Hiring for Sales and Marketing Profiles

 Sales and Marketing profession is growing faster than the average for all other occupations. Marketing and promotional campaigns are essential to every company, regardless of industry, as organizations seek to grow and maintain their market share. Marketing jobs are available at all kinds of organizations — large firms, startups, small businesses, and non-profits as well. Some of the major recruiters at Christ (Deemed to be University) for Marketing and Sales profiles include Godrej & Boyce, JLL, ICICI Bank, Zoho Corp, Byju’s, MyGate, Zomato, Impel-sys, Great Learning, Kristal AI, Intellipaat, The Media Ant, Address Advisors, MuSigma, Zolo Stays, Times Internet and Deltax. The Cost To Company (CTC) range is from Rs 3 Lakhs to 7 Lakhs per annum. The job profiles offered are in the areas of Digital / Content Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketer, Product / Event or Brand Marketing, Business Development & Marketing Analysis.

Any profession requires certain skill sets. Same holds true for a career for Sales and Marketing. Skills are broadly classified into three types namely Soft skills, Hard skills and role critical skills. Primarily, a sales/marketing professional requires all three types of skills. Soft skills are informal abilities that are generally learned over a person’s lifetime and usually relate to the person’s aptitude in performing common tasks and connecting with other people. Some of the soft skills required for Sales /Marketing are relationship building, time management, a gathering of information and problem-solving. Hard skills are often formal and technical abilities which could be earned from educational institutions, workplaces, seminars, mentorships, and training courses. Hard skills required for Sales & Marketing are product knowledge, active listening, sales presentations and demonstrations.  Role-critical skills are a subset of hard skills that are specialized for a specific function or role. The role-critical skills required for sales and marketing are Prospecting i.e., identifying potential customers; Referrals, using existing customers as a source to get more leads; and Closing of the Sale, which depicts the essence of selling efforts. The above are certain indicators which are common to many professions, but sales and marketing require that extra effort as these people are the face of the company and their actions reflect on the company.

Apart from the general skills mentioned above, the organisations that recruit from our campus also expect students to possess some of the following skills required for Sales or Marketing profiles i.e., editorial skills and creative ideas, good command over English language, negotiation skills, self-motivator and to motivate teams, part of an event management committee at college and co-curricular and extra-curricular activities, ability to multitask, good at primary and secondary research, proficient in Powerpoint, Excel and Word, ability to work under pressure, excellent written and verbal communication skills, openness to travel, creativity, passion for numbers & curiosity etc.

To facilitate the students to pursue a career in sales/marketing, Christ (Deemed to be University) offers certain general and discipline-specific subjects coupled with activities to give the students a better orientation about this field. The subjects such as marketing management and service management give them a general idea about the nuances in those respective areas. As they progress, the students who are specifically interested in sales and marketing are offered subjects such as Consumer behaviour, Sales and distribution management, Retail management, Brand management etc. These specialized subjects are dealt with in detail to give the students an overall perspective about the functions which contribute to the area of sales and marketing.

Apart from specialized subjects, the students are engaged in activities such as role-plays to simulate the sales experience. Activities such as ‘Retail Mela’ was conducted wherein students put up stalls in the University and sold products featured in their stalls. They were given tasks to promote their products and sell them to the visitors and the same was evaluated. This gave the students a rich experience pertaining to sales, promotion etc.

There is no better education than real-life experience, and internships allow one to learn on the go while still learning in the classroom. Marketing departments are made up of lots of moving parts, and internships help one determine exactly which projects and promotions they would like to join. With some real-life experience, one becomes a highly desirable candidate for employers. Some of the internships can lead to full-time jobs too. Summer internships and projects are a part of the curriculum at Christ (Deemed to be University). Students are encouraged to visit organizations and spend time under the guidance of a company executive to give them hands-on experience in working in the field. Students have been doing internships with Amazon, Oyo rooms, Cafe coffee day etc. where they spent time in field visits and activities. This gives them better learning about the benefits and problems faced by professionals in these fields.