The skills you need in order to get a position in marketing may differ a little for each company. But these basic ones will certainly help you succeed in any interview. Unfortunately, not many people understand that these skills truly need to be developed long before you start your job-hunting.

Empathy

Empathy is one of the skills that compile emotional intelligence (EI). It means that you understand other people’s feelings. The most reliable EI specialists agree that it is responsible for the ability to lead others, which, alongside with self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation, can help you get any job in marketing. Empathy is not hard to develop. Listen to other people, try to adopt their point of view. As an exercise, you can start a conversation with someone you don’t know whenever it’s possible. After some time, it’ll be much easier for you to communicate.

Social Skills

They are a part of EI, too. Social skills are very useful in the contemporary world of marketing. Any hiring manager would love to have a ‘people’ person on board, who is able to find a common language with the customers. Social skills should be trained on the daily basis. Like empathy, they require listening a lot. Besides, get feedback. Communicate with people and try to practice their behavior patterns.

Creative Approach

It’s a well-known fact that creativity means coming up with new ideas. For marketing, a new idea means a new market or selling something to new buyers. Creative marketers are very much wanted and wise employers often search for them even among university students every year. If you are one of the lucky ones who possess this quality, you’ll surely have no difficulty getting a job. If you are not quite sure, then you are to develop the creative approach to marketing as early as you can. Observe and get motivated by the best professionals in your area. Try to follow what they do to create appealing products from the simplest things. Read a lot, do some crafts, visit master-classes — all this will boost your creativity.

Analytical Thinking

Being creative is very important, but a good marketer should also have another type of thinking, an analytical one. It presupposes understanding market research data, the ability to draw the right conclusions from it, and the ability to analyze databases and statistics. You can easily obtain these skills in the process of education. So, take classes aimed at developing analytical thinking and do your best. Such classes should be based on combining creative process providing you with new information and analytically processing this information. Among others, these can be language courses, trainings, etc.

Social Marketing Skills

Yes, you have to possess social marketing skills already when you start working in marketing. One big trap for a newcomer, isn’t it? Where would you get the skills that are to be developed in the working process if you don’t have previous work experience? If this is the case with you, the wisest thing would be to mention (on your resume) some social marketing skills, such as SEO and SEM, as developing ones. Of course, those shouldn’t be the empty words. You should mention only the skills you really have tried to develop, learned about, or applied in your studying process by:

• optimizing mechanisms of working;
• analysis of large data volumes;
• estimating marketing effectiveness; etc .

Flexibility

The desires of a particular consumer may change quite quickly. The market consists of millions and millions of such consumers. So, how flexible do you think one should be to make some product meet all these demands? Flexibility has become one of the buzz words in today’s business. It doesn’t concern only marketing as a field, but it also deals with your ability to adapt to the workplace. The point is, it’s hard to measure one’s flexibility at the interview and, of course, it’s not enough just to mention it on your resume. You’ll probably be asked a number of questions that will allow hiring manager to estimate you from this standpoint. Be prepared. Learn as many case studies concerning marketing flexibility before the interview as you possibly can.

Writing Skills

For a person who’s done a number of essays, writing anything else seems easy. Seriously, young people don’t pay too much attention to writing because they think they are already good at it. But employers are looking for those who are better than average. The work of a marketer can be closely connected both to copywriting and business letters. It may seem natural, but the rules are very strict, and you should know them well. You have to improve your writing day after day.

Technical Skills

Anything that you use to accomplish whatever needs to be done compiles this group of skills. These can also be the skills aimed at improving your productivity. For a marketer, such skills are database management, needs analysis, planning, problem-solving, calculating, and working with various kinds of documents and applications. Think thoroughly what you can mention on your resume. Don’t be shy to enumerate anything you have. But remember that it’s not that hard for a hiring manager to figure out whether you really have a particular skill or not. So, knowing what problem-solving is, for example, is not nearly enough for it to get on your resume.

Speed Reading

We use computers in many spheres of our lives. This has led to an undeniable fact that young people almost don’t read today. That is why it takes them plenty of time to read and understand a text required in their work. Speed reading makes your brain work as a computer. You read faster and you are ready to process the information correctly in the process of reading. You can develop this skill at home. Watch numerous tutorials and read specialized literature. Here, practice is the key to your success.

Finally, note that there are many other aspects of a marketer’s daily routine, and you never know which skills will be needed. The skills we’ve mentioned in this article are universal and useful in any marketing sphere, though.