Perreault−McCarthy: Basic
Marketing: A
Global−Managerial
Approach, 14/e
Back Matter Appendix C: Career
Planning Marketing© The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2002685service activities—for example, in technical service or installation and repair.
Thing-oriented jobs focus more on creative activities and analyzing data—as in
advertising and marketing research—or on organizing and scheduling work—as
in operating warehouses, transportation agencies, or the back-end of retailers.
People-oriented jobs tend to pay more, in part because such jobs are more likely
to affect sales—the lifeblood of any business. Thing-oriented jobs, on the other
hand, are often seen as cost generators rather than sales generators. Taking a big
view of the whole company’s operations, the thing-oriented jobs are certainly nec-
essary—but without sales no one is needed to do them.
Thing-oriented jobs are usually done at a company’s facilities. Further, especially
in lower-level jobs, the amount of work to be done and even the nature of the work
may be spelled out quite clearly. The time it takes to design questionnaires and tab-
ulate results, for example, can be estimated with reasonable accuracy. Similarly,
running a warehouse, analyzing inventory reports, scheduling outgoing shipments,
and so on are more like production operations. It’s fairly easy to measure an
employee’s effectiveness and productivity in a thing-oriented job. At the least, time
spent can be used to measure an employee’s contribution.
A sales rep, on the other hand, might spend all weekend thinking and planning
how to make a half-hour sales presentation on Monday. For what should the sales
rep be compensated—the half-hour presentation, all of the planning and thinking
that went into it, or the results? Typically, sales reps are rewarded for results—and
this helps account for the sometimes extremely high salaries paid to effective order
getters. At the same time, some people-oriented jobs can be routinized and are
lower paid. For example, salespeople in some retail stores are paid at or near the
minimum wage.Getting Wired for a Career in MarketingThe Internet is a great resource at every stage of
career planning and job hunting. It can help you learn:
how to do a self-assessment, the outlook for different
industries and jobs, what firms have jobs open, how
to improve a résumé and post it online for free, and
just about anything else you can imagine. Here we’ll
highlight just a few ideas and websites that can help
you get started. However, if you start with some of
these suggestions, each website you visit will provide
links to other relevant sites that will give you new
ideas to think about.
One good place to start is at Yahoo (www.yahoo.
com). Select jobsunder the business and economy
heading, and then click on careers and jobs. Take a
look at all of the information and services that are
available when you select the Yahoo! Careerslink
(which takes you to careers.yahoo.com). For example,
you can browse résumé tools and salary information,
look at job listings, and much more. Yahoo also has a
link to a listing of career fields, including a section on
advertising and marketing. You may also want to
study the information on career planning,with a spe-
cial section for students and recent grads.
Another website to check is at http://www.
marketingjobs.com. It has listings of marketing jobs,
links to a number of companies with openings, a
résumé center with ideas for preparing a résumé and
posting it on the Internet, and lists of helpful periodi-
cals. You might also go to http://www.careerjournal.com.There are job listings, job-hunting advice, career arti-
cles from The Wall Street Journal,and more. You can
create and post a résumé here as well. Professional
associations are another great resource. For example,
the American Marketing Association website is at
http://www.ama.org, and the Sales and Marketing Execu-
tives International website is at http://www.smei.com. The
Council of Logistics Management website is at
http://www.clm1.org.
Another good website address is http://www.
collegegrad.com. It has links to the best sites on the
Web for posting a résumé, information on writing
cover letters and getting references, and ideas about
how to find a company with job openings. To get a
sample of what’s possible in tracking down jobs,
visit the website at http://www.thejobresource.com and
experiment with its search engine, which lets you
look at what’s available by state. For example, you
might want to search through job listings that men-
tion terms such as entry level, marketing,
advertising, andsales.
This should get you started. Remember, however,
that in Chapter 8 we gave addresses for a number of
websites with search engines. You can use one of them
to help find more detail on any topic that interests you.
For example, you might go to http://www.altavista.
digital.com and do a search on terms such as
marketing jobs, salary surveys, post a résumé, or entry
level position.