Ultimate Marketing Resume Guidance

DO THIS NOW

I strongly advise that you make the below adjustments to your resume today and start applying to jobs immediately even though you’re just starting our program. I advise that you immediately start applying to at least 1 job opening per day for a total of at least 7 jobs per week. You want to be applying the entire time while you’re in our program as it can sometimes take weeks for companies to get back to job applicants (depending on where you’re applying) and we want to help you get hired as fast as possible. Doing this simultaneously will help you get hired as fast as possible. 

If you’re in our All-Star Candidate program, some students update their resume immediately with all of the below work experience bullet points as this is the work experience you’ll get with our program. I don’t have a problem with our All-Star Candidate students doing this but you’ll want to make sure that by the time you’re interviewing, that you’ve actually done these assignments so that you can speak about them. I want to help you get hired as fast as possible so feel free to do this if you plan on working through our program pretty quickly as it can sometimes take a couple of weeks for some jobs to get back to applicants. Just so you have an idea of how long it will take to get through the program so you can properly time this, there are 23 hours worth of training videos (on-demand) and then the assignments that follow can be done in the span of 4-5 days on the fast end. So, if you plan on moving quickly through our program because you need to get hired asap, feel free to do this.  

We’ll be going over more about your resume in the Resume/Interview training but what I’m providing here is already going to drastically improve your resume so you want to make these changes now. 

Alright, let’s get into your marketing resume.

Golden Rule:

Every resume you send out needs to be tailored for that job posting. 

Breaking Down Your Resume Section By Section

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Let’s break down your resume to ensure that you give us marketing hiring managers what we want. Make the changes I’m stating below as this is going to help you start getting more interviews. Remember, this isn’t general resume advice like you received online. This is resume advice from marketing hiring managers so do these things so you’re giving us what we want.

Resume Formatting

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What matters most to us on your resume? Your work experience! So, a solid 75% of your resume should be highlighting all of your work experience that you have. I see a lot of young professionals split their resume into 2 columns to make it look pretty and they talk about their hobbies, skills, and have their contact info on the left hand side. More times than not, this is a bad use of space. We are hiring based off of who has the right work experience, not who can make their resume the prettiest. Think of your resume as valuable real estate. There is only so much room on it. You want to maximize your worth and you only have 1 page to do it (unless you’re in the UK where it’s okay to have a resume of more than 1 page). So, get rid of the column if this is preventing you from adding all the work experience that you now have as adding as much relevant marketing work experience as possible should be your #1 focus as this is what’s going to get you the interview and hired. 

Always use bullet points on your resume as this makes it much easier for us to read as well as it makes your work experience jump out more rather than using block text. I know you have a lot of work experience that you now want to add to your resume but that doesn’t mean that you should add everything. Add all of the work experience that’s most relevant to the job without having to go to a font size smaller than 10. 

Summary/Objective Section 

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If you decide to have this section which is optional, keep it short. You don’t want this taking up more than 3 lines max. Remember, what are us hiring managers focusing on? Your work experience. You now (at least after our program) have more than enough work experience where you don’t need to expand this section so your resume looks full. If you do decide to add this section, a very common problem I see young professionals make is that they talk about their objectives and their wants. Don’t do this! Your resume is all about selling yourself on why you’d be the best fit for the job. So, instead of saying what you want out of this job, instead, rephrase this section to sell why you’d be a good fit for their company. For example (this is very general and you should be more specific to the job you’re applying for if you decide to have this section): 

I’m determined to help maximize your marketing team’s ROI by implementing efficient and optimized strategies that I’ve acquired through my past work experience in Social Media, Email, PPC, and SEO Marketing.

Did you notice how I made this about what I’m going to do for them rather than just what I want to get out of this job? Also, notice how I tied in a bit about my work experience while doing this. This is what you want to strive for if you use a Summary/Objective section on your resume. 

Skills/Certifications/School Projects

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For the most part, you don’t want these taking up much space on your resume. Remember, we are focused on your work experience. If you have something that you feel really matches exactly what the job is asking for, go ahead and put this section in but you don’t want this taking up more than 2-3 lines max on your resume. If you have work experience that shows off the same thing as this skill or certification, it will look much better as work experience than just listing it as a skill or via a certification. Remember, your resume is valuable space and you want to make sure that you aren’t repeating yourself by listing it in your work experience section and then again in another section unless you really feel as though the hiring manager wants to see this particular certification or school project. 

Education

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If you went to an amazing school, put it at the top. If your school was just so-so, then you can put it at the top or the bottom. The most important thing to note here is that you don’t want your school to take up half of your resume as I sometimes see. Remember, 75% of your resume should be your work experience. If you’re going to list relevant coursework, please keep it on 1 line rather than using a bunch of bullet points which takes up more room on your resume.  

Interests

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If you have this section, this should be at the very bottom of your resume and don’t let it take up more than a couple of lines maximum. This is a great place where you can also subtly talk about interests that would make you a more attractive candidate. But I do mean subtly. Don’t say, Marketing is my life and I eat, drink and breathe marketing for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Instead, if you want to subtly plug another way you’re a good fit and if you’re applying for a social media marketing job, you might write something along the lines of: 

I’m passionate about design and I love spending my free time working on my travel photos and videos in Photoshop and Premiere Pro.

Software Knowledge 

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This is not a required section to have in your resume but if you decide to put it in, once again, don’t have this take up too much space. Here’s the top software that I’d recommend inputting if you decide to add this to your resume: Ahrefs, Canva, Hootsuite, SproutSocial, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Google Analytics, Google Ads Manager, and Linked Helper 2. 

Work Experience

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This is by far the most important part of your resume and it should take up roughly 75% of your resume. So, we need to make sure we get this right. Remember, every resume you send out needs to be tailored for that job posting. Make sure that you apply the below guidance for every resume you send out as this is going to ensure you’re maximizing your chances of getting an interview. 

When deciding what work experience to put down, here’s what I suggest:

1. First, essentially copy and paste the work experience they have listed in the job listing that they want you to have. Then, slightly alter these bullet points by inputting your work experience (assuming you have this particular work experience which you most likely will by the end of the program). You’ll notice in the job listing they’ll use certain keywords like “social media”, “PPC”, “ROI”, “funnels” and marketing terms of that nature. You want to keep these on your resume as it will make your resume stand out more to hiring managers and help it get through the ATS (Applicant Tracking System – an applicant scanning software that helps weed out unqualified applications). In essence, you’re putting the most important work experience to that particular job at the top.

2. After you’ve put in work experience for all of the areas they are asking for, if there is still room on your resume, you want to then select additional work experience bullet points that you’ve gained from our program (all listed down below) or from your previous jobs (whichever matches the job role best). For instance, if it’s a Social Media Manager position, you’ll want to add additional Social Media work experience bullet points that you’ve gained from our program or from your past jobs to strengthen your case that you have what they want and more in social media. 

3. I also suggest that you always try to have at least 1-2 bullet points in each of the 4 digital marketing areas (Social Media, Email, PPC, and SEO) so that they can see that you’re well rounded and can do a lot of different things for the company rather than just stick solely to 1 area of digital marketing. This is something that’s highly highly impressive to us so you definitely want to make sure you do this. 

4. Additionally, I always suggest adding the bullet point “Used automation tools to set up an automated outbound lead generation campaign” relatively high up on your work experience section. This always wows interviewers as nobody you’re competing with has done this and I’d say 9 out of 10 of the people you’re interviewing haven’t even done this so you’re going to look incredibly impressive. You’ll do this as part of our email/lead generation/automation tools assignment so you’ll want to make sure you do a good job on this, highlight it on your resume and talk about it in your interview as this will really make you stand out. 

5.  If you have the same work experience for 1 or more jobs, don’t restate it for both jobs. After this program, you’re going to have more than enough work experience where you should never have to restate things to fill up space on your resume. Remember, your resume is valuable real estate. You want to show as much work experience as you can so don’t ever repeat yourself. If you already have some of the below work experience that JobPrepped gives you, state that under your other job as you’ll have plenty of things to already state under JobPrepped. 

For your convenience, here is all of the work experience that you’ll get from JobPrepped. Like I said above, you should make these changes immediately to your resume and start applying immediately and simultaneously as you move through the program. If you’re like most of our students and are planning on moving through our program quickly, feel free to add the below to your resume immediately as well. You just want to make sure that you time it right so that by the time you’re interviewing, you’ve already gone through these trainings and the assignments so you can feel confident in what you’re talking about. 

Work Experience

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