If your job search has started to feel like it will never end, you’re not alone. In 2020, over a third of unemployed job-seekers were still on the hunt after fifteen weeks of looking for work. Unacknowledged applications provide little feedback, making it hard to figure out how to break the discouraging pattern of rejection.
So, why can’t you find a job? If you ask a room full of frustrated job-searchers why they think they’re struggling, you’ll hear certain complaints repeatedly:
- You need experience to get experience.
- Nobody’s hiring this year.
- I can’t find a job without an expensive degree.
These factors do truly make job searches more difficult, but none of them represent the top reason why you can’t get hired. At the end of the day, all of these factors are connected to one shared problem:
You’re looking for your next job in the wrong places.
Requirements are High and Getting Higher
As you browse job boards, intriguing options feel out of reach. Companies demand skills you don’t have, or they require a decade of experience in a specific field. Hopeful job-seekers may take a chance and apply to these jobs anyway, hoping for a lucky match. This bold strategy tends to lead to job application burnout and a discouraged applicant who doesn’t receive many phone calls.
Even when listed requirements look more approachable, the COVID-19 pandemic shook up the job market in ways that will have long-lasting consequences. Companies downsized, laying off large amounts of skilled workers. These newly unemployed people began applying to any new jobs that were available, creating fierce competition in many places.
Service Work Can Sometimes Be a Dead End
As months of job applications grow repetitive and discouraging, job hunters may begin to lower their expectations. When rent hasn’t been paid or your kid’s shoes don’t fit, a job in retail or fast food looks better than nothing.
While stockers and cashiers are an essential part of our daily life, the pay is low, there’s little room for advancement, and spending your day at a checkout counter begins to feel monotonous pretty quickly. Plus, you may actually have trouble getting an “unskilled” job in the first place if your career experience or a degree makes you look overqualified. These attributes might make hiring managers wary, because they assume that you’ll leave for greener pastures as soon as possible.
If you do try to make ends meet in this type of position, it can unfortunately have a long-term effect on your professional trajectory. Now, when you send your resume to other jobs, your potential bosses may frown at your current dead-end position, wrongly assuming that you lack ability or drive.
What Career Field Provides Stability, High Pay and Low Barrier for Entry?
To get hired and feel good about it, you’re going to need to identify a field that avoids common job search pitfalls. Rather than undervaluing yourself or wasting time with oversaturated markets, look for a field that has the following qualities:
- The entry-level positions provide room for advancement.
- Starting salaries pay your bills and will grow as you progress.
- There are plentiful job openings.
- No specialized degree or credential is required.
- Job duties are engaging, keeping you interested in your work.
Taking all these factors into consideration, there’s one field that fits the bill in every way: digital marketing.
What Is Digital Marketing?
Before we discuss why you can find a job in digital marketing, it may be helpful to spend a moment on its definition. In a broad sense, digital marketing is the use of technology to connect customers with a product or service.
Digging deeper into that surface-level description, the world of digital marketing includes a number of facets. It can involve pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, where a company’s marketing materials are shared on websites or apps. It includes search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO), which both involve boosting a website’s visibility in search results. There’s also social media marketing, where companies build relationships with their customers through platforms such as Instagram and Twitter.
More Jobs Than You Ever Expected
When you refocus your job search toward digital marketing, you’ll quickly see what a vast amount of options have been available all along. This is exactly what happened to Seth Hymes, the founder of In Demand Career. After years of always coming up short in job searches, he was suddenly overwhelmed with all the opportunity coming his way.
According to estimates by the federal government, there will be around 84,000 marketing specialist positions available in any given year for the rest of the decade. The same data suggest a 17.7% growth in positions between 2019 and 2029. Those numbers don’t include the many manager-level positions that you may be eying a few years down the road. They also don’t take into account that digital marketing is growing even faster than general marketing.
With this sheer quantity of available positions, you’ll be able to find the type of job you need without making major compromises. If you’d love the stability of a nine-to-five office job, you can find one. Since you’ll be working on a computer, remote work is also a common option. People who love flexible work hours or the freedom of freelancing will also find myriad openings in digital marketing.
No Degree? No Problem
The term “digital marketing” didn’t even exist until the 1990s. Being such a new field has helped digital marketing stay away from an overreliance on credentials. Most colleges and universities don’t even offer a degree in it. Instead, many employers are seeking inventive people who can demonstrate their ability to pick up new skills.
Even with universities starting to offer digital marketing programs, the field changes every year. As a new social media site becomes mainstream or a search engine changes their policies, knowledge quickly grows obsolete. As a result, traditional workplace experience and formal education aren’t mandatory.
Yes, You Can Find a Job
We know that jumping into a new field can be daunting, but the security of a healthy paycheck and the reward of an engaging professional life make it all worthwhile. If you’re ready to land that first digital marketing job without going back to school or shelling out a lot of money, check out In Demand Career’s mini course for free. You can pick up even more job-ready skills with our free training masterclass, or learn all of the most in-demand digital marketing skills with our full online course. These valuable resources will immediately have you picking up the hottest digital marketing skills, preparing killer applications, and connect you with a community of other driven job-seekers around the world.
