30 Days 15 Marketing Plans

Very recently I made a transition into B2B product marketing at a Fortune 500 company. It would have certainly made a good LinkedIn update, but I decided to skip that part and move on with life. Not because I didn’t want people to congratulate me for my new job but because I was still taking time to process how it all happened. Last few weeks were no less than a roller coaster ride that I had personally signed up for.

I’ve always fancied the work done by product marketers, be it a GTM launch, managing the whole product lifecycle or identifying use cases, the responsibilities are highly critical to business growth and innovation. While looking out for suitable job opportunities, I got a chance to explore roles of all kinds, some aligned to my skills and experiences, while some going on a different tangent altogether. What led to converting this particular job then, you would ask. Well, some unresolved paths and a series of decision paradox that I ultimately happened to crack. To be honest, I fumbled many a times, put myself through difficult situations to arrive at a conclusion. And the funny part was, when I arrived there, I realised my present destination actually had two paths, 1. A linear one 2. A twisted one with no fixed direction, and I took the latter. Why? Because I’m fond of taking the road less travelled by and couldn’t agree more with Robert Frost. From content marketing and lead generation at a small design agency, the journey to my next job was challenging yet full of learnings.

Right when ‘The Great Resignation’ was kicking in, I had little idea about how the job shift was going to unveil for me. I like to stick to deadlines, and hence put a target date to my job hunting stint. With festive season around the corner, I wanted to wrap it up before that. With this in mind, the time I had in hand was only 30 days. Initially, that looked just about sufficient and I kickstarted with a compelling resume-building exercise. To my dismay, the first 10 days brought no luck and I faced rejections after rejections. Something in my resume wasn’t really working. I took a stab at it again to re-articulate my experiences and achievements, this time more from a B2B marketer’s lens. Bang! It actually worked and I got shortlisted to interview for 3 positions right away.

Metaphorically speaking, the whole process of applying, getting shortlisted/rejected for an interview, felt like driving through a thick forest with little visibility ahead of me. Lesser did I know that it actually meant warming up for the real ascent up the hills, that was yet to be made.

Oh did I tell you, my job hunt was moving with little progress right when I was serving my last working month that too on the other side of the globe, 12 hours behind the Indian Standard time. You guessed it right, I had resigned without an offer in hand and was stationed at the West Coast of United States at the moment. Why? Adrenalin rush perhaps. Kidding! It’s a long story that needs to be told some other fine day.

On one hand the gorgeous fall season of the Pacific Coast lured me with all kinds of adventures I had ever dreamt of and on the other hand lay my plans to celebrate Durga Puja with my family when I would return to India. And in between the two most desirable states of being, the clock was ticking faster; reminding me of those 18 days that were left to bag my next job offer.

“Keep hustling” has been my mantra for the past 7–8 months. Cut to April 202I, when I decided to explore the “land of the brave, and home of the free”. And it kind of prepared me to fight for my dreams and push my capabilities as far as they could go. I’ve always been a go-getter but never as inert to difficulties and discomfort as I was now. This made me realise we are all hustlers for life, irrespective of what one does or where one lives.

-Unknown

Positions that looked out of reach earlier (owing to my limited domain experience) now encouraged me to apply for them without any fear. My cover note would illustrate my desire to work with prospective companies, backing it up with my stints in challenging roles in the past. To my surprise, this also worked!

Although I’ve lost count of the number of recruiters that I spoke to, I got a chance to prove my skills to 15 of them through assignments based on live company projects. You heard it right. And honestly, I was taken by surprise too, as I wasn’t quite aware about the hiring trends of 2021 ;)

Today I decided to make a note of all the work involved in converting a few job offers that has gotten me where I am today. Listing them down below and I hope to share a more detailed note with some of you, in case you are interested to check it out. For now, let’s look at the 15 assignments that I shared with recruiters in order to reach the last rounds of their hiring processes:

• Plan to market an app that notifies deals and offers promoted by America’s largest retail chain

• Community expansion plan for a growing fin tech startup

• Digital marketing plan to grow a leadership coaching startup

• Growth hacking strategy for a leading chatbot company

• Brand and PR strategy for a venture capital aggregator firm

• Marketing plan for an exotic food n beverages brand

• Presentation for an IT company’s virtual event

• 2000 words blog for a leading technology provider

• Plan to improve Performance marketing of an international student loan financing company

• 90 days product marketing strategy for a newly launched B2B SaaS product

• Creative brief and ad strategy for a leadership productivity software company

• Marketing plan for a leading Ed tech startup

• Content strategy for a marketing automation product

• Lead generation tactics for a global AR/VR company

• Marketing roadmap for a renowned creative agency

And the list goes on, with similar looking take-home exercises. And I’m not completely against them, but they do raise red flags at times when conducted unethically. In good ol’ days, cracking an interview would mean appearing technically sound in solving hypothetical problems, acing the stress test and displaying confidence. Today companies have gone one-step ahead by asking candidates to work on a business challenge that they would ideally be asked to do as a full-time paid employee. This almost goes without saying, companies expect job aspirants to do a detailed product/consumer research, brainstorm on the solutions and present their ideas for free, with no guarantee to be considered for that job. And some companies take their authority to the next level by not even sharing their feedback with a candidate whom they decided to not proceed with. Sometimes, not even a reply to share their decision about rejecting someone who didn’t exceed their expectations.

In my view, a good marketer needs to be able to find unseen opportunities in consumer behaviour in order to impact decisions that people make. No take-home assignment can ever give a recruiter the complete picture of the range of skills in a marketer’s arsenal. I’ve had experience interviewing with highly mature organisations as well as early stage startups who are adept at getting a full scope of the candidate’s eligibility just by probing well during the interview process. Some companies on the other hand should truly realise the weight of their requests, when they ask a shortlisted candidate to work on a live company project. For me, it’s an unfair practice and more when goes uncompensated for. The only bright side to it is probably the diversity of work one gets to explore in a short span of time. It definitely gets overwhelming but doesn’t look completely futile as it can build a portfolio of projects that one could leverage in the future.

Let me know what are your thoughts on take-home assignments. And those who are going through similar stages of job hunt, get clarity on the hiring process and if possible, try presenting your work over a call before sharing it over email.