Is it time to dust the cobwebs off your marketing CV, update it and starting to apply for the exciting roles you keep seeing advertised? Your CV is the first impression you give to a recruiter or hiring manager so it’s important to make sure you stand out from the crowd with your best foot forward.
The most difficult part to putting together your CV is knowing what to put in and what to leave out. Obviously you want to put as much information about yourself in as possible to make sure you cover everything they might be looking for, however that could end up with your CV looking a little like War and Peace which ends up working against you.
We have put together a list of things to make sure you include when updating your marketing CV, although we have assumed you already include your contact details and social media accounts!
1 – Campaigns: Make sure you provide detail of successful campaigns in your CV; detail what you did, how successful it was and include figures where possible. Directors will want to see how successful the campaigns were and the impact you had on the business, whether this is in terms of the ROI for the campaign or an uplift in social media followers.
2 – Bullet points: When detailing each role make sure to include bullet points of your biggest achievements. It could be a specific campaign that produced the best ROI or awards that were won due to work you carried out. This will give an idea of what you are capable of achieving for each role and the affect you had on the business while you were there.
3 – Interests (and being interesting): Culture fit is just as important as skills when it comes to hiring a new employee. Make sure that you have your interests and hobbies detailed at the bottom of your CV to demonstrate personality and show an interest in other brands as well. After all your field of expertise is marketing, so you should be interested in how other brands are communicating with their audience.
4 – Personal and professional goals: Do you have something specific you want to achieve within your career? Place this (within reason) on your CV as it shows that you are ambitious and have the drive to achieve your dreams. To a prospective employer this shows that you are looking to grow with the company rather than stay in one role for the duration of your career.
5 – Presentation: The presentation of your CV is incredibly important. Recruitment agencies need it in an editable format (NO PDFs!). We may need to remove details before sending it across to clients that could use your skill set or add some of the information we discuss with you over the phone. It’s also important to make sure your CV is formatted correctly. This may sound obvious but an eye for detail and what looks good is important in marketing so a poorly designed CV will not go in your favour.
Remember, your CV and covering letter are the first impression that anyone will get of you so it is important to highlight all the positives you have achieved. Especially within marketing roles, if you can’t market yourself effectively how can you market the company you are looking to work with?