I'm the CMO of Indeed. Companies are looking to hire a new kind of marketer

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In my job, I have a unique vantage point on how work is changing. Every day, we see millions of hiring decisions reflected in labor market data.

One trend stands out: according to our research division, the Indeed Hiring Lab, marketing job postings remain roughly 25% below pre-COVID-pandemic levels. In fact, marketing job opportunities have fallen faster than almost any other white-collar function over the last five years.

If you looked at that data in isolation, you might conclude marketing roles are becoming obsolete. I don't think that's what's happening at all. Our data also shows that despite the broader trend, marketing job postings mentioning AI are actually increasing.

What's changing isn't the importance of marketing. It's the type of marketer companies need.

More than ever, a modern marketing organization acts as a unified engine for sustainable business growth. Customers engage with brands across increasingly more channels, competition for attention continues to intensify, and artificial intelligence is reshaping how we create, distribute, and measure marketing.

Today, when everyone has access to the same AI tools, execution is no longer the sole differentiator: human judgment is. The modern marketer is shifting from a single-track functional specialist into a versatile, business-literate leader, and needs a completely different toolkit of skills.

When we're building a marketing team, we're looking for three capabilities:

Data savvy. We're getting billions of data points thrown at us daily. Access to that data isn't the advantage; knowing how to separate the real signal from surface noise is.

Business literacy. The best marketers understand far more than marketing. They can connect customer insight, product strategy, finance, and sales, and work backward from the business outcome rather than forward from the tactic.

Curiosity and courage. This one's more a personality trait than a skill, but it's the one I screen for the hardest. We look for marketers who are willing to test, fail, and ditch playbooks that worked before — and learn.