Are you keen to make a change in your professional life in 2018? Alternatives can help you to find a new job. Regardless the field or who is together with you on this journey, a great CV is mandatory. See what recruiters look for and how to improve your chances to catch their attention. The tips below were written with digital marketers in mind, but many of them apply to other areas too.
1 – KEEP IT NEAT AND TIDY
Make the CV easy for recruiters and hiring managers to read.
List out your responsibilities and your key achievements attained.
Break up your CV with bullet points making it easier for recruiters and hiring managers to find what they need.
Always try to upload your CV as a word document, as this will help the recruiter submit your application to an internal database.
Don’t feel the need to send infographic CVs. Infographics are too difficult to follow they will just frustrate your potential employer.
Take advantage of a spell checker (Grammar.ly is a great and free option). Don’t forget the role of a digital marketer requires constant communication so grammar should be flawless.
Don’t feel the need to leave out experience to shorten your CV. More experience you have to show, stronger your application is going to be.
Stick to a simple format, a brief snippet of what you are about, followed by your areas of expertise, your professional experience, education and finally any skills you may have suited to the role that you are applying for.
Don’t forget to include the keywords that your potential employer will be looking for, so your CV doesn’t get missed.
2 – KNOW YOUR UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION AND COMMUNICATE IT EFFECTIVELY
Everyone needs to have a personal tagline that differentiates them from everyone else. This line will be the first impression any hiring manager will get out of you. For example, if you’re a PPC Executive don’t just say ‘’I’m a great PPC Executive’’ – that’s just boring and doesn’t tell anyone how you are different from any other PPC Executive. Be creative!
Your own value proposition is going to obviously be different based on the company that you are applying for, so make sure to do your research in advance.
You will develop this by sitting down and analysing what your key skills are. Do you have an ability to write irresistible content? Or perhaps you have a deep understanding of marketing analytics?
Once you research the employer to find out exactly what they are looking for you should be able to put together a value proposition that includes keywords that are going to draw the company into reading your CV.
3 – KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE
If you’re doing your CV up for a specific role, have a look at the type of content the company usually posts. This will give you a good idea as to how they operate.
You need to do your research and tailor your CV to the company and position you’re applying for.
Highlight keywords from the job specification on your CV. For instance, if you’re applying for an e-commerce role, you would look to include keywords such as ‘’Conversion, bounce rate and Google Analytics’’.
Once you know your target audience, you will also know what skills or personality traits you need to add in to attract more attention.
Create a template CV and then tailor it to fit in with each company that you are applying to work for.
4 – CREATE YOUR OWN BRAND IDENTITY
Don’t be shy on your CV: throw in some hyperlinks to show your potential employer the work you have done in the past. This can be examples of content that you have created, websites you may have managed or blogs you may have created.
The CV you submit is what’s going to get you that interview, so make sure the potential employers know who you are and what you can do by the time they finish reading your CV.
Another thing to remember is to keep your LinkedIn and social accounts up to date. Your LinkedIn is, in essence, an extension of your CV. Any Hiring Manager is going to spend time looking through your LinkedIn profile, so make sure it stands out as much as your CV is going to.
5 – QUANTIFY YOUR RESULTS
A digital marketer CV needs to be specific in highlighting your achievements in current & previous roles.
You need to include analytics & metrics to show improvements you’ve made, whether it’s increasing organic traffic by +22% or even a +20% increase in organic revenue. These are things that are going to “wow” any potential employer.
Say where your traffic comes from. What were your key achievements? What were your wins? Even talk about your key projects.
Talk about different campaigns that you may have run in the past, what budget management ownership did you have? What were the results from this? How did it benefit the company? This will get the company thinking as to how you could benefit them based on your past experience.
It’s not just about putting the results down you need to describe how you got them too. Leave no questions for the hiring manager.
Finally, highlight your key achievements you have presented on your CV as the hiring manager will catch on very quick.
Thanks for reading and don’t forget the five key points:
Keep it neat and tidy
Know your unique value proposition and communicate it effectively
Know your target audience
Create your own brand identity
Quantify your results
If you have any questions don’t hesitate to get in touch here.
