Career Advice - Marketing vs. Finance, Accounting, and Banking

Marketing vs. Finance, Accounting, and Banking

Accounting, Finance, Banking as Career

If you are not taking any risk, then go for the boring career. i.e. Accounting, Finance, Banking. Becuase what they pay is:

Initial Salary + Structured Yearly Increment (never based on your performance) + Loyalty Premium

In Accounting, Finance, Banking you have to deal with large amount of money. And it is really tough to make people work without greed if you don't pay them "loyalty premium". e.g. same formula in

10,000 Salary + 5,000 Increment + 25,000 Loyalty Premium = 40,000

So after 5 years you get:

10,000 Salary + 4,0000 X 4 Increment + 25,000 Loyalty Premium = 55,000

That's why, people gets bored after some years. They are the ones that do day to day structured job, highly protocolous, tedious job but the salary is not raised to that level.

In most cases, they try out other stuffs to get out of boredom. The only way you find it interesting when you have a lot of money and maintain investment portfolio. So, if you don't have too much money, this career will make a robot out of you.

Marketing as Career

In Marketing, what you get is:

Initial Salary + Flexible Yearly Increment (based on your performance) + Motivating Bonus

There is no loyalty premium here. So salary is pretty low. e.g. in same situation:

16,000 Salary + 4,000 Increment + 5,000 Motivation = 25,000

So, if you get 25,000 in marketing, you can bet, that initial salary is higher than Finance. Assuming that increment is same. But, after 5 years your salary can be more than 55,000. But, in most cases, you can cross salary of your bank or finance friends in 10 years. I did in 7 year.

Marketing clients or employers can be successful if they get good ROI (Return on Investment). It means they will want to get more return from less investment. The investment they have on you is really uncertain. If you can't make any money for them, then the whole money is wasted. So, the starting salary is never high. But, if you can prove your worth, your salary will rise along with your performance.

Always remember that marketing people are Core Employees (who are variable cost). And Fiance people are Overhead Employees (who are fixed cost). So, fixed cost employee never can enjoy the real pie of sales. But, marketing people can.

There is a big BUT. To stay in marketing field for that long time, you have to smart enough. Those who think that marketing is not the field, they are not smart enough. Sorry to say. Marketing is mostly about finding opportunities and understanding people. If you are smart at this and very creative in engaging people, you should prefer marketing. It is really a myth that, you have to go from door to door for marketing. Marketing, Advertising, Branding has so many jobs that does not need you to go anywhere. And if you think you are not creative enough, then go for less interesting job in Fiance.

7 CV/Resume Tips at Both at Scrutinizer and Employer Level

Please note that, a CV/Resume is your catalog and you are the product. Therefore, no one knows better about this product than you. So, try to make the CV/Resume by yourself without the help of any consultant. Like the product catalogs for promotion, you have to apply several marketing strategy to market yourself. Here are some the tricks that I follow:

Scrutinizer

Self Marketing Tips at Scrutinizer Level

Scrutinizer is a person who picks up your CV/Resume first before it reaches the hands of the employer.

1. If your CV/Resume is in the hands of a scrutinizer, he has maximum 20 seconds for you. So, always have a impressive cover page for your CV/Resume that almost summarizes all your activities and can be easily browsed (not read) in less than 20 seconds.
2. To save the time and effort of the hardworking scrutinizer, highlight/bold some of the important keywords on your cover page that you want him/her to see. e.g. Worked as a full time volunteer for Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) from 2003-2005 (3 years). Now read the bold texts, it reads - Worked as volunteer for YMCA 3 years. i.e. Use a formal tone in choosing words for your CV, but don't let the scrutinizer read the whole text.
3. Try to avoid bullets for lists, because bullets itself attracts the eyes of the scrutinizer and words get least highlighted. i.e. Give more emphasis on words, not graphics or bullets. One of my favorite is the table form categorization.
4. Try to mention your career objective (specific to the job you are applying for), strengths & qualifications, educational & professional brief, achievements or portfolio, and especially contact information on the cover page.
5. Give reference where the employer (next person after the scrutinizer) can get further information to the statements you provided in the cover page. e.g. "Please refer to Item # 5B for more information about Language Proficiency". This will help scrutinizer from being overfed and the employer to get a healthy diet. Moreover, please give indication at below that this is a cover page and there are more.
6. To attract the scrutinizer, submit the CV in different color paper that can easily be granted as formal color, like off white, cream, pale sky, and other very light colors. If everyone is going for this strategy, then go for plain white color. No matter what, your CV/Resume should look different than others so that the scrutinizer can easily pickup your CV in the first look and be interested to give your CV/Resume substantial amount of time.
7. As for staying different than others, don't use words that everyone is using and don't make your CV just another boring CV for the scrutinizer. Use your creativity in choosing formal words. Try to give the scrutinizer the worth of his time. Because, he would be reading all same and boring stuff, when he starts looking into other CVs.

Employer

Self Marketing Tips at Employer Level

After being scrutinized, the CV/Resume reaches the hands of the employer.

1. The employer has about 60-90 seconds for reading your CV/Resume so you should prepare the CV/Resume considering this fact.
2. Don't make your CV too long and boring to read because employers are very busy people. For many, HR is not a priority job for them. Most of the time, these people spare their important work time to read your CV/Resume. Again, don't make your CV/Resume too short so that your employer thinks that you have less to tell about yourself. This is a fact that, those who work hard, can tell a lot about themselves and vice versa.
3. Have a nice looking CV/Resume site for yourself. If you want to say more about yourself, try refer to specific page or URL in your CV/Resume site for more information, but provide only a brief in the CV/Resume. This is quite helpful when you mention Publications. Prepare PDF files of your publications and upload them to your CV/Resume site. And refer them to your site. 
4. Shorten your URL using http://bit.ly from logged in account. So, when an employer visits your URL, you can spy on the stats. You can also customize an URL using ? and parameters after it. e.g. your URL can be like this http://www.yourcvsite.com/your-qualification?employer=the_name_of_the_employer&source=cv, this custom URL will actually take you to http://www.yourcvsite.com/your-qualification, but you can get a separate Bitly short URL for that, which can help you track which employer actually read your CV.
5. Try to push less important information at the back and most important information (that can influence the employer in making decision) at first. e.g. Keep Personal Information and references way back of the CV.
6. Make the CV specific to the job. e.g. you might have a list of about 25 extracurricular activities, but list only a few that you think can get you the job.
7. Try to avoid the word "Hobbies" instead you can use "Freelance Activities". These are not activities like "Extracurricular Activities" that has expired, rather activities that you do quite often. e.g. Camp Leader in Summer camp, Blogging, developmental reading (like-how to books), etc. Movies, music, etc. as hobbies can make you weaker. If you are applying for the position of Movie Reviewer, then it is perfect.
8. Rather than highlighting your duties, highlight your challenges and how you have overcome them while mentioning your achievements. Any achievement is worth nothing, if there were no challenges. Try to highlight challenges to make your achievement look great. Usually programmers know that, knowing and working with codes as per duty does not make you an experienced programmer. It depends mostly upon how many troubleshooting you did, in other words how many challenges and problems you faced. Achievements are more important than your qualification and most of the time not related to your qualification.
   

I hope these tips will be helpful for you and not too long and boring to read.

Personal Branding in the Age of Internet - Internet Marketing, When You are the Brand

Personal Branding and Self Marketing in the age of Internet

Before going to the broad discussion, let's get introduced to some terms:

• Brand = The image, the emotional image, the perceived image, identity, entity by others of a person, character, product , service, organization or abstract entity
• Social Media = Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter where you can interact with others in a network
• Social Network = The group both casual and professional people you can interact with online
• Blog = Short for “Web Log”, just an online diary that can express any idea that you want to talk about. If you are reading this, you already know what it is
• Authority = The situation where you become the most reliable source for information and deemed the most

Some Facts of Self Marketing and Personal Branding

• The most valuable brand in this world is Apple? No, YOU!
• Self Marketing is just like any other product or service marketing, but the product is YOU!
• Personal Branding is equally strong as corporate branding
• Good will is an asset for a company, likewise good reputation is also an asset for YOUrself!
• Internet allows any brand to express their ideas, share their views and philosophies, including YOU!
• If companies and brand can grow their reputation through website, so can YOU!

What Can You Do in the Internet?

• Express ideas and showcase skills & experience
• Share all the above with everyone
• Interact with others and maintain 2 way communication
• Establish yourself as authority
• Measure impression, traffic, and influence

Getting Started with Online Personal Branding

What You Need for a Good Job Application

• A compelling CV/Resume
• Link to your publications, resources, articles
• A website where you can post more information about you, your skill, experience, your achievements, etc.
• A professional blog to express your professional views
• Social media profiles where you can network with like minded professionals and friends

Analyzing Your Personal Brand

• Can you own your actual name? (Asif Anwar)
• Is your name very common? (~20 of them by the same name)
• Can you add anything to your name? (Asif Anwar SEOExpert)
• Is there any nick name you use? (Pathik)
• What about a descriptor /pseudonym? (marketguru)
• Consider and choose a your brand (SEOExpert)
• Create a new term or phrase (SEOple – SEO People)
• Is geography a consideration? (SEOExpertBD)

Finalizing Your Personal Brand

• Pick a brand name
• Google your brand name (Zero Google result is ideal)
• Assess your current reputation
• Check User Name availability with www.CheckUserNames.com
• Create Social Media account for your personal branding
• Create Good Contents and enrich your social media profile
• Get URL Vanity URLs for your profiles (e.g. instead of http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1234567890 get http://www.facebook.com/asifanwar

Considerations for Online Presence

• The link emphasizes your personal brand
• The link is short and easy to type
• The page is public and easily shareable
• The page does not require password or is not invitation only
• The page is search engine friendly
• You can measure and view traffic
• Has the ability to showcase as much contents as you want
• You can update contents easily
• Has the ability to showcase rich contents
• Has networking feature (Friends, Fans, Follower, Subscribers)

Popular Sites for Personal Branding

For Resume: LinkedIn, BDJobs, VisualCV
For Document and CV Upload: Scribd, Google Docs, DocStoc
For Images: Flickr, Picassa, Facebook Page, PhotoBucket
For Videos: YouTube, Facebook Page, Vimeo, DailyMotion
For Presentations: SlideShare, Google Docs, AuthorStream
For Blogging: Blogspot, WordPress, Tumblr, Facebook Note
For Personal Website: Webs.com, Google Sites, Yola, WeblyFor Shortening URL: Bit.ly, TinyURL, Goo.gl
For Audio files and Podcasting: YouListen, MyPodcast, iTunes Podcast, PodBean, PodOMatic.

Few Tips on Resume Site and Offsite Resume

• Pictures are worth thousands of words, use them. Animation, flash, infographics are good way to attract those that leave your site or blog in 5 seconds
• To make your site search engine friendly, make as much pages as you can on your various skills or try to place links to your blog in one place
• For skills, make a video tutorial of what you know and embed them in your site.
• Additionally, you can also put the video thumbnail on your CV with QR Code (Generate from http://qrcode.kaywa.com/)
• Use custom Bitly links (e.g. http://bit.ly/asifanwar) when you refer any link in your Resume.

Have a look at the video of the article in Bangla (English version coming soon)