8 Stand-Out Tools To Land More Digital Marketing Job Interviews (99% of Job Seekers Don’t Do #4, #7 & #8)

“573 applicants applied” – My heart sank to my stomach as I saw these words above the digital marketing job post I was applying for…

“392 applicants applied” 

“120 applicants applied” 

All I could think of was, “how the hell am I going to stand out and land a job interview?” 

And maybe you’ve felt the same way. 

You force yourself to edit your resume and cover letter. 

You do the best you can. 

You do this for not just 1 job application, not just 2 or 3…

But 10, 20…even 50 job applications. 

How many job interviews do you get? 

In fact, how many email responses do you get from hiring managers/recruiters? 

My guess is, you’ve been ghosted by the overwhelming majority of hiring managers in the past, am I right? 

It sucks. 

Everytime I was ghosted or received a rejection, a piece of me dies on the inside. 

It didn’t help that my savings account dropped like a leak on the ceiling as the months went by. 

At one point, I thought I would never get a job. 

You tell yourself that you “just gotta keep going”...

Yet every rejection and every company that ghosts you just lowers your confidence more and more. 

I’ve been there. But I’ve also been on the other side where I was landing interviews left to right. 

In fact, before I landed my job at a Clinical Research company…

I actually landed 8 face to face job interviews. 

And here’s the best part…I only applied to a total of 22 companies. 

According to Lehigh University, the average job seeker needs to send at least 100 to 200 applications to land a job. 

Hell, there are stories of people who have only landed one job interview after sending 300+ resumes. 

This is considered to be “average”. 

But if you’re reading this article, chances are, you’re not here to be “average”. 

In fact, my results were definitely not “average”. 

And it wasn’t like I had decades of experience either. 

At the time, I was actually transitioning from being a copywriter to a more strategic role like ‘digital account manager” or “digital marketing coordinator”. 

This meant that I needed to develop a few skills before even being considered…

Skills that I didn’t have any experience in such as running Facebook ads. 

So if a candidate had just one more skill that I didn’t have that the company needed, they would’ve likely taken my job away from me. 

Yet, despite having to transition job roles, I was still able to land 8 interviews with only 22 applications. 

How? 

Well for starters, I’ve studied unconventional job hunting strategies from career coaches (one of them used to be a recruiter for Fortune 100 companies). 

And now, I want to share what I learn and apply it to landing digital marketing jobs. 

So here are 8 tools you can use to ensure that you stand out like a sore thumb and land way more digital marketing job interviews ASAP!!  

And yes, this is still super effective for you, even if you just started a digital marketing career. 

So let’s begin…

Digital Marketing is a growing, complex field. 

There are many job roles nowadays…

‘Junior SEO’ 

‘Social Media Manager’ 

‘Digital Marketing Coordinator’ 

If you’re just getting started in this field, you want to pick one job role to focus on first. 

It can be a specialised job role like a ‘copywriter’...

OR it can be an entry level role that exposes you to many areas of digital marketing such as a ‘Digital Marketing Assistant’. 

Doing this helps you land a job much faster. 

Plus, you can edit new resumes and cover letters in under 5-10 minutes as most job descriptions for the job role will be quite similar.

But if you jumped from one job role to another…

You would have to make major edits to your resume, cover letter and even your LinkedIn profile. 

That takes a LOT of time and it will prevent you from reaching out to more companies. 

So choose one job role to focus on. 

Don’t worry. You can always change your mind later. 

But for now, stick with ONE. 

Here’s an example…

Let’s say you’re interested in becoming a ‘Digital Marketing Assistant’. 

You can find out what this role requires by: 

Once you’ve learned what the job role requires…

You can begin to learn the skills needed for the role…

Then, apply the skills you learn by creating your own projects (OR by working on someone else’s business)...

Then, you can showcase your experiences on your resume and/or portfolio website. 

This is how you can begin to stand out. 

LinkedIn is a goldmine for ambitious career professionals like you. 

It currently has 883+ million users and is the go-to for professionals and businesses. 

If you play your cards right, you can connect with the right people that have the jobs you want in this field. 

Therefore, it’s crucial that you optimise your LinkedIn profile. 

This includes: 

I’ll make an in-depth post about your LinkedIn profile in the future. 

For now, if you want to make a stand-out LinkedIn profile, the first thing to do would be to get clear on your ‘Unique Marketing Specialty’...

How do you stand out from all the other digital marketers out there, even if the field seems like it is “saturated?” 

You do this by having a ‘Unique Marketing Specialty’. 

You can specialise in a skill (ie. when I was job hunting, I said on my resume that I had specialised in copywriting and email marketing).

You can specialise in an industry (ie. fitness coaches, tech companies,  medical companies). 

You can even specialise in an industry within a specific location. 

Here’s an example. 

If you owned a B2B software company in Australia, would you hire the digital marketer who works in just about ANY industry? 

Or would you hire the digital marketer who specialises in helping software companies increase sales and recurring revenue? 

And even better, would you hire the digital marketer who specialises in helping Australian B2B software companies increase sales and recurring revenue? 

I’ll let you figure that one out. 

Hell, you can even do all three if you want – “Helping Australian B2B software companies create recurring revenue with SEO”. 

Note; if you struggle to find an abundance of opportunities based on what you specialise in, then go ahead and broaden your ‘Unique Marketing Specialty’. 

The point is, if you try to target everyone, you’ll end up targeting no one. 

The more specific you can go with your targeting the more you will stand out like a sore thumb. 

Again, don’t worry. You can always change your mind later. 

You don’t have to stick with the same industry your whole life (unless you want to).

You just want to pick a specialty for now so you can start landing jobs/clients. 

Once you’re more experienced and established within an industry, you can broaden who you serve. 

Now, what if you have no idea what your ‘Unique Marketing Specialty’ is? 

Here’s how you can find that out. 

I’ve always cringed at the concept of a ‘soulmate’. 

The Global Population is now 8.1+ Billion people. 

Are you telling me you only have ONE soulmate out of the 8.1+ billion human beings on the planet? 

Are you also telling me that your one true soulmate just happened to be in the same country…

In the same city…At the same location…At the exact same time you were there…and that is how you found each other (like some cringy romance movie scene)? 

C’mon now. 

I believe everyone has many different soulmates spread out across the planet. 

And as a digital marketer, you could have multiple industries that you’d love to help. 

But when you’re just getting started and you don’t have much experience yet…

You want to choose ONE ‘Soulmate Industry’ that you can make love to first (aka specialise in).

Now, if you don’t know what your ‘Soulmate Industry’ is, check out this list of 80 different industries you can choose from. 

Then, once you’ve gone through that list, you will…

Choose the top 3 industries that excite you the most…

Do more research on them…

Then pick your ONE ‘Soulmate Industry’ that you want to make love to first. 

Don’t overthink it. Just choose one for now and get a move on. 

Once you’ve picked your ‘Soulmate Industry’, you want to announce that to the world. 

You can do this by having a clear, succinct statement on your LinkedIn bio of who you are, what you do and who you serve.  

Here are some questions to help you with that…

Who do you help? 

What problem do you help them solve OR what outcome do you help them to get? 

What is your chosen skill/unique method to helping them get to the outcome? 

Take a look at some LinkedIn bio examples below to get your juices flowing…

Once you’ve crafted your bio, you can copy-paste the most important parts onto the ‘summary‘ section of your resume, your cover letter and your portfolio website (if you have one). 

Note: to craft an effective LinkedIn bio, you want to know what your target industry actually wants. 

How do you do that? By researching their pain points and desires. 

So, here’s one of the best ways to do research on who you want to serve…

Did you know there is a hidden job market? 

No, it’s not some secret black market job board that only a few secretive individuals have access to. 

All you need to know is that 80% of jobs are not posted online. 

So, if you’re only applying online, you’re missing out on that 80%. 

This is the hidden job market. 

How do you tap into that? Here’s one way…by doing ‘Informational Interviews’. 

An ‘Informational Interview’ is not your standard job interview. 

In fact, the intention of this interview is not to land a job. 

What you do is have a casual insightful conversation with either the person who has the job role that you want OR with marketing managers of a company. 

These Informational Interviews are super effective for you because…

So, you know the challenges faced in the job role and the skills you need to obtain for the job role.  

By knowing what challenges the company you want to work for is facing…

You can position your resume, cover letter & LinkedIn to communicate to them that you can solve their challenge. 

You can also do a marketing audit to help them solve their challenge – I talk about this further down this article. 

If the company opens up a relevant position in the future, you may be the first person they think of. 

Otherwise, they may know someone else in their network whose company is hiring for someone like you at the moment. 

The hiring managers I had an informational interview with in the past gave me solid advice on my resume & how to stand out as a candidate. 

One of them was nice enough to share with me what networking events I should attend and how I should present myself professionally.

This strategy alone already makes you stand out because 99% of job seekers don’t do it. 

If you get on a call with a hiring manager, it shows them right away that you have high levels of initiative and interest. 

During one of my job hunts, I had an informational interview with the hiring manager at Deloitte. 

In the end, she gave me a unique referral link that I could’ve used to apply for job positions in Deloitte. 

If I had gone through that link and then got hired by Deloitte, she would’ve gotten a commission for it. 

So, for the person you’re having an informational interview with…

This could be a prime opportunity for them to get rewarded for referring you. 

I’ll have a much more in-depth article in the future that will show you how to do informational interviews – this strategy alone already makes your job hunt 10x easier if you know how to do it. 

Step one: Find employees who have the job role you want OR find marketing managers of companies you want to work for – do this on LinkedIn 

Step two: Scrape their email address using a scraping software (I used Skrapp.io)

Step three: Verify their email address to make sure its legit (I used hunter.io email verifier)

Step four: send them one of these two emails…

If you’re reaching out to an employee with your chosen job role…

“Hey <name> 

I found your name while researching fellow <university> alums in Perth so I hope you don’t mind me contacting you. 

I am hopeful to transition into <’your chosen job role’> and would love to connect with you to learn about your work. 

Are you available for a quick coffee? I can come to you. 

Best, 

Sam” 

If you’re reaching out to marketing managers…

“Hi <name> 

I found your name while researching <company> and thus I hope you don’t mind me reaching out! 

I find the work you’re doing incredibly <insert flattery> and am hopeful to transition into a similar space. As someone who has done so well, I’d love to learn more about you. 

Are you available for a quick virtual call or coffee? 

I can make myself available at your convenience and come to you. 

Best, 

Sam”

Step five: get on a call with them (ideally meet them in-person). Then ask them for advice on how to stand out and what challenges their company faces that someone like you could help with. 

Once again, I’ll have an exclusive article on this in the future. 

Right now, if you have some jobs you need to apply for asap…

Here’s how you can effortlessly level up your resume and cover letter. 

No disrespect, but most resumes suck.  

Only 2-3% of resumes result in an interview. 

I’ll write up a comprehensive post about the DOs and DON'Ts of Digital Marketing resumes & cover letters in the future.

But for now, what you can do is use AI to help you craft an effective resume within seconds. 

See, many companies use an ATS (applicant tracking system) that scans your resume for the right keywords.

If your resume doesn’t have enough of the right keywords, the ATS rejects it. 

In fact, about 75% of resumes get rejected by the ATS. 

How annoying? Being rejected by a robot, knowing that your resume will never be seen by a human. 

Well in the age of AI, we can use AI to fight against AI – fight fire with fire. 

Here are some AI tools to help you have a winning resume. 

Do a Google search for ‘AI resume scanner’ and you will see many options. 

Some of them can give you what you need with their free option. 

Others require you to pay for their subscription to get anything of value. 

Do a search around if you don’t want to spend any money. 

If you’re willing to spend some money to accelerate your job-hunting process, then the resume scanner I recommend is beamjobs.com. 

This is what I used back when I was job hunting. 

It helped me to craft a beautiful looking resume.

It then scanned my resume and gave me recommendations on how I could improve it. 

Check it out if you’re willing to save time with just a bit of cash. 

Of course, how could we forget about this bad boy, right? 

Around late 2022, ChatGPT blew up and everyone started talking about it like it was the best thing since sliced bread. 

Regardless of how you feel about it, ChatGPT can help you save time by drafting and giving feedback to your resume and cover letter within seconds. 

Just edit and plug this prompt into its textbox and see for yourself…

Now, what if you DON’T have any digital marketing experience yet? 

It’s annoying, isn’t it? 

You look at the job description and even some entry-level roles require you to have ‘2-3 years of experience’. 

But how can you get experience if you have no experience…and you need experience just to get experience…but you HAVE NO BLOODY EXPERIENCE?

I like to call this the “No Experience Loophole”. 

And there are two ways to break out of the “No Experience Loophole”...

Option One: Work for someone else 

Option Two: Create Your Own Experience 

You can set your website up in a way that impresses your employer. 

For instance, you can…

All these skills are super important for any company that wants to improve their online presence.  

For almost every business, their website is the ‘first impression’ – and a bad ‘first impression’ will lose customers/clients. 

So by applying what you learn to your own projects and using that to build up your resume, cover letter & portfolio…

You can impress your employers just enough for them to hire you. 

They can even train you on the job (or at least give you the space for you to train yourself). 

This is especially useful if you want to get into social media management. 

You can build up your own social media profile and practice skills such as growth hacking, content creation, audience engagement, etc. 

You can then outline your social media growth on your resume & portfolio website to land more job interviews. 

Aside from that, there is one final way to create your own experience that will definitely land you more job interviews. 

And that is…

Don’t have years of experience? 

Want to work for a company but feel like you’re not qualified enough to land a job interview with them? 

It’s normal to not feel like you’re qualified. 

It’s normal to feel like there is too much competition out there. 

But allow me to show you ‘The Airbnb Strategy’ that is GUARANTEED to make you stand out right away. 

Look at this picture here…

That’s Nina Mufleh. 

Years ago, she wanted to work for Airbnb. 

So, what did she do?

Did she just send a bunch of resumes and cover letters online like 99% of job seekers do? 

Did she attend a bunch of random ‘networking events’ and hope that she finds the right person that can get her a job at Airbnb? 

Did she sit on her ass, pray and beg the ‘career gods’ to give her a job at Airbnb? (lol)

Nope, Nope and HELL NO!!

Here’s what she DID do. 

She created a marketing audit for Airbnb to SHOWCASE her skills. 

Because it’s one thing to SAY that you have the skills that hiring managers need. 

It’s a different thing altogether to SHOW that you have the skills they need. 

That’s what Nina did. 

Guess what happened? 

Her marketing audit went viral. 

And Airbnb gave her a job interview. 

Unfortunately, Airbnb didn’t have any open positions for her. 

But her audit caught the attention of other Silicon Valley companies – Uber, LinkedIn and Dropbox. 

These companies gave her an interview too. 

In the end, she decided to work for Upwork – one of the most well-known freelancing sites – as a Freelance Growth Manager. 

Amazing! 

Nina’s story shows that when you’re willing to do just a little more than everyone else…

You will set yourself leagues apart from all the other job seekers. 

Especially all the job seekers who only rely on their generic resumes and cover letters. 

Once again, I’m gonna need to do a comprehensive article just on marketing audits alone. 

In fact, almost every single one of the 8 ‘stand-out’ tools that I’ve mentioned in this article will need its own article as there is just too much to cover here. 

So stay tuned for that. 

But for now, I’m showing you Nina’s story to get your juices flowing. 

And if you want to take it even further…

Here’s one way you could potentially FORCE your hiring managers to consider you before everyone else…

Imagine you’re an employer looking for a digital marketer. 

You sit on your revolving leather office chair, sifting through hundreds of resumes. 

80-90% of the resumes suck and are not even worth reading. 

The rest are attention grabbers that have professional designs and are either decent or really good at selling the candidate. 

You sift through the resumes and you have a couple of candidates you want to interview. 

Then, your secretary walks into your office. 

She tells you that someone just walked straight into the reception and handed in their resume, cover letter and…get this, they handed in a marketing audit for the company. 

In an instant, your ears perk up – “Can I see?”, you say to her. 

She hands you the documents. 

You read through this mysterious person’s resume – it’s polished and it grabs your attention immediately. 

Then you go through the marketing audit that this mysterious person sent to you.

The marketing audit lists out points that the company could improve on with its website, social media marketing, etc. 

Not only did the marketing audit just give you some fresh new ideas to improve your marketing campaigns…

But this person just blew you away with their initiative. 

If this is the level of initiative they show before even landing a job interview, imagine how much initiative they’ll have on the job itself. 

Your heart beats with excitement. 

You ask the secretary, “is he/she still here?” 

The secretary says, “yes he/she is waiting at the reception”. 

Here’s a question for you, wouldn’t you at least want to have a quick chat/interview with this person? 

And even if you’re super busy right now, wouldn’t you at least ask your secretary to get the person’s contact details so then you can schedule an interview with them? 

Well why not, right? 

Who else was willing to take such bold initiative like that? 

And even if a company is not hiring right now, the hiring manager might know someone else in their network who is looking for a digital marketer. 

So, if you’re down for it, I challenge you to make a bold move like this and see what happens. 

In the future if I’m going for a new job, I will definitely put this into action. 

FYI, I got this idea from a YouTuber who literally did this and got a job instantly.

You can watch her video here.

If you’re someone who just skimmed this article all the way to the bottom without reading the whole thing, first of all, how very naughty of you. 

I promise this article is worth your time, if you read the whole thing. 

But regardless, if you’ve read this jam-packed article or not…

I’m gonna give you a recap of the 8 tools I mentioned that will make you stand out like a sore thumb and help you to land more digital marketing job interviews…

Hope this article was helpful to you. 

Please send an email to [email protected] if you have any questions, feedback, concerns or anything you’d like to share. 

I love feedback and I read all of them as they help to create better articles for you. 

Talk soon. 

P.S. If you want a complete step by step, ‘hold-you-by-the-hand’ roadmap to landing your very first $40K+/year digital marketing job (even if you’re a beginner), then check this out. 

P.S.S. If you know anyone else who wants to get into digital marketing, please share this article with them. 

And if they want to subscribe to my newsletter, send them this link: https://digital-job-formula.beehiiv.com/subscribe.