  • Finance 
  • HR
  • IT
  • Legal 
  • Marketing
  • Operations
  • Sales

When was the last time you saw an internship for an HR or Finance grad? 

The answer is probably never. 

I would understand if Marketing were easier to get into perhaps, or didn’t have professional qualifications, but if anything it’s the contrary. Marketing has a proper degree course at almost every university in the UK, whereas functions like Finance and HR seem to take grads without the respective Bachelor and let them complete their ACCA, CIPD and so on on the job. 

So if anything it should be the other way round. 

Which brings us to the why. Is it because marketing is deemed as fun? That because it can be enjoyable that companies think that people will do it for less? Or that they still don’t really understand it – that it doesn’t require proper qualifications because they’re not sure of its value or ROI?

One thing I do know is that continuing down this line will severely hamper a company’s diversity and overall performance as only certain demographics can afford not to be paid properly for their first job. Which means you end up with a team of lovely people who all think the same, which is bad for any creative team.

Another good assumption is that those companies which take marketing seriously and invest properly in their early career marketers will be the rising stars of the future if they are not already, as they will have a well-rounded talent pool in their marketing department.

And if that’s you, I’d love to speak to you.

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