Marketing jobs you can get at 16 (and at 18)

Straight answer, no padding: marketing is thin at 16, so the handful of things genuinely open to you at that age get found locally rather than on any jobs board. FIRSTJOBZ lists roles for over-18s, which makes this page your map for the run-up: what to go and do at 16 and 17, then what's waiting the day you turn 18.

That's not a consolation prize. Handled properly, those two years are the reason you get hired at eighteen while somebody else with identical grades doesn't.

What's genuinely open at 16 and 17

Four real things, none of them theoretical. They share a pattern worth spotting early: none of them arrive through a search box. You find them by walking in, by asking someone you already know or through school and college.

Small local businesses. This is the big one. A café, a barber, a gym, a takeaway, a garage, a village hall - loads of them have an account nobody has touched since last summer, because the owner is busy running a business. Walking in and offering to do a month of posts is how a great many marketing careers genuinely started. Sometimes it becomes paid hours. Even when it doesn't, you've got a real client, a real brief and a real result to talk about.

Volunteering with something that needs promoting. Charity shops, sports clubs, scout groups, youth theatres, a local festival. They all need posters, posts, photos and somebody to write the newsletter. Nobody is going to turn down a sixteen-year-old offering to help with that. Ask at the desk or message the page directly.

A Saturday job in something customer-facing. Not marketing, but not a detour either. Retail and hospitality teach you how real people decide to buy things or walk away, which is the entire subject of marketing. Every good marketer you'll ever meet has an opinion about customers formed behind a counter somewhere. These come from a printed CV handed over in person, plus the card in the window nobody else reads.

Courses and your own projects. Free online courses from the big advertising and analytics platforms, a media or business qualification at college, or simply making things nobody asked for. The rule: pair every certificate with something you made using it. Certificate plus artefact beats certificate alone.

Now the hours rules, because they shape all of the above while you're still school-aged. If you're 16 but still in year 11, you count as a child worker in law. You can't work during school hours, never before 7am or after 7pm. Term time is capped at 12 hours a week: 2 hours on school days and on Sundays, with up to 8 hours on a Saturday once you're 15 or 16 - 5 hours at 14. School holidays loosen to a maximum of 35 hours a week at 15 or 16, or 25 hours at 14, with Sundays always capped at 2 hours. You're entitled to an hour's break after 4 hours of work and to a 2-week stretch of the holidays entirely free of work each year. Some councils also ask your employer to register the arrangement, so don't be thrown if a work permit gets mentioned.

Once you're past school leaving age - broadly the end of year 11 - you become a young worker instead. You can work up to 40 hours a week and full-time is allowed, though in England you'll stay in part-time education or training until you're 18.

Worth knowing: apprenticeships in England are open from 16 once you've left school, so the door isn't legally shut. You apply for those direct with the employer or through the government's apprenticeship service. In practice marketing employers tend to recruit apprentices at 17 or 18, since the work involves representing a business to the public. Apply anyway if you find one. Somebody has to be the youngest person they hire.

Pay-wise, your legal minimum at 16 or 17 is £8.00 an hour. Our marketing pay guide explains the full ladder and how to check whether a salary advert is actually generous or just dressed up.

What unlocks at 18 and where FIRSTJOBZ comes in

Your eighteenth birthday changes several things at once, without you doing anything to earn it.

The money. Your legal minimum jumps to £10.85 an hour the day you turn 18. Same work, higher floor.

The hiring. This is the real unlock. Junior marketing assistant roles, agency juniors, content assistants and the bulk of marketing apprenticeships are all pitched at people who've finished school or are finishing college. From 18 you stop being an exception on the pile and start being the target.

The full working week. Adult working-time rules replace the young-worker limits, so evening events, launch days, weekend festivals and the long days around a big campaign are all available. In a sector where a lot of the fun happens outside office hours, that matters more than it sounds.

The grown-up bits. Client meetings, licensed venues, brands that sell age-restricted products, some advertising platforms and tools that set their own minimum age for account holders. None are laws about marketing as such. They're the small practical walls that quietly disappear on your birthday.

The board. Ours is the one that carries roles for over-18s, so it becomes yours on your eighteenth. From 18 you can browse live marketing jobs and apply to whatever's up that week. Until the date lands, use the guides: same site, different job to do.

Arrive at 18 ready

Everything above is the reward. This is the work. Three things stack quietly between now and your birthday.

Experience, written down as you go. Keep a running note of every account you ran, every poster you designed, every event you helped fill. Dates, what you did, what happened afterwards. Screenshot results before somebody deletes the post. At eighteen this is a portfolio; at sixteen it's a two-minute habit.

References who will actually pick up the phone. The café owner, the club secretary, the head of sixth form who watched you organise something. Ask before you need them. A name with a working mobile number beats a glowing paragraph from somebody unreachable.

Availability you can prove. Employers hiring eighteen-year-olds are quietly asking one question: will this person turn up? Six months of never missing a Saturday shift answers it. So does a course you finished rather than started.

Here's why it works. An eighteen-year-old with two years of running a local business's social account, a folder of finished work and a reference who answers the phone isn't an entry-level gamble. They're the safest hire in the pile. That's the whole play. Spend 16 and 17 building the folder, then arrive at 18 holding it.

The common questions, answered straight

Can I do marketing work for free to build a portfolio? For a charity, a club or a friend's small business, yes, plenty of people start that way. Keep it small and time-limited. If a proper company with paying customers wants weeks of unpaid work from you, that's a job they should be paying for.

Do I need a degree? No. Plenty of people in this industry came in through apprenticeships or by making things until somebody paid them. A degree helps in some corners and does nothing in others. Our routes into marketing guide compares all three doors honestly.

What if my portfolio is only school stuff? Then it's a portfolio. Nobody expects a national campaign from a seventeen-year-old. They expect evidence you can finish something and explain why you made the choices you made.

Do I need a National Insurance number? You'll usually get yours automatically around your sixteenth birthday. Employers ask for it when you start rather than when you apply, so not having it yet is never a reason to delay.

So don't sit out the next two years waiting for permission. Marketing is one of the very few sectors where you can build the evidence before anyone employs you, which means the sixteen-year-old who starts making things this month walks into eighteen with an unfair advantage. Our no-experience guide is the full playbook for building that folder and the marketing hub holds the rest of the series. Start where the door is open now. The board is waiting on your eighteenth.