Maybe you’re a marketer looking to pivot careers and try a new role or new industry, or maybe you’ve been looking to level up your marketing career for a while now and can’t seem to land the job offer.

Regardless of where you’re at in your job search, learning to market yourself and help prospective employers envision you in the role will make you stand out as a candidate.

In this Awaken Career Chat, I invited Marketing Executive and LinkedIn Influencer - Maya Grossman to share interview tips, career pivots, and how marketers can better market themselves in the job market.

Maya has over 15 years of marketing experience in small and big corporations (including with Microsoft and Google) and has worked in various marketing functions, such as social media, digital and product marketing.

She is also a LinkedIn influencer who regularly shares marketing career content, leadership stories, and advice on leveling up in your career.

In this interview, you will learn:

How Maya pivoted her marketing career from social media to digital to product marketing
Pros and cons of working at small companies, start-ups, and big corporations
Important traits that make good leaders at workplace
How to prepare for your next interview and mistakes to avoid

Here’s a glance at this interview…

[6:04] Lydia: What do you like about big companies and smaller companies or start-ups, and what do you not like?

Maya: They both have pros and cons, and it really depends on what you’re optimizing for and what season in your life you’re in…

[13:33] Lydia: What kind of marketing positions did you hire within this 15-year marketing career?

Maya: I probably hired for every marketing role you can think of, from entry-level jobs to helping CEOs find their first VP of marketing…

[21:42] Lydia: Maya has a theory about how to be a great leader, so I’m going to have her talk about that.

Maya: So this kind of started when I was talking to one of my coaching clients and she said, “I’m not the leader type. I’m not super loud, I don’t command the room when I walk into it, and I don’t think I’m tough enough on my employees…”

[27:05] Lydia: What kind of mistakes do you see in interviews, and what would you suggest people avoid?

Maya: So I’ve already mentioned one of them: if you don’t know how to answer a question, don’t BS your way through it, just say you don’t know. But here’s the caveat…

[30:26] Lydia: Is there any better way to let people still see you as a quick thinker, and what is your perspective when a candidate tells you about that, especially if they are in a senior or leadership position?

Maya: First and foremost, prepare for interviews. And when I mean prepare, I think people don’t really understand. I mean take 5 to 10 hours to prepare for an interview. Here’s why…

[34:05] Lydia: What’s one piece of career advice that you can give to marketing professionals who are ready to job search?

Maya: Be very, very, very specific about the role that you want. So, to your point earlier, you’re not open to every role. And even if you are, let’s say you are, say you have a very diverse experience and you’re not sure…

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