When the guys at onlymarketingjobs.com advised us about the opportunity to be involved with the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s 2012 Pitch Competition we grabbed the opportunity with both hands. The pitch is a national competition run by the CIM to give marketers the opportunity to pitch a campaign idea to a defined brief.  This year the challenge was to raise awareness of the issues of diabetes across the UK for the charity Diabetes Awareness Group.  There are 3 regional competitions and the winners of each battle it out for the potential for their marketing strategy to be rolled out across the UK. 
We’re always on hand to give our candidates advice on their CV’s so it came naturally for us to support the contestants of this event who will no doubt be some of our future candidates too. After each team had presented their idea we reviewed their CV’s with them and advised as to how they can maximise the impact of it in securing their next marketing job. We met a range of marketers from current university students through to marketing managers and product managers. The quality of CV’s varied but with the help of Julie Storey, Miles Zerny and Tom Fordham they all walked away with a stronger resume than they came with.  All delegates were also pointed to our careers advice videos on youtube where they can gain advice on Writing CV's, Interviewing Skills, Preparing For Interviews and Managing your Reputation On-line.

When all the presentations had been completed a final three were selected and presented against each other. The variety of ideas coming from just these three was diverse and the quality of each excellent especially given only two weeks to prepare on a subject that none of the contestants had any knowledge of. The winning group included a placement student from one of our favourite Leeds marketing agencies and was thoroughly deserved with great creative thinking and a well managed budget that could be adapted to suit the available funds. 

We’ll certainly be supporting the Northern team to go all the way and have no doubt that with their revised CV’s the folk we met will have no trouble securing the next marketing job. Good luck to all! Tom Fordham, Miles Zerny and Julie Storey