One might think that people would have a natural talent of selling themselves through marketing resumes in general. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Despite being able to influence opinions on anything, when it comes to looking for jobs, marketers usually have a hard time.
To begin with, creating a resume that reflects all your skills and achievements might seem a bit tough, especially if you have little experience in the field. 47% of recruiters agree that they look to increase their brand awareness on social media. With the trends of marketing constantly changing, it might be time to take a hard look at your resume and do some polishing.
Here we are focusing on 6 important tips that can elevate your resume from the rest.
1. Who is Your Future Employee?
Similar to the key rule of marketing, you need to know who you have to sell yourself too. Once you know whom to target, the task of how to write a resume for the first time becomes easier. When it is known who will be looking at your resume and who will be making the decisions, you can craft the message accordingly.
The first step is to know more about the company and the specific role you are applying for. It might be worth finding out who the hiring manager is and address the covering letter to that person directly. More importantly, it is important to find out what kind of marketing they are seeking help with. Whether it is traditional or digital marketing, whether they already have a marketing team at the firm, or what feature or product they are trying to market.
Once you have got the outline of the job you are applying for, customize the resume catering to the description. Try to highlight your prior experience based on their requirements, and use the right keywords to grab their attention. One can also add more details about the specific skills they are seeking for a particular position.
2. Reveal Your Unique Persona
Every person has their own set of unique skills that differentiate them, from the rest of the group. While you focus on delivering what the position requires, it is also significant that your resume does a good job of effectively rendering what you can bring to their table.
This is called your value proposition, which defines you and sets you apart from others. To develop this unique blend, it is necessary to understand what your strong point is. In marketing, there are many areas where one can shine, from being knowledgeable of the audience to being a writing expert content to lure in the audience.
The resume should hinge on what the company is looking for but also talk about the unique aspects you can offer them. At times, even for the same position and job descriptions, the bigger and smaller firms might employ totally different strategies.
3. Add Relevant Numbers
Long descriptions of your achievements are not that pleasing when it comes to making a killer resume. But what might strike the chord is a simple statistic that represents the product of your marketing skills. For a marketing job, in particular, one can talk about a variety of stats such as the growth in site traffic due to your marketing efforts including SEO or other campaigns, improvements on landing page optimization, increase in the number of subscribers, and so on. These will raise the interest of the reader at first.
4. Create a Striking Format
Before reading, anyone sees the format of the CV. It might also be the one thing that the hiring manager will notice primarily while skipping through dozens or even hundreds of other resumes.
Even if your experience is not significant, the design of your resume will at least make sure that the application is read. There are many resume samples and templates available online to choose from. You can also edit them, change colors and fonts to emphasize different parts.
But remember not to go overboard with the use of multiple colors or fonts. Keep them to a maximum number of two, with choices that complement each other. As we covered before, adding infographics will be another critical part of the layout. You should make it a point that the resume as a whole picture comes out together pleasing than cluttered with too much information.
5. About the Content
So we have covered how to approach the descriptions, what to focus on and how to formulate the design. Now, much like other job positions, marketing resumes also need to cater to a few other parts that will keep the applications intriguing.
It is better not to drag the written content. It is not necessary that you mention all your prior experience unless it is relevant to the position.
As most of the resumes today are send in online, another way to get attention is by adding links to portfolios or websites such as Linkedin profiles. It would also be better to keep the education section simple, as most hiring managers claim that this is the part they are least interested in.
Moreover, try to contain everything to one single page if possible. Lengthy resumes are quite often not given attention. There are many layouts available with two columns that let you include more information than the traditional designs.
6. Add a Cover Letter
A resume might cover the important points of your career, but it might not tell the whole story. Say you have had a career break or moved from one field to another, a cover letter is the best way to explain all these factors.
It is also another place to explicitly show your interest in this particular job, and add personal touches to the application. Recruiters read hundreds of cover letters and resumes every day, so make sure that you do not simply copy-paste some template that you found on the internet. Avoid using sophisticated phrases only to sound fancy unless that does not truly reflect your personality.
What Recruiters are Looking for?
As a bonus, we have also brought you here some exclusive tips from our marketing manager interview questions. There are a few things that please as well as annoys them. Take a look at what points they focus on and what they utterly dislike to make sure that you feel yourself that my perfect resume reviews can get the dream job.
1. Writing Style
Resumes with spelling errors could mean the first strike for many recruiters. Some even say that they throw away resumes with spelling errors right away. But writing style covers much more than mere spelling errors.
The details should be easy to comprehend, the tenses used correctly and the language should be formal yet natural. Avoid using pronouns such as “I” and “you” in the descriptions, but use the conjugations appropriately. Attention to details such as formatting, syntax, spelling, and structure matters when applying for a job.
2. Listing Unnecessary Skills
Many of us have the tendency to list all the software and technological tools that we merely know how to use. But unless you can use them confidently and is familiar with the interface quite well on how to get results, it is in both your and the company’s best interest that you do not list them. The same applies to the languages you speak and the workshops you attended in college.
3. Not Mentioning the Location
Many marketing jobs include traveling as part of the description. While applying, hiring managers prefer if you have specified whether you are willing to relocate or travel as part of the job. As hiring managers are legally not allowed to ask candidates where they live, mentioning the location makes the process easier.
To Sum Up
Crafting the perfect resume is not an unmountable task. Nor is landing your dream marketing job. They both go hand in hand, Jobs like marketing data analyst and growth hacker are more in demand than ever. Marketing candidates should also stay updated about the new tools and how to use them as it could increase their chances of staying relevant in the field.
As per the report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the field of marketing, the demand is set to increase by 10% by 2026. Fortunately, things are looking quite well to the horizon for marketing candidates and creating the perfect resume could make it easy to open doors along the way.