With multi-choice done away with and respondents left to come up with whatever answer they liked, 8% still mentioned ‘guru’ as their most disliked word.

The somewhat respectable ‘Head of Digital’ ranked first for hottest job. Has the era of the nifty tech-world job title truly come to an end?

Let’s be honest. This wasn’t a serious piece of analytical work. More a rough poll of where people’s career ambitions lay and the roles that have the most caché right now. But the over-arching impression I got was that people had some very clear ideas about the kind of job they were hoping to snag in the future.

The top five hottest digital job titles

  1. Head of Digital.
  2. Creative Director.
  3. Strategist.
  4. CEO.
  5. Content Strategist.

In a poll answered mainly by digital folk, Head of Digital is hardly surprising. And CEO doesn’t exactly sound ground-breaking. However, Content Strategist scraped in to the top five and while many will argue that content isn’t a new discipline, I’m certain we wouldn’t have seen this title hit the top five a couple of years ago.

Specialist skills

Specialist roles also appear to be in demand. When asked which role people would most like to recruit for in their teams, data and analytics roles were most in demand (16%) followed by content specialists (14%).

Which role would you like to recruit for your team?

This interest in specialisms was picked up in Marketing Week’s annual salary survey too. Marketing Week deputy editor Branwell Johnson commented:

Our annual salary survey indicated that people with specialist skills were more likely too see a payrise. And those with digital skills remain in demand.

This supports Neil Perkin’s blog post from November 2011 Will 2012 be T-Shaped? which pointed out the need for digital marketers to have a strong vertical skill while still being able to understand other digital disciplines.

The Econsultancy jobs board reflects this too, with significant numbers of recruiters advertising for employees with specific skill sets like analytics, PPC and user experience.

Employers

Meanwhile, Google was considered the most popular digital company to work for, gaining 6% of votes.

Again, this was an open question, so with myriad possible answers. Saatchi & Saatchi and Facebook were also mentioned. However, it seems the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well, with 11% of respondents looking to one day own their own business. 

Salaries

34% of our survey respondents told us they did not receive a pay increase in the last year. This compares to 26% of general marketers.*

Salary increases in digital

What about for senior level strategists? According to SoDA’s recent salary survey, there’s been a 12% decline in the number of MD’s, partners and chief executives earning over £300,000 since 2011.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. According to SoDA, that statistic is being partly attributed to the recruitment of junior and senior strategists in 2012. Good news for all those aspiring Content Strategists out there.

So, to sum up. If you’re thinking about where you see your career going – specialising seems like a good idea. Oh, and drop ‘guru’ from your title.

In the meantime, you can check out more digital marketing jobs on the Econsultancy jobs board. You know you want to!

Why career progression is broken in digital marketing agencies