Amy Ferguson ⋅ Highland Park, IL NorthShore University HealthSystem ⋅ 16 years experience

Hi, Joe. Congratulations on your fellowship. Getting hands on experience will be a great way to begin to learn about strategic marketing and communications. I recommend also looking into certification programs, doing internships, applying for entry level roles, etc. I'm happy to continue to provide guidance. Please connect with me on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/amysferguson/

Jerry Welsh ⋅ Middleville, MI Master Military Transition Advisor/HPS GPO ⋅ 30 years experience

Lucas,
You have the education. Let's get out of the wedding garb and into a sports jacket or a button shirt with a picture. Your tag line is where they search, does it say what you want to do? Do some Informational Interviews, or use some of the ACP folks who popped up. Learn about a career, know the language, also know the metrics the career thrives on, speak the language it will open a lot of doors.
Remember that you are part of the 0.5% of Americans who serve their country. You are very well respected, but the chance civilians have been part of the 0.5% simply means they will not understand your language or experiences-without translation. Thank you for your support and sacrifices. God Bless https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/come-prepared-transition-process-gap-between-civilian-jerry-welsh/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-more-right-jerry-welsh/

Dave Mayewski ⋅ Aurora, OH Rockwell Automation ⋅ 38 years experience

Lucas

It would be best to connect live for me to better understand your background, education and areas of interest. Marketing is a broad field and it wouldn’t be fair for me to try to point you in a direction without taking about the sectors and where your interests and experiences might lead you.

Dave

John Broomhead ⋅ Littleton, CO Verizon ⋅ 35 years experience

Whatever you decide to do post military, remember your military skills are transferable - critical thinking, teamwork, discipline, adaptability.

Phil Marcoux ⋅ Mountain View, CA PPM Associates ⋅ 40 years experience

Lucas, I’m sending you same advise I just posted for someone as it applies to you as well.

marketing is a somewhat miss used occupation. It depends on the company and in some cases the division as to how they use someone in a “marketing “ position.

In some cases your job is to support sales regardless of product, in other cases you need to be a product expert supporting sales, or you may be a product market expert supporting development teams creating and introducing new products. You also find positions that only expect you to be a social media expert.

Your entry into a company is easier if you know what they expect of a marketer and what type of job you want.

One possible way to find out the above and earn some money in the process is to be a contractor offering marketing services.

An easy way to find opportunities is to become a contractor on www.wework.com
Look at the job requests and offer bids. It helps to have a good resume statement which you should be able to create from all of your educational prep work.

Look for groups seeking help writing job bids for the government. There are many. Look at the site - https://www.gomactech.net/. All of these companies attend this out of a need to market their services and market the government reps to help them define new opportunities.

Once you have a few of these under your belt you can be a more attractive candidate for full time employment or you may decide it’s better to be a freelancer.

Make sure you keep your LinkedIn profile up to date with project accomplishments as this is one source recruiters scour aggressively seeking potential candidates.

If you decide you want a full time position then seek out recruiters but only those who are client retained so you don’t pay their fees.

Melinda Long ⋅ West Des Moines, IA Wells Fargo ⋅ 19 years experience

Connect on LinkedIn with military recruiters within companies so you can see the positions they're sharing and special programs to get talent into the organization. I ran a search on " military recruiters and Renton Washington" and it pulled quite a list of contacts that you should try to reach out to for assistance. Use the box underneath for additional search string ideas to run to see if you get more results under "people also searched for".

Please watch company sites for military programs to get in the door. Wells Fargo typically has multiple programs every year in all areas of the bank. As these programs hit you will see these recruiters share that to their network on LinkedIn so you can apply.

A few names here at Wells Fargo are Ronnie Smithwick and Michael Larkin both military vets themselves and they work with around another 15+ military recruiters to help talent find jobs within Wells Fargo. I'm not sure how many positions WF posts in your market so possibly they would have other ideas for you. Best wishes on your search and thank you for your service!!! :)

Kirk Surber ⋅ Spring, TX U.S. Army, Staff Sergeant ⋅ 8 years served

Quite honestly, the education realm isn't the way to go in this field.

Everyone looking to hire wants results, not a degree in Marketing. They care about your experience and your knowledge in either/ or/all content creation, social media, production, b2b marketing.

Learn how to use multiple avenues of marketing at the same time, learn how to monitor the success/failure of your marketing, understand AIDA, SEO, web development, web design (learn how to make a quality landing page), understand/accept failure will happen and testing everything will be key.

Know key metrics of CPC's and how to figure ad spend to get an approximate desire/result...

The list goes on.

You want to learn marketing, sure you can join someone for $10/hr starting out.

Really want to learn marketing? Start your own business and fail over and over again. You'll learn more about making a successful marketing program in 6 months than you will earning a Masters in Marketing over 7 years education. I've gone this route and in the first 6 weeks they finally get to a day 1 search on Google with all the marketing info out there.

If I had to do it all over again, I'd find a product that I really loved, could sell nationwide, and market the hell out of it.

Kirk Surber ⋅ Spring, TX U.S. Army, Staff Sergeant ⋅ 8 years served

Quite honestly, the education realm isn't the way to go in this field.

Everyone looking to hire wants results, not a degree in Marketing. They care about your experience and your knowledge in either/ or/all content creation, social media, production, b2b marketing.

Learn how to use multiple avenues of marketing at the same time, learn how to monitor the success/failure of your marketing, understand AIDA, SEO, web development, web design (learn how to make a quality landing page), understand/accept failure will happen and testing everything will be key.

Know key metrics of CPC's and how to figure ad spend to get an approximate desire/result...

The list goes on.

You want to learn marketing, sure you can join someone for $10/hr starting out.

Really want to learn marketing? Start your own business and fail over and over again. You'll learn more about making a successful marketing program in 6 months than you will earning a Masters in Marketing over 7 years education. I've gone this route and in the first 6 weeks they finally get to a day 1 search on Google with all the marketing info out there.

If I had to do it all over again, I'd find a product that I really loved, could sell nationwide, and market the hell out of it.

FRANCIS TEPEDINO, ESQ. ⋅ San Diego, CA THE CONDOR GROUP ⋅ 30 years experience

From my experience in industry, formal education is one of the main keys to a successful career in Marketing.

Even attending evening college is very worthwhile while looking for, or holding down an entry level job.

Good luck.

Deb Miller ⋅ Bardstown, KY US Postal Service ⋅ 16 years experience

Thank you for your service Lucas! Federal agencies like USPS also have marketing and communications groups. Great news is you could continue to grow as a marketer in various venues while simultaneously building your years of federal service. I have been in USPS marketing and sales since 2012. It is exciting. As someone stated earlier there are also long hours. Please glance over career choices in other federal agencies, too. I would be honored to answer questions. Best wishes for success. https://www.linkedin.com/in/deb-miller-66b95752

June Webb ⋅ Chevy Chase, MD JWebb Inspire ⋅ 17 years experience

Lucas,

The marketing field is a competitive market so be ready to “expect the unexpected”. You will have to work lots of long weekends with very little or no pay the first few years to learn the process if you do not have any experiences.
I suggest that you look for an internship for six months to get the feel of what it entails before spending a lot of time or money investing in a degree because neither a degree or certification these days can compete with others who have two plus years of experience in conjunction to the algorithm of the internet that is being used these days as part of the marketing strategies.

Best of Luck.
If you connect with me on Linkedin, I can refer you to a marketing partner of mine to give you more insights into his marketing company that he started over fifteen years ago and perhaps can give you some sort of online internship.

June Webb
https://coachjunewebb.com/

Patricia Sanderlin ⋅ Hempstead, TX HP ⋅ 20 years experience

Hi Lucas!

Thank you for your service!

The marketing field is a large one. I would say that it depends on which direction you want to go? Just to name a few directions, there is sales, product management, go-to-market, research, sales material/content creation, customer experience, digital marketing, B2B, etc.

As a start, find your local chapter of the AMA (American Marketing Association) and go through their website. They offer a lot of resources.

Regards,

Patricia

Kevin Beatty ⋅ Dallas, TX MDaemon Technologies ⋅ 20 years experience

Hello Lucas,

I would echo the points made by Joe and also encourage you to invest in your education either using free tools to obtain certifications from Google, Hubspot, etc. and/or look at certificate or degrees from online programs like West Virginia University's Reed College of Media.

High demand areas for agencies and companies like content marketing are also worth exploring.

Wishing you the best in your transition,

Kevin

ACP AdvisorNet Staff ⋅ New York, NY ⋅ 10 years experience

Hi Lucas,

Thanks for reaching out for assistance on ACP AdvisorNet! You may be able to find advice in our community section (https://acp-advisornet.org/community/advisors).
There, you can narrow down Advisors by expertise and location to send a private message. In your case, you might want to take a look at people with experience in Marketing.
You can feel free to private message me if you need any help navigating or connecting with people on the website.

Best,
Jessica