🧪 Career lessons from a VP marketing + 4 unmissable reads on careers

Hello hello hello 👋🏽,

Welcome to the first edition of the Marketers Help Marketers newsletter.

I told a bunch of you that this would hit your inbox on Friday, but an urgent deliverable came my way.

So here I am - furiously typing away on a Sunday night.

What is it about Fridays and last-minute things?! 🤦🏽‍♀️

Before we dive in, here’s what you can expect from this newsletter:

• This is where marketers (like me & senior marketing leaders) help marketers (like you) win at careers.

  How?

  By sharing bts, never heard read before stories of how marketing leaders think about careers, making moves.

• Help you view your marketing career more strategically because we all know that marketing hits (literally and proverbially) differently.

  To have a fulfilling, high-growth (and lucrative) career, you need to be smarter at spotting opportunities.

• Weekly-ish frequency, expect it every Friday PM.

Today's newsletter will be a short one because I am having one hell of a week, but I am committed to shipping, so let's go!

[This week] Career lessons from a VP Marketing:

You may or may not know this, but I host a career podcast for marketers called Ctrl + Alt + Marketing.

This season, I am chatting with startup marketing leaders about their careers, how they hire and use AI.

The first guest to open season 2 of the show is Branca Ballot (VP Marketing, Glide).

Born in Brazil, Branca studied mechanical engineering, followed by an MBA.

She started her career in consulting, before landing at startups and in marketing.

She has some awesome stories to share from her 18-year career, like how she cold-called her way into a job at Zenefits or built a team of 80 marketers at GoDaddy.

Here are a few things you can learn from Branca's career:

• You don't have to start in marketing to be great at it. 

  Branca's engineering and consulting background actually helped her become a better marketer.

  It taught her to think analytically and be data-driven.

• Don't be afraid to put yourself out there. 

  Cold-calling can be scary, but it can also be incredibly effective.

  Branca landed her dream job at Zenefits by taking the initiative and reaching out to the company directly.

• Marketing leaders look for resilience when interviewing candidates. 

  In her own words, for every win in marketing, there are a hundred failures.

  So, if you want to work in marketing, you must bake resilience into your DNA.

  Hiring managers look for this quality, so while interviewing, talk about how you handle failures and your achievements.

• Secret to managing your manager. 

  It is simple.

  Be a solution and not a problem.

  Overcommunicate when you face problems, but also back them up with solutions and the approach you will use to solve challenges.

4 interesting things I read on careers and interviewing this week:

• 7 Rules for an Accelerated Career

  My personal favorite is:

  You need three career currencies to thrive in a career: Skills, Network, Audience.

• Cecilia Haynes' job search strategy is 🤌

• TREND PREDICTION:

  Companies will prioritise hiring people based on who their LinkedIn audience is.

• It's a great time to be a marketer who understands tech and knows how to use tech. 🙃

That's all for this week.

I will see you next Friday.

If you enjoyed reading this edition, take a second and write back! I’d love to hear what you thought about this.

You also know where to find me on LinkedIn.

Your marketer friend,

Mita

PS: I promise the content and formatting will be better coming week :)