Two roles for marketing freshers — Junior Marketing Manager & and Creative Strategist — traineeship leading to a job offer
(Also open to candidates with 1-year experience)
The Organization:
Alt Strategy -An alternate perspective on Marketing & Business
- It’s an organization just starting out from someone who has run startups before. More about the founder here: Saurabh had earlier run an award-winning digital agency and then an e-commerce company called Cupidly which got acquired.
- We will start by launching a podcast & a newsletter
- Then workshops for marketing & business professionals.
- We have another project in which you could play a role in -Candid Conversations is an AI-based platform that allows people across cities and countries to connect via quality conversations https://nosmalltalk.candidconversations.life/ (PS-This blog is actually for our project Candid Conversations..scroll through to get an idea)
Currently, looking to select a team in helping us build & rapidly grow these projects.
we are looking for
Smart, driven professionals either freshers or up to 1 year of experience in marketing to help build & grow this.
Your educational degree doesn’t matter, just what you bring to the table.
Two roles we are hiring for :
- Creative strategist (jr): A marketer who loves writing, creativity. Someone who realizes that in today’s world marketing isn’t really about writing a great tagline or a one-page ad but using words & other multimedia communication across platforms tailored to specific audience sets.
- Marketing Manager (jr): Someone who is interested in marketing strategy and also wants to execute from learning new tools to analyzing audience segments to actually running campaigns on social media or managing CRM platforms.
While these are 2 different job roles but if you apply to the first you will get an opportunity to explore various facets of the second role too.
Main aspects of the job:
1.The opportunity or the challenge: We will be launching a product that is global in scope & digital. So from day 1, you will start focussing on different markers, the consumer behaviors, business challenges, etc & building a digital business
2.Marketing: You won’t be doing the typical stuff someone with up to 1-year experience does. The work will involve marketing & brand strategy + social media marketing + content creation + growth hacking & later business strategy.
3.Internship which gets converted to a job: If you are a fresher you will be starting as an intern with a stipend of between 7,500 to 15,000 INR/ month. The variation depending on your current expertise in marketing.
At the end of the 4-month probation period (5 month for undergrads), your job will be confirmed basis your performance and you will receive a competitive salary + variable ESOP + appraisal every 6 months (in case you have previous marketing experience, we can consider skipping the internship period- read point 13.) A competitive salary would typically mean something around 20,000–28,000 initially (and then appraisal after 6 months)+ESOP which will probably be somewhere around the same amount
4.Appraisal: Life is too short for a yearly appraisal cycle. You will undergo an appraisal cycle every 6 months post-confirmation. So at the end of the first year, you will have 2 appraisals & should also be eligible for stock option plans.
5.ESOP: Post funding all employees will be eligible for an ESOP plan. Employees can choose to balance their salary & stocks allotted (draw a lower stock & higher salary or vice versa). The standard 1-year cliff + 4 years vesting will apply to all ESOP allocations.
The stock option can be extremely beneficial since you will be among the first few members of the team.
6.Location Independent: You can work from anywhere, even after the pandemic ends. So you could be sitting on the beaches of Goa, foothills of the Himalayas, the Alps, or Bali as long as you are doing your work and have high-speed wifi…we are not bothered.
I wrote the job post sitting here
And is remote work any good? Well this should provide an answer: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-01/return-to-office-employees-are-quitting-instead-of-giving-up-work-from-home
7.Learn: I will guide and when required train you in certain skill sets. If you are interested and creative enough you will learn more in 6 months on marketing & strategy than you would do in a year of formal education & get paid for that. You will also get access to a few other resources along with any training conducted by us whenever they happen.
8.ROI of your work: The biggest challenge or USP of this job is that you will be able to see the impact of your work. And not in facial stuff like awards or likes but actual customer response and revenue.
9. Get Paid for Quitting: This may sound crazy and is perhaps is but 15 days after the probation starts & during the entire probation period you can quit at any point (with just 2 working days notice) & you will be paid up to that point & for an additional week. The reason for this is simple — we only want those who are really interested in the job.
10.Work Hours: We don’t believe in spending a specific amount of hours as work but getting your work done & there is a certain amount of flexibility too in terms of choosing your work hours. The belief is if you are expected to work on a weekend, can’t you hang out with your friends or family on a Wednesday afternoon? We believe one can & one should. Idea is to work together & figure out when & how we work best..ending in happiness all around. :) It’s also not structured like a compensation off with a tit-for-tat attitude but where people decide when would they like to take an off or have a more relaxed day.
11.Your day-to-day work: We don’t believe in stereotyping people in boxes of a JD. Marketing is always about looking at a consumer problem from different perspectives and you will be encouraged to look beyond one skill set (e.g. copy, analytics ) to see how you can connect with the audience. Your initial designation will be ‘intern’ & at the end of 3.5 months, you will be confirmed to one of the designations mentioned above. (If your work is exceptional you can be confirmed earlier too)
12.Not advertising but Marcom: Since a number of you will come from the agency side would like to clarify -this is less advertising but more marketing. You will not be working with the demands of multiple clients but on one product. Looking at it from various facets & deep dive into building it. The reason for introducing a probation period & a stipend is to give you a solid grounding in multiple facets of this. Going forward this will also have an impact on your designation (marketing/strategy) & how your remuneration grows vs PR/Advertising as time progresses. So please choose accordingly.
13. For experienced candidates: Candidness, fairness & respect for talent are the principles we live by. So in case, you believe you have practical experience & know as much as someone with around 4 to 6 months experience at Candid Conversation would, we are willing to skip the probation period & start with a full salary.
In that case, you would need to know & have worked on at least 80% of these: Creating landing pages with A/B or multivariate testing included, CRM tools, automation tools like Zapier or use of webhooks, Social Media Management tools, ORM tools, basics of personalization, paid advertising on social especially via AI tools, analytics basics, copy optimization, personalization & testing, chatbot marketing, graphic design tools, AI-based copy, integrating Twitter and FB to offline consumer experiences
Strategy and ideas beyond theoretical concepts to practical execution is an obvious need.
In that case,- 1) just apply using the form at the end 2) And a tweet to us Twitter & we will schedule your interviews separately.
14. Etc:
- During the building phase, we will be working 5.5- 6 days a week. (later we will move to lesser hours, yet even now the work hours will definitely be less than many ad agencies)
- We understand that some of you will require flexibility for your exams or some assignments. That’s completely fine, please inform in advance
- We are always Candid — saves everyone time. So this is a candid take from our current intern
To get an idea about the work check out what Aditya had to say about his internship experience (not a word is edited…he could literally say whatever he wanted & it would have been published here. We believe in a candid ecosystem)
“It’s been just a month since I started working at candid conversations. The environment is great-got to learn a lot of new things, there is the pressure at work because the focus is on quality & not filling the hours. It’s exciting to work at a startup in its early days.”
Why isn’t the job as easy as a ‘google search’ aka What we are looking for:
Skillsets:
1. Loves — writing, consumer behavior & learning digital tools: A lot of our marketing will be using words combined with the latest technological resources in CRM, analytical & other marketing tools; and then connecting all of this with our brand/business strategy. You will be given complete guidance on how to do it but you should be keen to learn. (2 of the 3 is acceptable. 3 of 3 qualities is good)
2.Creative: You are good with ideas, creative thinking
3.Opinions: We are all for independent opinions but at the end of the day we need to move rapidly in the same direction. So even when we disagree, we commit wholeheartedly.
4. Self Driven & Honest: THIS IS CRITICAL. You will be given a goal, direction and guidance at various points, but we won’t spoon-feed and monitor you. You have your independence and have to be self-driven to get results. We are always there to support you with solutions when you get stuck. And we don’t tolerate dishonesty or lying.
5.Comfortable rather thrive in remote, independent work: We work remotely not just because of Covid but even in 2012, the first company I started was a remote-first company. This gives people flexibility, helps them save time & money, also allows them to do deep work. But we also understand this may not be for everyone.So in case you are not excited to work remotely then this job may not be for you.
Added advantage:
• If you have experience in Marketing, PR or any other aspect of Marcom then that is an advantage but not a must
• You are comfortable reaching out to people.
The attitude we admire :
- Those who realize the world needs change & its for each of us to drive that with the tools we know.
- Those who see their personal life as an important part of their work & can take out the time to devote to their life
Apply :
For the role of Junior Marketing Manager :
For the role of Junior Creative Strategist:
In case you are interested in both just apply for the second role (creative strategist) and choose the option mentioning your interest in both roles.
Last date: ASAP. We interview candidates every 2 weeks
Why such a long job Post?
It’s probably your first job & at the strangest of times…Thus, we want to be as candid as we can; so that you know what the job and culture is like & the opportunity.
On day 1 you will probably be paid less than some of your other batch mates but by the end of the year, you would have learned more, earning as much or more & building a startup especially a startup that is aiming to be global in scope and in a new field which is impacting people’s lives.
…choose it only if you connect with the cause and are excited at the thought of building & marketing this.
addendum-What happens if this fails? it’s a startup after all.
While most startups skirt this but we want to address your worst fears.
First-As a founder I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought it would fail :)
Second- You join a job primarily for the salary & a chance to learn.
You will always, always get your salary, even if we go bankrupt. That’s a commitment. And you will learn more than a regular & probably more than a typical startup job
And finally-
The aim is to do this while having fun, doing cool stuff (we will have a podcast & maybe even a coin offering) & try to make the world a better place. (I just downloaded a few reviews ..even pre-product these are the messages we get)
Follow our new project Candid Conversations on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn & Instagram OR listen 👂 🎧 to our podcast where we play agony aunt for your marketing & business challenges -Spotify, Amazon, Google or YouTube
