‘Words into action’: Bootcamp helps emerging marketing talent break barriers

From complex – often impenetrable – job descriptions to unreasonable expectations for entry level employees, many brands are not making it easy for early marketing talent to get a foot in the door.

One organisation trying to breakdown these barriers is The Marketing Academy Foundation, a charity that finds young people from challenging backgrounds paid apprenticeships in marketing departments.

The foundation hosts regular sessions of its BeTheOne bootcamps, free employability skills workshops designed to help young talent from diverse socio-economic backgrounds improve their success rate in the job market.

Aspiring marketer Oluwatomisin Alhassan saw an ad for the latest bootcamp, which took place last week, when scrolling through her Instagram timeline.

“I was intrigued and clicked on it, because I’m getting started in marketing and I wanted to know how to get my foot in the door and utilise the skills I’ll be gaining in my internship to make myself stand out when applying for marketing jobs,” she explains.

Starting her internship with the Brixton Finishing School this month, Alhassan felt her passion for fashion and consumer behaviour, mixed with an entrepreneurial streak, would find a great home in the marketing industry.

As a female from a minority background, I know what it’s like to be excluded and I also know what it’s like to be included.

Yolande Battell

The first part of the bootcamp session explored the different roles within marketing, encouraging the young participants to see how the job descriptions match their skillsets. This was followed by tasks exploring what they’d like to do and how their ambitions would fit different roles within the industry. After that, the participants reviewed how best to present their CVs.

Alhassan explains that sometimes when applying for marketing jobs it can be a challenge tailoring the job description to your CV.

“It was great to know how to do that because employers look at your CV for just seconds and if it doesn’t fit in with what they’re looking for it will be discarded,” she says.

“Sometimes it is hard to understand what the job is about. Sometimes it’s just a lot of words and sometimes it’s not even distinct enough, so I feel like companies need to find a balance of explaining what the job is, but also writing it concisely.”

One of the bootmcamp mentors was Yolande Battell, a former Unilever and Kraft Heinz brand manager, who previously served as marketing manager for European brand development at Kimberly-Clark and executive vice-president of client management at Jellyfish.

Fuelled by a desire to help bring underrepresented talent into marketing, she remembers not seeing anybody who looked like her in the industry when she joined in the late 1990s.

Young people invited to ‘co-create the future of marketing’

“I really want to make a difference to the industry and make sure I leave it in a better place than when I found it. As a female from a minority background, I know what it’s like to be excluded and I also know what it’s like to be included. I want to use my leadership to help make a difference,” she explains.

One way the industry is failing diverse young talent is around recruitment, Battell explains. Having worked in big, matrixed organisations, she appreciates recruitment is a massive operation that involves many more people than just the hiring manager. She agrees job descriptions can be long and quite generic, but acknowledges that when recruiting on mass there often isn’t time to tweak every single line.

Instead of sticking rigidly to a job description or getting hung up on experience, the main thing she looks for in a new recruit is potential.

“I really hate the tick box and it’s partly because of where I’ve come from. I don’t want to be a tick box, particularly now with brands looking for diverse talent and tokenism comes into place. I’m anti that,” Battell explains.

“When I’m interviewing I’m looking for potential. I’m looking for how they behave and what their ambition is, as much as what they are able to bring. So how can we grow them? How can we nurture them, as well as how can they nurture us as an organisation? That is so individual and you’re never going to be able to get that in every single job spec, so you need to be able to be broad enough to attract potential and yet not specific enough to eliminate potential.”

Words into action

Battell regards taking part in the BeTheOne bootcamps is an opportunity to help the next wave of talent, an experience that leaves a lasting impression. Having mentored young people across several BeTheOne sessions, she recalls two interviews that really stand out.

The first was with a young woman who was so nervous she failed to make eye contact and responded only with scripted, textbook answers.

“I thought I can’t work like that. I won’t be able to help her if it’s going to be like that and I really wanted to help her,” she recalls.

A comment the girl made about wanting to work in charitable marketing struck a chord with Battell, who decided to go off-script and ask why she had this specific interest.

“She looked me in the eyes for the first time and said: ‘I’ve come from care and I really want to be able to make a difference.’ That moment has stuck with me and that was earlier this year in February,” she explains. “I was like: ‘We’re going to pause this interview. That right there is what you’ve got to bottle.’”

At the other end of the spectrum, Battell interviewed a young man at the most recent bootcamp who blew her away with his energy and enthusiasm.

Sometimes it is hard to understand what the job is about. Sometimes it’s just a lot of words and sometimes it’s not even distinct enough.

Oluwatomisin Alhassan

“I asked him, how his friends would describe him. He used the word charged. I was like: “What do you mean? Tell me more about charged.” He said passionate and ready to go. That’s what he was like. It was an absolutely brilliant word and it was like he’s teaching me,” she explains.

“My feedback to him was very different from my feedback to the first lady, because they’re coming from completely different ends. For him it was all about don’t change a thing, keep doing exactly what you’re doing.”

She also credits Alhassan for her insight into how the industry can improve job descriptions to attract young talent, simplifying the language, getting rid of the jargon and aiming for something more concise. Battell argues marketing should want to bring as many diverse voices into the conversation as possible.

“By embracing these differences we’re widening our picture and the context of what we see, and then we will bring better solutions to challenges and opportunities that we might not have thought of before,” she adds. “We’re in marketing and we’re serving such a wide-ranging community, so we need those diverse perspectives.”

For Alhassan, the exposure to senior leaders offered by the bootcamp gives young people something to aspire to and shows how much early talent is valued, as well as providing an opportunity to ask any burning questions.

She is looking forward to embarking on her Brixton Finishing School internship, which will involve working on live briefs and learning about SEO, as well as masterclasses on different topics within marketing. Her goal is to work in fashion marketing, focusing on branding, understanding consumers and PR.

Reflecting on the future for emerging talent like Alhassan, Battell’s mantra is ‘Yes we can’. However, if her marketing peers want to make a tangible difference they need to get started.

“People are thinking about what they can do and that’s great, but you’ve got to turn that thinking into action. Whether it’s internal or external, there are so many initiatives you can get involved in. If you really want to make a difference you just need to move towards action,” she states.

“It doesn’t even have to be an official scheme. Internally it could be a colleague who needs help. Externally there are lots of events you can attend to see where your services could be of use. There are loads of charities people can get involved with and groups they can join. From there you network more broadly.”

To find out more about The Marketing Academy Foundation’s BeTheOne bootcamps click here.

Marketing Week’s Opening Up campaign is pushing for the democratisation of marketing careers. Read all the articles from the series so far here.