How to get hired
Most marketing jobs in India are not at famous consumer brands. They sit inside hotels, hospital chains, banks, real estate developers, coaching institutes, B2B manufacturers and software firms, and the person hired is usually called "Marketing Executive" or "Executive – Marketing". The routes below are how people actually get those seats.
Campus, if you are in an MBA or PGDM
FMCG, consumer durables, banks and telecom firms recruit marketing management trainees from business schools in the final placement season, usually between November and March. Most of these programmes put you in sales first: six months to a year as an area sales manager on a territory before a brand team will take you. If you hate the idea of a beat plan, ask about this in the pre-placement talk, not after you sign. The case round is usually a live problem ("our toothpaste is losing share in UP towns, what do you do?"), and they look for numbers in your answer, not frameworks.
Sector marketing roles, for graduates
A hotel's sales and marketing team, a hospital's patient-outreach team, a bank's local campaigns desk and a developer's site-launch team all hire B.Com, BBA and BA graduates. The work is practical: organising corporate tie-ups, doctor meets or site visits, getting brochures printed, tracking leads in a CRM and reporting them weekly in Excel. Interviews test whether you can talk to a customer and handle a spreadsheet. Carry one example of something you organised (a college fest sponsorship, a society event) with real numbers: footfall, money raised, leads collected.
From sales or customer support
Sales people move into marketing more often than anyone else, because they know what the customer objects to. Ask your manager for a small marketing task first (the dealer meet, the WhatsApp catalogue, the regional campaign) and put it on your CV. Our sales guide covers the ground you would be moving from.
What tests and interviews check
- A short written task: a campaign plan for a new branch or product with budget, channels and how you would measure it.
- Excel: a pivot of leads by source, and cost per lead.
- Basic digital knowledge, because nearly every role now runs some paid ads. The free Google Ads and Analytics certifications on Skillshop are a cheap way to show it.
- For regulated sectors (health, finance, education), whether you know you cannot promise outcomes in an ad. The ASCI Code is short and worth reading once.
First titles and the ladder
Marketing Executive or Marketing Associate, then Senior Executive, Assistant Manager – Marketing, Marketing Manager, Senior Manager, and Head of Marketing or Marketing Director. In SMEs the jump from executive to manager can happen in three years because the team is two people; in large companies it takes longer but the pay steps are bigger. If you want to specialise early, the neighbouring guides go deeper: digital marketing, brand and product marketing and events.
What the job is really like, sector by sector
In a hotel, marketing is close to sales: corporate rate deals, wedding and conference business, and festive packages, with weekend work around events. In a hospital chain it means health camps, doctor referral programmes and local ads, and every claim goes past the medical team. In banks and NBFCs you run branch campaigns that feed sales targets, and your success is counted in leads converted. In B2B manufacturing it is trade fairs, catalogues and dealer meets, with travel.
Targets are common even in roles that don't say "sales". Ask in the interview how your work is measured: leads, footfall, cost per lead, or revenue. Pay rises fastest when you can say "I ran this budget and it produced this many customers", so keep those numbers from your first month.