Hi all. Recently finished undergrad here with a shiny marketing degree that I’m now realizing may not mean a whole lot.

Every “entry level marketing job” that promises to train me in branding, SM content creation, advertising, and business plan development that I’ve applied to has ended up being a peanuts-for-pay sales job, going door to door selling water bottles or harassing people at the end of the Costco line for 3.50/hour base pay plus commission, or no base pay and commission only. They want me working Monday-Sunday for 55 hours where I can be “making six figures within a year if I work hard enough” with a 4-level promotion plan that sounds suspiciously pyramid-schemy. They keep hitting me with surprise group interviews and, to my surprise, I’ve been the only one with a degree in literally all of them. This has been multiple separate companies.

Do entry level marketing jobs actually exist? Am I just looking in the wrong places? I’m tired of being deceived by companies looking for grunt sales workers. Have my college advisors horribly misled me? Glassdoor has been a godsend in this whole process but now I’m wondering if I need to just suck it up and do the awful sounding work or go in a completely different direction. Maybe this is highly Gen-Z of me, but I don’t want to kill myself with zero work/life balance for a job that brags about having 23,000 applicants in a year and doesn’t offer minimum wage or any benefits whatsoever.

How did you all get your start in the industry? I’m looking for any and all advice, at this point. Maybe a come-to-Jesus moment about the 60k I just blew on a diploma that doesn’t get me into the work I actually want to do. I don’t know. It’s been four months since I graduated and I’ve been misled numerous times and ghosted 3x as much.

I’m a 24 year old living in Chicago who graduated from a university with a degree in digital marketing. During my time in college, I had 2 internships within digital marketing (social media intern & digital marketing intern).

Since graduating, I’ve had a year of professional experience working as a digital marketing specialist on a 12 month contract. However, since finishing up that role, I’ve been unable to land a new role in digital marketing. I’ve submitted over 150+ applications, had dozens of interviews, and made it to the final round of interviews three times, but to no avail.

As a young adult new to working in the marketing industry, I would appreciate some advice on how I can accelerate this job process and get a job ASAP in Chicago? Any help or networking is greatly appreciated.