dear [Marketing]

Marketing isn’t dead. It just stopped hiring new grads.

Here’s which skills to focus on and how to get your foot in the door.

With Ally Basak and Samantha Wen. A Silicon Valley CMO who had to lay off her whole team, and a Berkeley grad who applied to 10 jobs a day for nearly a year before landing her first job.

What does a marketing career actually look like now?

Entry-level marketing roles are on the decline as AI automates basic tasks. Hiring managers are seeking “super individual contributors” who can own deliverables end-to-end: running a live event, managing a social channel from strategy to post, producing video in Adobe Premiere Pro, or building a full campaign.

Skills that stay valuable

  • Brand strategy and storytelling
  • Product marketing: positioning, messaging, and go-to-market
  • Creative: original design, illustration, visual identity
  • PR, earned media, and thought leadership
  • Influencer marketing, especially short-form video
  • Content production: podcasts, webinars, video series
  • Campaign management and performance measurement
73%

Drop in content marketing manager postings in one year

Semrush, 2026
65%

Marketing tasks that can be automated with AI

Anthropic, 2026
68%

of marketers say finding a job is harder than five years ago

Content Marketing Institute, 2024
“Every time I post a job, I get 4,000+ resumes on LinkedIn alone. The only way I can manage is to filter some of them out using AI. For the rest, I click on their website and make a snap decision. My best advice to Gen Z is to have proof of work. Show me what you’ve done, and I’ll hire you.”
Ally Basak · Chief Marketing Officer
Samantha Wen

Samantha Wen graduated from UC Berkeley in 2023 with a double major, internships at Tesla and Warner Brothers Discovery, and a strong GPA. She applied to 10 jobs a day for 11 months without a single offer. What finally worked wasn’t more applications. It was leaning into the one thing she could speak to with total confidence: producing live events based on experience she gained on her college improv team.

She got hired on personality, specificity, and proof of work, using AI to sharpen and accelerate her learning along the way. The stakes are higher now, but the formula holds: show up with something real you have delivered, and be able to speak to how AI made it possible or better.

“Being yourself wholeheartedly, following your strengths: That makes you the unique person in the unique position to do what you do well.”
Samantha Wen · UC Berkeley ’23

Proof of work checklist for entry-level marketing

Cover letters get skimmed. Here are the things you should be able to show before applying.

  1. A campaign, event, or project you owned end-to-end, even for a club, nonprofit, or personal brand

  2. Demonstrated ability to manage a content calendar or project timeline using a real tool

  3. One concrete example of using AI to do something faster or better, and what you did with the result

AI as leverage

Content creation

Claude / ChatGPT

Draft copy, emails, briefs, and campaign concepts in minutes. The skill is directing and editing, not writing from scratch.

Visual generation

Canva AI / Adobe Firefly

Generate on-brand visuals without a design team. Fluency here makes you a one-person creative department.

Market and competitor research

Perplexity / ChatGPT

Synthesize industry trends, audience insights, and competitor positioning faster than any analyst.

Analytics and reporting

GA4 + AI summaries

Turn raw data into narrative insights. Hiring managers want someone who can speak numbers fluently.

Workflow automation

Zapier / Make

Automate repetitive publishing, reporting, and lead workflows. This is table stakes within two years.

Video and audio editing

Opus Clip / Descript

Repurpose long-form content into short clips automatically. One podcast episode becomes ten social assets.