Journal #3
Santo has gone through many avenues of marketing, allowing him to be knowledgeable in a wide range of marketing sectors. He started his career through working at the airport, Rogers, and TD. He said that most of his career has been in marketing but on the data side of it. He then moved onto CBC where he balanced working while getting his MBA part time. He said that “I wanted to grow what I was doing. I felt pigeonholed into data analytics and I wanted to get more out of it.” He then moved onto working and running the marketing team at Moneris. He ran the PR, Brand and Marketing side all without having direct marketing experience.
“You have the knowledge and support of the organization. You just need to be confident with yourself.”
That quote stood out most to me, as entering a new industry is very intimidating and you can often doubt your knowledge and skills with the position you are up against. It is important to believe in your efforts and know that you will do the job well and successfully. Santo then spent four years at JP Morgan Chase, and now has the role of Marketing and Communications at Retail Council of Canada where he is focused on the advocacy of retailers and retail issues.
As I appreciate all the knowledge Santo shared to our class about his positions, it is ultimately not the career I am interested in. He focused more on B2B side through global marketing, while I am more focused on a Public Relations/ Marketing career through the beauty/fashion industry.
The question I prepared for Santo was “What are some of the biggest challenges you have had to overcome?”. His response was that early on, he did not understand the important of sales, and never knew the importance of nurturing the relationships with sales.
Something that I think is very important that Santo brought up was the importance of forming relationships and connections. He got his current job through his connection with the CEO, not through LinkedIn or hiring sites. He was able to meet with the CEO and create a role that didn’t even exist before. An important quote he said that I will leave off with is that
“In your career, roles will get eliminated, departments will move on and you will get asked to also move on. That is ok! Don’t worry because you are building a knowledgable skill set and you need to have confidence to move on from it and find something better.”
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