How important is it to attend a prestigious university for a marketing/management position?

[sofia_1]

Hey! I´m new to this forum and needed some advice, so after reading through the pages for a bit, I decided to write this post, hoping that someone could help me Thanks in advance!
My name is Sofía and I´m a first-year BBA student. I have done first year of medical school but realized I´ve always liked marketing and management and it's what I want to do. I am now looking for a summer internship and for that matter, I´ve been building a more polished linked-in profile and resumé. While doing so, I started connecting with a lot of people my age (19- 21), also looking for internships that had amazing CVs, also (I think) thanks to the unis they´re attending (IE business school seems the most prestigious, most second or third years have taken part in several volunteer programmes, internships, courses on leadership, start-up competitions, networking events, student clubs...) while I am doing a BBA in a pretty average uni that doesn´t go out of its way to improve the student´s career (not the worst uni though, nor the best).
I have to say I´m pretty ambitious when it comes to my career (I work in anything I can find related to marketing and luxury anytime I can while studying languages and courses from LVMH, Condé Nast...), I´m looking for a summer internship in a smaller company since I´m only a first-year, and aim to work in the luxury sector in management or marketing (hospitality or fashion), but after researching big internship programmes in Cartier, Hermés or Mariott and looking at some profiles of the type of people I will be competing with, I was wondering how important is the uni you attend?

I was told by family members that degrees don´t really matter and that it is a master´s degree that determines and specifies your career. I do plan on doing a masters at EHL Lusanne, Les Roches Marbella or Bocconi in Milan, but again, I don´t know if even after a prestigious masters degree, I´ll be in a disadvantaged position compared to my mates.

Thanks in advance, I don't have anyone in the marketing or management world that I could ask this question.

 

[WebshopMechanic]

Hi @sofia_1

In my opinion, your university isn't important. The way you present yourself and stand out from the crowd IS important.

I would create an awesome profile website that tells these brands about you, the reason why you want a career in fashion, why you think you are different. You can support your CV with it. Yes, many might not look at it but there will be those brands that you.

You should also do some learning around persuasive copy writing techniques. Look up the best copywriters and see how they craft their propositions. Your are selling yourself so this will help you with your prospecting.

Finally, look up a very smart company founder called Carrie Rose from Rise at 7. She is exceptional at PR, marketing and self-promotion. She's on Twitter and often creates threads explaining how to pitch ideas to journalists.

Hope that helps.

Matt

 

[IanSuth]

I cant tell you abut Marketing in particular but i did recruitment (in IT) for 28 years so this is written from that perspective

When doing graduate recruitment you see hundreds of applications that are similar - yes the name of the institution may stand out or the fact someone got a 1st rather than a 2i BUT the biggest stand out -

An applicant who says "I am applying to your job because I have read up on you and the role, I see you want X and I have done some of that in this work experience here (or on this project here)" Obviously in far more depth than this but you get what i mean

A personalised application pointing out why you are good is worth at least a degree grade and other than the very top or bottom unis they are all much or a muchness. Also some work experience doing a bit of everything in a smaller company is worth at least as much as being Pidgeon holed in some huge internship program at a huge company

Biggest red flag - the candidate who wrote to me saying - "I am seeking a trainee IT Director role" - there are few shortcuts to the top, just ensure every job you do whilst a student whether paid or unpaid you are always thinking "what can I learn here good and bad"

 

[Paul FilmMaker]

I hired a marketing exec without a degree. She's just brilliant. She learned everything from YouTube, Linkedin and the net and applied it to her family's business and now she's doing the business for me.

She's outstanding.

I have a degree in marketing and I have used literally nothing from my course except maths (I majored in marketing for maths). However, what a top University and excellent grades do is they attract employers. So at a good University, great employers turn up and ask you to join their graduate schemes. And marketing means I have tremendous credibility.

However, the woman who works for me doesn't need a degree to be brilliant at marketing. She just needed a tremendous amount of effort to learn what she needed.

 

[SolomonD]

A good university will always help, however it is definitely not the only route, it just makes it easier and some companies have a rather blinkered approach to only recruiting on a narrow profile (hello group think).

We stopped specifying graduates only because we have some really good self taught people. We recruit on aptitude. I firmly believe a mix of backgrounds creates a better creative environment.

 

[paulears]

I'm afraid I stopped relying on the universities to demonstrate applicant calibre around the start of the 2000's - recruitment with integrity was abandoned around that time in favour of filling places. So many unis now flip-flop between core subjects almost on a whim. Oh dear, only a handful have applied for our marketing degree, so we'd better find something more popular, let's 'specialise' in er, games develoment! Some of the staffers who delivered marketing, who are spare time gamers, jumped straight in, and the rest would go to work elsewhere when made redundant. This repeats over maybe a five year cycle. See a demand, create a programme. Demand fades, scrap it.

The result is no depth at all, so it became impossible to assume a graduate with a decent degree could actually do industry standard jobs. Something I spotted numerous times. In my field, I'd need a certain job role for a short contract, and have nobody left to call, so I'd open it up and recent graduates would apply - qualified with a 'Designer' tag on their CV, not assistant, not a support to a designer role. They'd know the vocabulary when I chatted, so I'd give them the work and then discover they didn't have any real skills at all. I could NOT pin it to a certain establishment, although a few well known names came up more commonly than others. The trouble with what I do is that you need a team. A few activities are general, must most specific, so they have to be able to work independently - in fact, they're expected to be totally independent. I don't care how they carry the job out, as long as the end product works to the expected standard, and sometimes it just doesn't. I'd have to ask them to do basics, then discover they didn't know how to operate industry standard equipment that their uni didn't have. No breadth of knowledge at all. Some were useless. Can you imagine a person with a Sound Design degree spending three hours setting up a system and not knowing one very, very common connector goes in and TURNS to lock. I don't think it is my job to explain how such a common everyday process is done. Having to go and turn and click 40 odd cables, both ends, was enough to make me stop paying any attention to Degrees, and looking entirely at their job history.

My reliance on a qualification title has totally gone.

 

[Mark T Jones]

I'd say it's as important as you make it

Undoubtedly a top university can open doors. On the other hand, real life experience is mire important to many employers - particularly smaller companies

Where do you see your career path going,

 

[Deleted member 59730]

On the other hand, real life experience is mire important to many employers - particularly smaller companies

And larger ones!

I used to work with some of the top Brand Managers and marketing people in Europe. What university they went too was pretty unimportant. Many had worked their way up from office juniors. What mattered most was track record of successful product launches. Stories of successes and failures soon got around.

 

[The Byre]

If you look at your education from a purely mercenary PoV, every student would be lined up at the LSE, followed by UCL. Their graduates earn more than grads from any other unis in the UK. After those two come Oxford, Cambridge and St.Andrews.

If you want to ensure that you earn less than the average wage of £30k, attend a former polytech. And if you want to make sure that you spend the rest of your life doing menial jobs at minimum wage, do a vocational degree course at a former polytech.

And here's an insider tip - the LSE does external courses at a fraction of the cost of a full-time conventional course. (Which is how I got my BSc-Econ back in 49BC.)

If you step outside the top five, you will probably need an MBA to make any meaningful impression for a really good employer.

But here's the skinny for students that no careers teacher or other educationalist will tell you - we employers love results. That means that we are looking for achievements. Having some sort of meaningful educational certificate is an achievement of sorts, but that certificate is just a ticket to the train. It's what happens after that, that counts!

There is no getting around the fact that big employers have structures, one of which is their graduate programmes. For example, the best employer (conditions, progress and pay) in the retail sector is Aldi. They require a 2:1 in a proper subject and from a proper uni - so no music technology, no cinema studies, no diversity studies and no former polytechs - and a great deal depends on a good interview.

But all that just gets you on the train. It gets you that £46k plus car trainee gig. After that comes the hard part - the 60 hour weeks and the evening classes in German, French and Spanish - or whatever they recommend. And not all trainees get through to become area managers.

And some shop managers beast the books to become area managers.

If you look at the life paths of any successful person, you nearly always find that they have had very chequered careers. But the one thing they have in common is that they have a record of achievements. They may have bummed around the world, they may have dropped out of college, they may even have gone to prison - but once they were given a chance and got the bit between their teeth, they were off to the races!

Fashion is a pretty cut-throat business, so you'd better have sharp elbows and be fluent in French and Italian. Especially French. And wear a stab-proof vest!

But I would be thinking long and hard about incurring all that student debt and take another look at doing an online external course such as the ones offered by the LSE and other prestigious unis around the world that people have actually heard of.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

Results . Not exam results but sales results !
It does not matter if cant read or write if you are a fantastic sales person you will always be on good money .
You can dress up selling goods and services all you like but at the end of the day it is just old fashioned selling

 

[Deleted member 59730]

For example, the best employer (conditions, progress and pay) in the retail sector is Aldi. They require a 2:1 in a proper subject and from a proper uni

If after attending a prestige university my reward was to be a job as an Aldi manager I think I'd slit my throat. What a depressing prospect! No wonder they pay well. They wouldn't attract candidates other wise. While I can see the pride and satisfaction in launching the original caterpillar birthday cake I see no sense of achievement in selling a knock-off.

 

[Paul FilmMaker]

In fact, I'd go even further than my earlier post because I have a marketing degree, was an Erasmus scholarship winner (so did my degree in multiple languages) and know how useless it is from a practical perspective. E.g. Nothing in my marketing degree was about lead generation. Instead, we did tons of essays on strategy, Porter etc... And frankly, we could have done it in 3 months, not 3 years.

And sure, a degree's important for someone starting on their career because large companies hire for their grad programs by only hiring 2.1s in marketing.

But when I hired a marketer for my little business, I needed someone who could practically generate leads. The stuff that isn't taught at Uni.

So I hired someone practical with no degree (although a little experience) and she's been absolutely brilliant. She spends a ton of time executing and also, she's from Gen Z! She's super motivated and helps get the phone ringing.

She's here, if you want to see what a fantastic, GenZ marketer without a degree looks like. She's doing a great job: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paul...eerbuilding-activity-6898261399043485696-iqCB

 

[SEODEV#338055]

If you want to get a degree for marketing then choose the university with the highest marketing career rate for alumni

But you don't need a degree for a career in marketing

A homeless drug addict who went permanently truant aged 12, urinated in all their neighbour's letter boxes, just released from Broadmoor with a long criminal record and covered with demonic facial tattoos could be a high successful marketing manager

I think you are focusing too much on prestige and appearance and not enough on your actual value in the marketplace

How many digital or print assets have you created, built, designed that have gained attention in a competitive arena and made significant profit for a client? What area of marketing do you specialise in and what are your credentials in that area? How can you convince me that your presence in my company will begin helping my team achieve its targets from day one?

Degrees are good to have but they don't earmark you for success

Just ask that mid 20's girl or guy working the graveyard shift at McDonald's in Tottenham Court Road

 

[Jacob Evans]

I know of people who've come from very different fields and applied for jobs that they actually got. It's all about how you present yourself. The way you present yourself does help and from the post you've created, it shows how ambitious you are; I don't think you need to think about this too much. Just go and apply everywhere you want and be the best you can.

 

[SEO_Freelancer]

I've sat across from a lot of candidates who are looking to apply for marketing roles. I'll never look at academic achievements, always real-life experience. It's a very unique industry because specialisms such as UX / CRO / PPC / SEO / Email Marketing - all are experience based and performance driven tools and with 90% of the courses available, they are often tick box exercises. Some of the best search / Marketing professionals I know started with getting a personal website and playing around with it.

If you learn best in academic setting, I'd pursue it but I wouldn't rely on the institution to get you a job, it's always about how much you are keen to learn and what you've done vs. what you have learnt. It's a very odd industry.

 

[SEODEV#338055]

It's a very odd industry.

Good post but what's odd about on the job experierience?

 

[Mark T Jones]

I've sat across from a lot of candidates who are looking to apply for marketing roles. I'll never look at academic achievements, always real-life experience. It's a very unique industry because specialisms such as UX / CRO / PPC / SEO / Email Marketing - all are experience based and performance driven tools and with 90% of the courses available, they are often tick box exercises. Some of the best search / Marketing professionals I know started with getting a personal website and playing around with it.

If you learn best in academic setting, I'd pursue it but I wouldn't rely on the institution to get you a job, it's always about how much you are keen to learn and what you've done vs. what you have learnt. It's a very odd industry.

You appear to be refering to specific promotional disciplines, in which I'd certainly agree that hands-on experience is a big part.

Marketing as a whole goes way beyond promotional disciplines, and understanding it requires a mix of theoretical, psychological and practical knowledge - which definitely benefits from some formal education.

A good university can definitely help you to get a job though it will likely be in a prescribed format - eg 'graduate trainee' in some big co.

Ps please don't say 'very unique', it upsets the grammar Nazi in me

 

[SEODEV#338055]

Nothing grabs the attention in a marketing interview quite like the start and completion of a successful client project, achieving pre-set targets in a competitive environment, and overcoming challenges with smart strategy

Highly specialised (@Mark T Jones is "highly specialised" allowed? ?) degrees are useful when combined with real life experience

Marketing hirers need to see practical skills as well as theoretical "grades"

 

[Chris Ashdown]

I thought the main skill in marketing , was learning the exclusive language skills involved in Marketing, which seems similar to understanding the Guardian government job adds, a new world to most people ?

 

[Avast Business]

Hi! From my perspective, experience is absolutely essential. It's true that theoretical foundations are important, but the hand-on is what really counts. I have worked with excellent professionals who have told me that they only applied 10% of what they learned at university...

 

[aashisk2323]

Hey! I´m new to this forum and needed some advice, so after reading through the pages for a bit, I decided to write this post, hoping that someone could help me Thanks in advance!
My name is Sofía and I´m a first-year BBA student. I have done first year of medical school but realized I´ve always liked marketing and management and it's what I want to do. I am now looking for a summer internship and for that matter, I´ve been building a more polished linked-in profile and resumé. While doing so, I started connecting with a lot of people my age (19- 21), also looking for internships that had amazing CVs, also (I think) thanks to the unis they´re attending (IE business school seems the most prestigious, most second or third years have taken part in several volunteer programmes, internships, courses on leadership, start-up competitions, networking events, student clubs...) while I am doing a BBA in a pretty average uni that doesn´t go out of its way to improve the student´s career (not the worst uni though, nor the best).
I have to say I´m pretty ambitious when it comes to my career (I work in anything I can find related to marketing and luxury anytime I can while studying languages and courses from LVMH, Condé Nast...), I´m looking for a summer internship in a smaller company since I´m only a first-year, and aim to work in the luxury sector in management or marketing (hospitality or fashion), but after researching big internship programmes in Cartier, Hermés or Mariott and looking at some profiles of the type of people I will be competing with, I was wondering how important is the uni you attend?

I was told by family members that degrees don´t really matter and that it is a master´s degree that determines and specifies your career. I do plan on doing a masters at EHL Lusanne, Les Roches Marbella or Bocconi in Milan, but again, I don´t know if even after a prestigious masters degree, I´ll be in a disadvantaged position compared to my mates.

Thanks in advance, I don't have anyone in the marketing or management world that I could ask this question.

Marketing and management is all about knowledge, smartness, and the thought process. Thus, attending university is not that important if it is not about just the degree but the career you want to make. Some certification course or even youtube lectures will work for you to gain enough knowledge to be able to fetch a respectable job or run your own business successfully.

 

[Bob Morgan]

MBA = Means Bugger-All!

 

[Thomas_Stewart]

Hello Sofia. In my case, wich the university i studied didn`t affect the job search at all. It's more of a matter of self-presentation. You need to understand that at the beginning of the journey you need to gain experience in order to understand how this whole system works and is arranged. And the more you have this understanding, the easier it will be for you to understand what is required of you and what you can give to a future employer. Good luck, I'm sure you'll succeed!