Digital marketing analyst skills for your resume and career

The pandemic is accelerating the general trend of digitalization. By far our most in-demand graduates are those with social media and digital marketing knowledge. Remote work, e-commerce, and internet-enabled services will be growth areas during the recovery from the pandemic's recession.

Data analysis requires some basic math skills to calculate ratios or percentages and then understand what those metrics, like click-through rates, tell you. Because of remote work, the technical skills of setting up video conferencing and trouble-shooting your own WiFi network have increased importance.

Team building, leadership, co-operation, salesmanship. I always tell my students to show any leadership positions they had while in school on their resumes as businesses value people who can both take the initiative and work well with others.

Many marketing jobs require a blend of customer insights, data analytics, and strategic marketing decision making. So developing these skills may be helpful to be ready when the right job comes around. Skills in sales are often overlooked, but these are valuable too and have three advantages:
-There are many excellent opportunities in careers in sales that some students overlook.
-Even if one does not take a job in sales, the skills of deals involving business development, problem-solving, and communication are valuable in any career.
-Getting a job in the first place often involves selling oneself.
So having sales skills are also worth having.

If you can't find a job right away, volunteering is an excellent way to develop skills, make contacts, and stay optimistic. Look for opportunities at non-profit organizations, for example, where you may help out a cause that may be important to you and give you a chance to learn about skills that you may lack. Often, serious volunteers are given access and opportunities that paid employees may not get. It is also not uncommon for a volunteer position to become a paid position when opportunities in the organization arise.

In marketing and business, there are also many excellent one-year master's programs being offered to help students develop focused skills in marketing management, data analytics, and customer insights. Some are even focused on particular industries like health care or technology. These programs offer students a year of in-depth learning as well as career coaching and access to recruiters. They can be a treasured addition for students who have healthy non-business undergraduate degrees who may now want to focus on marketing career goals. Also, the starting salary and responsibility level tend to be significantly more than that of a recent graduate of an undergraduate program.

Stand-out technical skills likely vary by field. For example, when working with big data, database management, and data mining and modeling would be extremely important. I also imagine that programming skills would be an asset. Thinking of my field (Management) in particular, here are some technical skills that I'd emphasize: writing skills, proficiency in using collaborative decision-making tools, project management, and familiarity with productivity trackers. Finally, in an earlier question I noted that organizations may embrace more remote work; in that situation, I can see how critical it will be for managers to show that they can effectively establish goals, rally enthusiasm, coach and mentor employees from a distance. A lesson the pandemic has taught many organizations is that forging human connections in remote work is a challenge, and those who have developed the skills to do this are invaluable.