Finding a job that fits my skills

mrfranky

Hi all,

I've been working for myself for around 15+ years now but the business isn't doing so well and I need to unfortunately look for employment to help with the finances.

Because I've not been in the employed work space for years and years, I know very little about what type of job titles there are, or what I am supposed to be looking for with the skills I have.

I don't have any qualifications, but I do have experience in the field I have been in.

When I needed to learn something, I simply learned it using information/guides online. In my experience you don't need to go and get a degree for a lot of things to learn it. You can learn these things yourself online with the right motivation. But it seems that's what companies want right? A bachelors degree etc.

So that's where I am a little stuck. I have years of experience but no piece of paper to tell someone, hey look I officially learned this etc.

I have experience in:

Creating/maintaining and running a successful online ecommerce/entertainment website.

Building/maintaining social media pages with the aim to gain traffic to the website.

Hiring/managing a small team of content creators, ensuring they are sufficiently trained and tasks have been assigned to them.

Email marketing.

Affiliate marketing using Amazon/Etsy.

Content creation for the website in a blog type format.

Moderate experience in content creation using Photoshop, Premier Pro, Excel, Word, Midjourney and more.

I'm not really sure how to package all that up and find something that requires those things.

I'm hoping some ideas can come my way here. Again, I'm new to trying to find employment so please bare that in mind if my questions sound daft.

Thanks

Marcon

mrfranky said:

Hi all,

I've been working for myself for around 15+ years now but the business isn't doing so well and I need to unfortunately look for employment to help with the finances.

Because I've not been in the employed work space for years and years, I know very little about what type of job titles there are, or what I am supposed to be looking for with the skills I have.

I don't have any qualifications, but I do have experience in the field I have been in.

When I needed to learn something, I simply learned it using information/guides online. In my experience you don't need to go and get a degree for a lot of things to learn it. You can learn these things yourself online with the right motivation. But it seems that's what companies want right? A bachelors degree etc.

So that's where I am a little stuck. I have years of experience but no piece of paper to tell someone, hey look I officially learned this etc.

I have experience in:

Creating/maintaining and running a successful online ecommerce/entertainment website.

Building/maintaining social media pages with the aim to gain traffic to the website.

Hiring/managing a small team of content creators, ensuring they are sufficiently trained and tasks have been assigned to them.

Email marketing.

Affiliate marketing using Amazon/Etsy.

Content creation for the website in a blog type format.

Moderate experience in content creation using Photoshop, Premier Pro, Excel, Word, Midjourney and more.

I'm not really sure how to package all that up and find something that requires those things.

I'm hoping some ideas can come my way here. Again, I'm new to trying to find employment so please bare that in mind if my questions sound daft.

Thanks

Nothing at all daft about your question - very sensible to be asking at all rather than just charging in regardless!

Might be worth talking to a couple of agencies who deal with the sort of areas in which you have expertise, and getting advice from them on the sort of keywords you need to include in your cv. They should also be able to tell you your likely earnings capacity as an employee and possibly suggest any further training/courses which could help you.

Before doing that, check with some of your current/former clients if they are happy for you to cite them as reference points, both in terms of actually giving a reference and linking to any (publicly available) website/marketing material you've provided for them. That's far more valuable to a potential employer than a bit of paper saying you've got a purely theoretical qualification.

josephine82

I wouldn’t worry about not having a degree. So many organisations these days respect experience as well as qualifications, but you’ll need to demonstrate how your experience fits the role criteria. 

It’s not really my area, but this sounds like digital marketing to me. So you could search for digital marketing officer, coordinator, content officer, social media manager, as some example job titles? 

I’d advise just doing a search on indeed for some of the above titles and just looking at jobs that come up, get the job description and see what they are looking for. This will help you build a picture of what these roles involve and what fits your skills. I’m sure there is a role out there for you! 

Good luck. 

DullGreyGuy

In the UK you can get away without formal educational qualifications, unlike many other countries. There can be a preference for various more vocational qualifications though but these are often short/mid length courses not 3 year degrees etc. Self learning is often an option and you just pay to take the exam.

Marketing isn't really my area of expertise but there tends to be the three phases and in large companies it will be split between different people (or organisations)... you have the more strategy guys who'll decide if they get an extra £100,000 money to spend this quarter should it be put on TV, Print, SEM, Affiliates etc. You then get the content creators and the ones that deal with the practical aspects like booking the advert slots, managing the affiliate network etc. Finally you have the analysts who monitor the sales funnel, conversion rate by source etc and feedback into the strategy guys so they can adjust when it appears print is saturated and you'll get a better ROI in moving spend into sponsorship 


You need to be a bit clearer on your skills... "build websites" means you were writing .Net/Python to introduce a/b testing of copy/layouts etc or create a membership loyalty scheme etc or do you mean you were putting content into Wordpress etc?

Find job agencies that target marketing roles (or the agents with this interest in a more general agency) and speak to them about roles. You'll be able to tell from their questions what's important and what isn't. If the 1st question everyone asks is if you have a Cert or Dip from CIM then you probably may want to consider joining and getting the qualification. 

breaking_free

I've been working in the IT industry for 15+ years. In that time not one person has ever asked to see my degree or graduate diploma. Just saying Not suggesting you pretend you have a degree, just pointing out that it may not be necessary.

AnnaWatts

Your diverse skill set is impressive! Consider exploring roles like Digital Marketing Specialist or E-commerce Manager. Highlight your hands-on experience in website management, social media, team leadership, and marketing. Showcase your adaptability and willingness to learn. Companies value practical expertise, so emphasize your accomplishments. Good luck on your job search!

zedonk

I'm in a similar position to you, self-employed for 14 years and now looking for a salaried job where I can use my transferable skills. I'm quite open-minded about what that job will be, which makes it hard to search by job title. 

I've found the gov.uk jobs website really useful for browsing through jobs to see what's out there. It has all the civil service and NHS jobs and some private sector stuff too.

I do have a degree (from 20+ years ago) but most roles I'm looking at there don't require one. 

Archerychick

Your skills are great! Definitely fits in with a range of marketing roles.

You have a couple of options - 

1. Identify and approach agencies near to you who offer services to end clients - this typically gives alot of variety across a wide base of clients, especially in the smaller agencies.
2. Seek roles working within a marketing team at a company - you may find you have a more wide role working for a business who sell their services to businesses, and a narrower role for those selling to consumers but they all vary a bit!

It’s worth spending a bit of time on your CV, read some online resources on the best ways to do this.