Ghosted, Drained and Doubting Yourself? A CMO’s Survival Guide to Today’s Job Market
Marketing Unfiltered #62 → How Thick Skin, AI Tools & Community Helped Me Land My New CMO Role
Good morning everyone.
We are shifting gears from my Marketers Anger Index & bingo card from last week and onto this week, Harry shares his very actionable survival guide to today’s job market.
Let us know what you think by hitting reply or hit the ❤️ button.
Thanks and have a great weekend,
How Thick Skin, AI Tools & Community Helped Me Land My New CMO Role
Something a little different in the newsletter this week. I’ve seen first hand how difficult it is for marketing job seekers out there right now – and those across all disciplines for that matter. A fractured market, ATS, thousands of applicants for every position, ghosting as the rule rather than the exception and such a lack of feedback it makes you wonder if manners were culled from the HR KPI set alongside human insight and pragmatism.
I’m thanking my lucky stars to have started a new CMO role but I’m still licking the wounds picked up in the battles of thankless application and interview processes last year – and I know I’m not the only one who was in those wars…
Being unemployed can hurt on financial, self-esteem and mental health levels. Some days you wonder if you’re actually invisible, others whether you need to just drop marketing as a career and do something – anything – instead.
So here’s my Tuppence worth – what worked for me, what to avoid and how to manage the expanses of confidence-sapping dead time you’re likely to be experiencing.
Good luck out there, and if you know anyone else in a similar boat, please don’t hesitate to share this with them.
Harry
1/ Job Search Strategy
I have a simple rule for this:-
One exceptional application will have a better hit rate than one hundred generic submissions. Customise your CV and cover letters to the Nth degree (yes, this is also so you can flirt with ATS more successfully), cherry pick roles you’re a 75% fit for and ignore those fishing expeditions where you’re missing half the required skills and experience.
Next, weaponise your job search. Treat it like a work project with a brief, KPIs, schedule and channel strategy with a methodology you can work to every morning for a couple of hours max. Every new CV iteration and bespoke cover letter requires research, keyword placement and enhanced copy skills. Every interview has it’s own strategy document including the JD, company research, interviewer bio, key experience points related to the role and insightful questions for you to ask them.
The market is packed full of exceptional talent, so you need to bring your AAA game to every interview, no matter what stage or level.
2/ Polishing Your Personal Brand
I love writing, and my ego clearly enjoys putting my errant thoughts out in the ether, so promoting myself comes relatively easy. However even if this isn’t your bag, some degree of personal PR is a must.
First, write a positioning statement for yourself first to frame how you want to be perceived and the kind of approaches you want. One line, keep it simple and really focus on what problems you fix. Mine sounds something like this:-
“I’m a highly effective performance, growth and brand marketing leader – a creative problem solver and motivating team builder who has globally scaled numerous B2C digital and mobile entertainment brands. I acquire, convert and retain new customers through brave, innovative and data-driven integrated channel strategies augmented through AI”.
Next, write your project plan for how you’re going to speak to your audience (yes, this is literally an extension of your job seeking strategy for brand YOU). How often will you post, which speaking opps will you apply for, which media can you pitch articles to etc.
If you’re up for it, shoot video as you’re walking the dog/cat/kids to school. Talk about a news story related to your positioning. Have an opinion, offer creative solutions. Be interesting so you STAND OUT from the crowd.
3/ How I Found My New Job
I spoke with over 70 recruiters and headhunters and kept them updated with my CV and status every month while I was looking. Rather than just sending yet another iteration of my CV, I shared updates on my consultancy projects, this newsletter, speaking engagements and yes, even my metal detecting finds. If I couldn’t be interviewed, at least I wanted to be memorable!
Engaging with my marketing friends and communities (thanks CMO Circle, RTG and Marketing Leaders in particular) and my wider network on LinkedIn was critical. With these communities, you get out what you put in – so help others when you have the opportunity and you’ll be amazed how helpful people will be in return. It may be karma, it may be simple courtesy, but nice people like helping nice people, so get involved.
One piece of oft-quoted advice I read was:- ‘Have a coffee with 100 contacts’.
…and I believe that would be time way better spent than spamming your CV to 100 lookalike AI-filtered opps on job boards or LI.
In late September (just as I was about to start the refurb on our new house, ironically) I was approached about six new roles in the space of 24 hours, with another coming three days later. Two came from headhunters, two came from LinkedIn applications, two came via recommendations from community friends in my network and one was a passive approach I received from someone who saw my newsletter articles and posts.
Don’t spread yourself too thin, but I’m a firm believer in the mantra:-
‘You’ve got to be in it to win it’
…so keep irons in multiple fires, as you never know where your dream role could be hiding.
4/ Grow Thick Skin. It’s Gonna Be An Ugly Ride…
How long is too long to wait for feedback after a final interview?
As regular readers on LinkedIn will know, I had a Q4 run of form as far as new job opportunities went. Seven C-Level B2C marketing positions, in processes taking place over six weeks. Here are the stats:-
Four turned into actual interviews – the other three either weren’t feasible or went dark
Twenty two interviews in total over the four live roles – six for two of them, five for the other two
Four presentation decks, raging from three straightforward capability/ expertise questions to a thirty slide strat deck covering multiple geos, KPIs and channels that took me a couple of days to complete
One rejection with rationale soon after the final interview
I only finished one (rapid) process and received a courteous ‘no’ with solid rationale soon after
Of the remaining two, I finished one three weeks ago and another five weeks ago.
I’ve still not heard from the ghosting business, but the other made me an offer – a great one – for a different job to the one I spent 2 months interviewing for.
I’ve now started, and I bloody LOVE it!
Delays are par for the course I’m afraid. I completed three processes last year and STILL haven’t heard whether I got the gigs!
But seriously, how long is too long?
When do you bypass the talent team and drop a friendly mail to the CEO?
When do you give up and move on?
In tough markets, the first casualty appears to be courtesy. Don’t take a lack of communication (ghosting) personally – it’s just a symptom of the times, albeit one I swear I’ll never be guilty of myself.
5/ Lean Into Technology
You know this already – AI is already a significant pillar of any marketing career, so embrace it. Join free courses, download tools, build stuff. I’ve used YouTube to learn how to build AI agents, made a (crappy) App in Lovable, designed countless images with Leonardo and crafted data sets and done business profiles with ChatGPT. Check out the AI Edition of this newsletter to see the tools and platforms other marketers are using every day and embrace the opportunity to augment yourself like some weird marketing Robocop.
6/ Keeping Your Chin Up
When you’re ‘outside’, it can feel like nobody wants to know you – like you’re an incontinent, foul-breathed Reform voter at a wife swapping party. The ghosting, the thankless effort, the wasted work and the frustration – OH MY GOD the frustration of getting NOWHERE day after day after pitiful day, no matter what you do. Yes, it gets to you, hard at times.
Job hunting takes progressively longer through your career, and the marketing job market is a pyramid shaped hierarchy. There are fewer jobs at the top end and they pay more, so they’re highly competitive with longer processes. Be prepared to bed in for a while - perhaps even a long while…
This can, and does, become onerous, stressful and depressing, so I’d suggest spending no more than a couple of hours max at the start of each day on approaches, personal PR and applications, then segment your day to focus on other, more positive endeavours.
Try, against all odds, to maintain your sense of humour. Nobody wants to hire ‘Gill from The Simpsons’ and frankly, life’s hard enough without you beating yourself up needlessly.
It’s an absurd time to be a marketer, and things may feel overwhelming when your options appear to be limited/ non-existent. I’ve found great solace in the ‘CMO Ready To Go’ community (a subsect of the CMO Circle). Lots of awesome senior marketers in the same unemployed boat keeping each other motivated and entertained with pragmatism, cheerleading and irreverence in equal measure.
As ide from consultancy work, my goals were to finish, edit and submit my book ‘The Fossil Hunters’ ✔️, find a house and start refurb ✔️, take up metal detecting ✔️, spend time doing fun (cheap) things with my family ✔️, invest time in learning AI tools and platforms ✔️, build out my new channel knowledge (✔️, with my metal detecting TikTok channel and several AI platforms) and exercise more (✔️, sort of, with long daily dog walks).
You’ve got loads of time (finally!!) so spend it on things that are good for you mentally, physically and actually.
7/ Staying Productive While You’re Out Of Work
I’m going to cheat here and link to an article I wrote for Marketing Unfiltered a while back. There’s some overlap with the suggestions I’ve already made above, but most of them are worth repeating IMHO.
8/ Be Honest With Yourself
We can’t all be CMO at Google. Hell, only 100 people get to lead the Marketing in the FTSE 100, so at some point you may realise that what you dream of and what you get might be two very different things.
Personally, I prefer the challenge of scale up B2C brands and find slow moving corporate behemoths are overtly political and often boring. Plus when you’re working with tens of thousands of people, you’ll likely be siloed into a niche sphere of influence and creative decisions, when debated by committees, turn into what I call ‘the brown soup of compromise’ more often than not.
You may need to take a step back down the ladder in salary and title, but that’s OK - it’s fine. If it makes your ego feel better you can always call it a pivot – an interesting left turn on your career journey. The only person who really cares is you, and you have the wonderful capacity to get over yourself.
Being unemployed for a long time can make you feel worthless - like a failure, even - but it absolutely, unequivocally shouldn’t. Yes, when you’re on the hunt the silence really is deafening, but be reassured:-
· No, it’s not you.
· Yes, loads of people are in the same boat, fighting for the same roles
· Yes, AI, ATS and a ridiculous volume of applicants mean you may be repeatedly passed over for jobs you’re perfect for
· Yes, it will get better (if you grit your teeth, maintain your humour and are pragmatic in your job seeking strategy).
In a modern marketing career, unemployment is as common as a typo in a CRM email or an ill-advised social post, so stop beating yourself up, recognise that you’re simply a product of circumstance and soon enough you’ll be stuck in a meeting, dreaming of the days you spent your mornings sat in your PJs, crafting AI enhanced cover letters to appease thankless ATS Gods.
Then again, maybe not…
If you’re having a tough time, do join the communities I’ve mentioned above and work to magnify your personal brand.
If you’ve run out of ideas and the weight is crushing you, please get in touch - I’ll try to help if I can.
Good luck out there,
Harry!
PS. Keep an eye out for next week’s newsletter, Simon Swan shares: An Alternative Approach To Content Hype - If Your Content Disappeared Tomorrow, Would Anyone Notice?
I think that's possibly the only infographic with that many words in it that I've ever actually read. Every single word. It's absolutely on the money! It's so right and so correct.
Thank you, Harry. I needed to read this today.