How To Get Digital Marketing Experience in Ireland: breaking the virtuous circle of the chicken and the egg

Posted by: Krishna De | Posted on: August 30th, 2009 | 14 Comments | Posted in: Career, Digital Marketing, Marketing online, Social media, Social media and nonprofits

In the current economy I am still finding there are lots of marketing professionals in Ireland that don’t have a job.

One of the actions many are taking is to up-skill themselves – there have been a lot of people attending the Digital Marketing Institute programmes who have traditional marketing experience and now are looking to develop a knowledge of digital marketing and social media.

However attending a course does not a digital marketing practitioner make you.

But many people find it’s like the chicken and egg: which one comes first?  They can’t get a role in digital marketing as they don’t have the experience. And they can’t get the experience until they get a job.

This last week I acted as a ‘matchmaker’ – someone was looking for experience with digital marketing and and the other was a non profit organisation who was looking for marketing support and were especially interested in digital skills. The non profit now has a marketing professional keen to put into practice their learning and the marketing professional will have a tangible project they will able to show to a future employer and add to their portfolio.

So perhaps if you find yourself in the situation of some time on your hands that you don’t want to use only to learn and network but you want to get real experience here are some idea’s for how to find a role:

1. Alternatives the marketing recruitment agency now list on their website opportunities they call ‘Charity Marketing Projects’. You can register online if you are interested in being considered – here is a list of their current projects where non profits are looking for marketing, PR and communications experience.

2. Board Match Ireland supports the development of Boards and Management Committees of community and voluntary sector organisations. Candidates are then matched, based on location, skills and preferred area of interest, to non profit organisations who have also registered their board opportunities. The site is free to use and you can register online HERE – there are over 200 opportunities listed requiring from 4 hours of support a month upwards and there are many looking for strategy, marketing and PR expertise.

And don’t forget the Career Bootcamp – a free series of workshops taking place during the week of the 31 August 2009 in Dublin, all speakers are gifting their time and organised by the National College of Ireland from CV experience to how to use social media platforms to help you find your next role (yes I am leading that session and all speakers for the sessions running from the 1 September onwards are gifting their time).