Earlier this week, I spent an hour with a colleague who is looking to find her next marketing opportunity. I’ve known Alex casually for 8 years. I knew Alex did ‘marketing’, but I didn’t know what she did with any kind of detail. We talked. Alex explained the projects and campaigns she worked on and managed. It was clear to me what Alex liked about her work and what she was good at. It was also clear that Alex may need some help telling her story. This post is really for Alex.
Alex is a talented marketing writer, has a good ‘eye’ for visuals, is very organized, and is a solid learner of new tech. She supports WordPress websites, creates complicated Smartsheet models, and has been working with sales teams forever. The lead-to-cash cycle is part of her professional DNA. Best of all, she has the project manager magic wand. People like to work with her. They listen to her feedback. She can coach people through challenges, she can escalate to the client with grace and still meet the project deadline. Alex makes the people around her better.
So why am I writing about Alex? Simple: Alex needs to sharpen her message in two ways: (1) show her commitment to growing her core skills, and (2) up her marketing metric game. Put differently, Alex needs to help her listener see her focus on continually getting better at what she does well, but Alex also needs to include a talk track that demonstrates she knows why she does what she does.
The first idea – Alex showing commitment to excelling in her core skills is a big topic. I am not writing about that today. With her skill and experience, there will be ample resources for Alex to fall back on. For ‘being your best’, my favorite recent advice for marketers comes from Jessica Apotheker’s TED Talk on Marketing in the Age of AI. Jessica preaches specialization and excellence in your craft. Hard to go wrong there. But Alex needs a bit more. Recruiters and hiring managers will want to know that Alex knows the business reasons for what she does. That’s where the Skill:Metric Rubric displayed below will help.
How will Alex use the rubric? When Alex talks about her amazing skills, I encouraged her to find her skills below and then read to the right about relevant metrics. I asked her to write down several examples of good outcomes from the last 5 years and then ‘translate’ the outcome using the language of metrics. That means naming and estimating the numerator and denominators. Of course, Alex won’t have all the data but no hiring manager is expecting audited results. The hiring manager wants to hear how Alex used her skills and is listening for Alex to explain how the skill translates to marketing outcomes. Metrics are part of that process.
Will Alex relate her amazing skills to real-life metrics and differentiate herself from others? I think she will!
Can you? Read down this table. Find your skills. Look at the associated metric and its components. How well do you relate your marketing skills to these metrics?
Think you don’t need marketing metrics? This short blog post from Ziflow makes the case with some good examples. Need more persuasion? Even the scientists at Cleveland Clinic will encourage the most hard-core right brain artist to use a healthy dose of their left brain.
With Skill:Metric insights, you’ll be better prepared for your next interview. What does ‘better’ mean? When the recruiter asks, “So, tell me about yourself. I’d like to know more about your marketing background”, you be able to respond with a qualitative description AND just the right dose of metrics!
Reach out to our team at Elevation Talent Group if you want to talk about using marketing metrics in your job search. If you are a hiring manager and want to ask better questions and frame your next interview with more marketing metrics, connect with Brian Sauerland at Elevation Talent Group. Brian is one of those gifted right brained artists (award winning pastel artist) who also knows a thing or two about the business of marketing!
Sources:
- Harvard Business Review, May 2025, Analytics for Marketers
- Digital Marketing KPIs Every SME Needs to Measure for Success (sometalentedpeople.com)
- A Complete Guide to Marketing Metrics & KPIs | 2024 (careerfoundry.com)
- A Simple Explanation of the Math Behind 7 Common Marketing Metrics (hubspot.com)
- Digital Marketing KPI Examples – 12 Digital Marketing Metrics to Track (cascade.app)
