More Rays of Hope on the Jobs Front
The marketing jobs picture is starting to brighten but don’t expect a large salary increase if you change positions anytime soon, advises Tracy Sinclair, the practice leader for marketing with Aquent, a talent agency for marketing and design professionals.
“Things are definitely picking up, we saw an uptick beginning in November of last year,” says Sinclair, who is based in Chicago.
Many companies, however, remain wary about taking on new staff in these still unsettled economic times and so instead are offering contract positions for specific marketing projects, she explains. Even within the contract space, however, there’s reason for marketers to be optimistic about the jobs picture, Sinclair notes. More than 50% of the contract positions Aquent is working to fill involve options to be hired permanently if job candidate and employer agree.
Most in demand now are analytical abilities and database marketing expertise, Sinclair counsels. On the consumer products side, “companies are collecting reams and reams of data. They don’t necessarily have the people internally to create consumer insights out of that data,” Sinclair says.
Another hot area is brand and product marketing as many companies that cut back on new product introductions during the recession gear up to start rolling out new offerings again.
More detailed information about salary trends will emerge from a survey Aquent is currently doing with the American Marketing Association, Sinclair notes. You can click on the survey link here to take part yourself.
But anecdotal evidence to date suggests “salaries are flat,” she says. And changing jobs isn’t the guarantee of a higher salary it once was, she adds.
Marketers can see what average salaries are in their specialty and geographic area with a salary calculator that uses data from the 2009 AMA/Aquent study.
