How to turn a part-time, seasonal job into a full-time, permanent marketing or advertising career

Marketing is one of the easiest careers to create your own opportunity in. It’s directly tied to revenue, and in today’s digital world, nearly everything can be tracked.

If I were in a part-time or seasonal marketing role, I’d have a conversation with my employer early on to set a clear, measurable goal and state my hope and expectations:

“If I can help the company generate X in revenue before my internship ends, would you consider using a portion of that to bring me on full-time at Y salary?”

This approach does a few powerful things. It shows initiative, goal-orientation, and confidence in your ability to produce results. It’s also low-risk for the employer since the new role would pay for itself based on what you’ve already produced. And once you’re full-time, you can build on that success with more time and focus.

Pro tip: I used this strategy multiple times in my career to get salary increases and promotions. It’s not just for landing the full-time role, you can (and should) keep having these conversations.

The key is to define success together before the internship ends. Most people wait until the end and hope an offer appears but those who have the conversation, set expectations, and take ownership of the outcome are the ones who usually get hired. As the owner of an advertising agency, that’s the type of person I’d want to hire.

If you’re working a part-time or seasonal role and dreaming of a full-time marketing career, here’s one move that changes everything: treat every task like a portfolio piece.

Don’t wait for permission to “do marketing.” Instead, look for gaps in social posts that could be sharper, signage that lacks punch, email copy that feels generic and offer to improve them. Even if it’s outside your formal role, showing initiative with real deliverables builds trust and visibility.

One specific tip: document your impact. If you rewrote a flyer and sales went up, note it. If your Instagram caption got more engagement than usual, screenshot it. These micro-wins become proof points when you pitch yourself for a permanent role or when you apply elsewhere.

Marketing is about momentum. Show that you’re already thinking like a marketer, and the transition from seasonal to full-time becomes a natural next step, not a leap.

When I started marketing, full-time jobs were hard to get. I was hired briefly to help during hectic campaign seasons. Early on, I realized that organizations seldom promote tenure, but rather people who make major contributions.

So, treat a part-time position like an audition rather than a temporary job. My method was easy. Others missed a chance, but I took advantage. I managed the company’s email marketing list. I started analyzing open rates, A/B testing, audience segmentation, and weekly performance updates to the full-time staff. People noticed within a month. I became vital in three.

Here’s what worked:

1. Don’t merely complete tasks; seek out inefficiencies, propose solutions, and subtly establish yourself as the go-to person for getting things done correctly.

2. Monitor data, capture images, and analyze changes over time. When you eventually seek a full-time position, whether in that organization or another, you’re not merely “requesting” one; you’re demonstrating that you’ve already been operating at that caliber.

3. Understanding people is as important as outcomes in marketing. Keep your curiosity, ask your experienced colleagues about their campaign techniques, participate in modest cross-department projects, and learn the business cycle. These kind acts build trust and visibility.

4. Don’t take for granted that management is aware of your desire for stability. I approached my supervisor directly and expressed, “I’m eager to develop alongside this brand; what steps can I take to facilitate that?” That one line unlocked avenues of mentorship I had never imagined were out there.

When the company underwent its restructuring and sought a full-time digital marketing coordinator, I emerged not merely as a candidate but as the clear frontrunner.

Before getting a full-time job, go all out. It takes responsibility, consistency, and curiosity to go from seasonal help to a strategic asset. Instead of waiting for a title, one should start acting like a professional right now.

One strategy I’ve seen work repeatedly is treating your part-time role as a sandbox for your marketing experiments. Instead of just completing assigned tasks, look for small projects where you can test ideas, measure results, and showcase impact. For instance, if you’re managing social posts, experiment with A/B testing headlines, captions, or posting times. Track engagement and present insights to your manager.

This approach does two things: it demonstrates initiative and data-driven thinking, and it builds a portfolio of measurable outcomes that proves your value beyond just filling hours. Over time, it signals to your team that you’re ready to take on larger campaigns and strategic responsibilities. In essence, you turn a seasonal position into a live showcase of your capabilities, which can be a springboard to a permanent role.

At Tecknotrove, I often advise budding marketers to focus on impact over hours—showing results earns you credibility faster than tenure ever will.

My single best piece of advice is this: Make yourself the owner of a small problem nobody else wants.

Every marketing team has a “graveyard” of forgotten tasks. Maybe it’s the company’s Pinterest account that no one has touched in months, or that list of customer reviews that have never been turned into social media graphics.

Don’t wait for permission. Just pick one and start solving it in your spare moments. For example, spend an hour a week creating clean, simple graphics from those testimonials using a free tool. Then, post them and track the engagement.

I see this story play out constantly on forums like Reddit’s r/marketing and in discussions with hiring managers. The person who gets the permanent offer isn’t the one who just fulfilled their duties. It’s the one who can walk into their manager’s office and say, “By the way, I noticed our old testimonials weren’t being used, so I turned them into graphics. The one I posted last week has become our most-shared post this month.”

You instantly change the conversation. You’re no longer just the unnecessary help; you’re a self-starting strategist who creates value out of thin air. You’ve already proven your worth beyond the temporary role, making it an easy decision for them to keep you.

Run experiments and share results. We bring in part-time hires during the summer when demand is high. A lot of them treat it as ‘just a job’ to get by. If you want to turn a seasonal job into a marketing career, run experiments and share results.

Marketing is very fluid. Campaigns change, algorithms shift, and what worked last month barely works during the next month. People who grow fast and get permanent positions are those who run experiments and share results on how to move the brand forward.

Our most recent full-time hire got the position after sharing her TikTok experiment. She filmed quick TikToks showing how customers DIY heated their stock tank pools. We hadn’t planned that content, yet her videos outperformed our paid ads within a week. She showed creativity backed by data from her test experiments. Reason enough to have her on the team permanently.

Focus on building internal relationships. The primary goal is to find a way of turning short-term tasks into long-term collaboration. In many marketing teams, interns and seasonal employees are hired to execute campaigns. However, the ones who transition to full-time roles are those who proactively integrate themselves into strategy discussions. You must be at the table when important stuff is being discussed.

For instance, during a seasonal campaign at our company last summer, one junior contractor consistently joined post-campaign reviews and shared short reports on what worked with our audience segments. The insights she shared directly informed our next-quarter planning and highlighted her as a strategic thinker, not just an executor.

The goal is to use your temporary role in the marketing/advertising department to demonstrate initiative, curiosity and cross-team value. You can easily be forgotten if you only focus on outputs and mundane tasks. Find a way of getting a seat at the strategy table and you will get noticed if your insights move the needle.

Use your seasonal role as a chance to prove your value through measurable impact. Pick one project or campaign, track its results, and show how your work directly improved engagement, sales, or brand awareness. Bringing data and initiative to the table demonstrates that you’re not just filling a gap, you’re driving growth, which makes a strong case for a permanent role or opens doors to future marketing opportunities.

Learn to interpret data. In advertising, you will be bombarded with data, most of it uncategorized. You stand a better chance of excelling in this field if you learn to interpret data.

A simple, “I noticed our Instagram ads for the new nightstands are getting a lot of engagement. The ads are appealing to women between the ages of 25 and 34 but the conversion is low. If we adjust the CTA, based on past purchases, we might increase sales by 10%.” It will make you visible to the managers and invaluable for the company, guaranteeing you a permanent spot.

The seasonal workers are expected to record all campaigns and measures they touch and develop a results portfolio capable of demonstrating revenue impact instead of managers merely realizing they have worked hard. The majority of part-timers do their jobs without relating their effort to business results, but tracing the lineage of your social media posts bringing in 47 qualified leads or your email sequence increasing the rate of opens shows that you are thinking strategically and not as a fungible commodity.

This conversion takes place when you take this collection of data to the performance reviews or contract renewal meetings and demonstrate precisely how much revenue would be lost if the company lost your institutional knowledge of how the audience behaves and what campaigns will be most effective. Employers keep seasonal employees who are able to measure their impact on the bottom line since the cost of replacing that performance intelligence is more expensive than the cost of providing permanent employment, in addition to the fact that you already know which marketing channels will result in actual conversions as opposed to vanity engagement metrics.

Turning a seasonal or part-time role into a full-time marketing career can be achieved if you are proactive. This does partly depend upon what the role is, but if you are proactive and take the reins for marketing and advertising initiatives, then your employer will either recognize your value and hire you full-time, or you will start to build a portfolio of good work.

Don’t just turn up and complete assigned tasks. Look for gaps where you can demonstrate long-term impact, for example by optimizing content for search or working on building followers on social channels. When the employer sees you contributing and showing initiative, you become indispensable.

This is exactly how many of the best digital marketers I’ve mentored made this first step, by showing they weren’t just “help” for the season, but a dedicated, essential part of the team.

Use your current gig to build for the future. It is helpful to save completed marketing or advertising materials from part-time or seasonal work to a portfolio you can share with future hiring companies. Ensure you confirm with your employer what pieces can be shared or what steps to take to anonymize the client details if required. Leverage your past work as individual case studies that speak to your work ethic and skill. It helps to frame these pieces by outlining the goal, approach, skills used, and results for each item to demonstrate not just the creative skills but also highlight additional qualities such as business understanding and project management.