Succeeding in Marketing

Cater your resume & cover letter

OCS has great resources for creating resumes and cover letters for different industries. However, going one step further and tailoring your application materials for the specific company you are applying to can go a long way.

"Catering resume and cover letter to the specific job you’re applying for even though it’s kind of a lot of work and grueling. It’s kind of important because what I did find was that the jobs where I sent in my standard cover letter, which was kind of general, and my resume, those were the jobs I didn’t really hear back from."

- Marketing Assistant on the Innovation Team, The Boston Beer Company ‘21

Take initiative

“I think part of it is having a take-initiative attitude toward marketing. You can get away with not doing the research and just building something that looks cool and you can put it out and nobody’s going to notice– especially the people looking at the ads– but if you actually care about doing your best and if you're an action-taking kind of person, then you can improve the quality of your work.”

– Marketing Intern at Students for Justice ‘24

“On the sales side, a lot of follow-up is involved. That’s been a lot of what I've been doing— really trying to build relationships with different restaurant owners— and thinking creatively about how to pitch something based on their needs.”

-- Student Marketeer at RedBull '22

Get experience on campus

Although prior experience is not always necessary, there are many organizations on campus that can help you get experience in marketing and business in general before going into the professional world.

“Through my experience on campus, I knew how to use all the software, like photoshop. The hard skills. Spending time in marketing and thinking about the things makes you much faster at recognizing exactly when a trend is important and how to frame certain things so that they can be actionable. If we’re thinking about how to create ads for a specific population, I've already got an intuition built around that where I know how to look at different groups and see how you can frame things differently.”

– Marketing Intern at Students for Justice ‘24

Networking

As with many industries, networking is a one of the best ways to learn more about and get involved in marketing. Whether you are looking to conduct informational interviews or fill a vacant position, taking the time to talk to someone who has been in your shoes is a great way to spend any free time you have.

Cold emailing

Cold emailing is a great way to get more of a feel for what marketers do or whether or not it is the right job for you. Taking a chance and emailing someone about your excitement regarding the work they do can go a long way.

“I would definitely recommend reaching out to Harvard alumni and even having some connection— like oh, I was a student athlete as well. If u reach out to someone from the same house or something like that, i think they’re even more likely [to respond]. In the past I've just reached out to Harvard people and they’ve responded.”

– Student Marketeer at Redbull ‘22

Use LinkedIn

LinkedIn is home to many professionals in a variety of industries including marketing. In addition to being a great place to start looking for people to network with, LinkedIn also has posts with job opportunities that you can take advantage of.

Stay open minded

“You never know who you're going to meet and how they're gonna come back into your life, so even if this person isn't necessarily in a field that you think you're interested in or if you take a look at their background and you don't really know, just go for it because you don't know what you might learn. I talked to so many people in a bunch of different fields. Staying open to that has been a great learning experience. Don't close yourself off to things that might not seem like your cup of tea at first.”

– Marketing Associate at Launch Pop ‘24