How Many Marketing Hats Do You Wear?

By Jason Stewart  - April 1, 2008

What's the over/under on your qualifications and experience?

Patrick Schaber over at The Lonely Marketer posted something back in January that I have been meaning to mention...

Specifically, it is a piece called  Experience Today’s Marketing Manager Needs, and it talks about the number of hats the small business or startup marketer is supposed to wear. He is talking about the difficulty in filling a position he has vacated because of the breadth of experience required to fill it, but I am reminded of a few interviews I had before I joined Demandbase wherein I was lauded for my range of experience but suffered because I was overqualified. Or worse yet, I had exactly what they needed but they expected to land someone like me for half of what I was looking to earn...

In some ways, being able to wear a lot of marketing hats could be turning into a curse rather than a blessing. I have a colleague right now who is looking for a position, but he is having some trouble because his resume has such a wide range of marketing experiences on it rather than a specific specialty like "marketing operations" or "product marketing" or "content writing." It is as if he is being punished for always stepping up to fill his employers most urgent needs, and for never saying "that's not my job."

Mr. Schaber writes from the perspective of someone trying to hire someone with a wider range of experience, but it also works in reverse and can become very challenging to find a job when you have that range of experience. In any case, he does a great job summing up some basic requirements you should look for in your small business or startup marketer. Check it out here.