Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

Basically, you should be able to embrace and learn any program that will help you do your job. These change at a rapid pace so be open and experiment.

That being said, my dream marketing employee would understand marketing and marketing communications. They would be able to think like my target consumer and create communications, directed at this target, that get results.

Adobe and HTML are not necessary, but having a knowledge of them might help you do your job better.

Dear Justine,

When it comes to software, one of the best kinds of online training I've come across is offered by Lynda.com (here's a link: https://bit.ly/Software-Training).

If you have a good amount of graphic design training already, great: go for it. If you DON'T, be warned: learning to USE graphic design software will not MAKE you a graphic designer.

I've earned my living as a graphic designer for 25 years, so trust me on this. But to polish your skills, Lynda.com is a GREAT place to catch up. I am a member of Lynda.com and their training is first rate.

I hope this helps.

Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer
The Direct Response Marketing Guy™
Princeton, NJ, USA

I agree with Harry: My dream marketing employee would know Marketing -- strategy, tactics, sales, etc.

I'd expect them to use whatever tools they need to accomplish the objective. If we need design or software expertise, we should hire someone with that expertise. But I wouldn't expect a marketing person to be a software guru any more than I would expect a software guru to be a marketing strategist.

That said, it certainly can't hurt to know how to use common tools like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Excel, InDesign, etc. If nothing else, knowing these programs will enable you to communicate better with the folks who use them to accomplish their tasks.

A lot of which programs to use depends on the level of the employee (whether manager or individual contributor), but in general Word, Excel, and Powerpoint would be high on the list for any employee.

If the employee was an individual contributor and involved with putting together marketing literature, then a page layout program (inDesign, etc.) and Photoshop would also be on the list.

There is a free version of a program similar to Photoshop called GIMP, if you want a program to play with without having to pay for Photoshop.

I was in the same boat as you a few years ago. I learned desktop publishing (not graphic design) and HTML (Frontpage and Deamweaver). It helped me a lot. However times have changed so you might want to focus more on your internet skills as many software apps are not SaaS or web-based. CMS systems replace html, etc. Learn, Google adwords, Google Analytics, many other Google tools, social media, and related online e-marketing. That is where the marketing present and future is. Knowing those will make you my dream marketing employee.