Marketing CVs In Media: The Good The Bad and The Unforgivable

You would expect marketers in media, as professional communicators to have universally mastered the art of the CV, alas this is often far from the truth.

Your CV can be the ticket to your dream role or the first hurdle you fall down on the road to the opportunity of a lifetime.

Skip the “one pager”

Google how to write a CV. You’ll get hundreds of results with contradictory and spurious advice. A common rule is to keep your CV to one page.

Scrap that. Your CV is a presentation of you. If you’ve got 3-5 years’ experience working with niche B2B products across multiple geographies, take the space to show this off!

Though I want to make it clear we’re not advocating long essay type sprawls. Which brings us onto my next point

Make your introduction short

I know I’ve just told you to elaborate on your experiences and drop the “one pager”, but when it comes to your introduction, less is more. Keeping it to a maximum of three well-written sentences (who you are, what you do) is enough to get your future employer interested enough to keep on reading.

Approach your CV in the same way you would with marketing copy for a cold lead.

Concisely outline who you work for, what they do and what you work on – never assume your potential new employer knows what your current business does!

Increasingly I’ve seen candidates from the millennial generation including hyperlinks to their current company’s website. This isn’t a standard practice but in the modern digital world makes a lot of sense and certainly makes my role as a recruiter easier.

The quality of your copy

Approach your CV in the same way you would with marketing copy for a cold lead.

Concisely outline who you work for, what they do and what you work on – never assume your potential new employer knows what your current business does!

Increasingly I’ve seen candidates from the millennial generation including hyperlinks to their current company’s website. This isn’t a standard practice but in the modern digital world makes a lot of sense and certainly makes my role as a recruiter easier.

The Story

I should be able to look at your CV and grasp the essentials of who you are and what you do in 30 seconds.  As a specialist marketing recruiter if I open a CV and am confused by the 

persons story I am unlikely to read further - if you can’t capture my attention with your own story, how can you be expected to promote a product or event?!

Adding figures

Marketers should learn from your colleagues over at the sales desk - harness the power of your commercial figures.

A strong sales candidate will have commercial figures at the forefront of their CV. In my opinion marketers should adopt this:

• Boast about the growth figures for the products you’ve worked on - give a percentage or a revenue figure.

• Boast about the new markets you’ve contributed to opening - be specific.

• Show that you’ve managed a marketing budget - if you can, give a figure.

Your Marketing Skillset

The sad truth is regardless of where you are in your career your CV is going to be one of many, possibly reviewed by someone who needs to quickly tick whether you’ve got all the skills they need.

Including a concise marketing skillset at the start of your CV is an effective way of doing this. The danger of this is taking up too much space, the following is a great example of what this should look like:

• Email Marketing

• Event Management

• Social Media promotion

• Public Relations

• Strategic Marketing planning

• Negotiating Contra deals 

• Team management

• Branding                                      

To Summarise:

The don’ts:

• Artificially force your CV down to one page

• Assume we already know all about your current company and role

• Introducing yourself in a short essay

The do’s:

• Give clear context to where and what you’ve been working on – add hyperlinks if appropriate!

• Learn from your colleagues in sales – harness the power of your commercial figures.

• Elaborate on your marketing skillset.

• Tell a clear story.

Looking for advice on your interview and presentation skills? Check out the below links to our YouTube Channel:

Event Marketing Interview Advice

Event Marketing Presentation Advice

Do you agree with the points above? Let me know in the comments