A Critical Assessment of Skills and Knowledge for Entry-Level Marketing Jobs: A Delphi Study

Given that the importance of technical and soft skills may differ by specific context, the goal of this study is to identify the skill set that marketing undergraduates need for successful employability. While the marketing education literature has contributed to our understanding of the skills that may be important for marketing undergraduates to possess, there are two important gaps in the literature that this study seeks to address. First, there has been only a limited effort to study both technical and soft skills together and second, their relative importance. We address these gaps by conducting a Delphi study with a panel comprising of 12 human resource managers and 15 marketing managers. Among the list of 51 skills identified, the panelists selected 20 skills as being the most critical for entry-level marketing jobs and then ranked them on their relative importance. Followed-up interviews were conducted with selected panelists to gain insights into the top six skills identified in the Delphi study (application of marketing concepts/tools, verbal communication skills, creative problem solving, research aptitude, written communication skills, and knowledge of company’s products). We further compared our results with three different industry studies and discuss their implications for marketing education.