Resume Tips for Marketing Managers
To get you started, here are some tips for creating the best resume for a marketing manager.
1. Choose the Right Formatting
The traditional format for resumes is the chronological resume that lists jobs and duties in chronological order. While a lot of job seekers use this format, your job activities may be similar in many jobs, and it can get boring fast. You can use the functional resume format that highlights your skills and job activities rather than simply listing your previous employers. A functional resume focuses your activities and achievements into areas, and you can expand on what you’re best at within those areas.
2. Remember Visuals
As a marketing expert, you know how important visuals can be to getting your message out there, and the same is true for your resume. You want your resume to be easy to read while also highlighting your industry experience and marketing skills. To do this, you should use one font throughout your resume and a clean layout that will make it easy to read, and then also use bolding, bullet points and italics to highlight your skills and achievements.
3. Focus Your Resume
Just like every applicant isn’t right for one job, the same resume isn’t right for every position. In order to get hired for a specific position, you should focus your resume on that company and how you can fulfill their marketing needs. As well as tailoring your resume to each position, you should also make sure and only include relevant experience or skills. Your resume shouldn’t just show that you’re a great marketing manager, but that you are the right marketing manager for the job.
4. Include Results
Marketing is a results oriented field, and you want your resume to reflect that. Don’t just list companies and what you did while you worked for them. Show the results of your marketing campaigns or projects you managed in hard numbers and statistics. When you highlight your results, you are providing a track record of your achievements and proving that you will work just as hard for another company.
5. Show Breadth of Experience
Since marketing managers can work in various different industries, you might have to explain a bit about each company you have worked for on your resume. You don’t have to sell your previous employers to your prospective employer, but you should give them some idea of who the company is.
6. Go Heavy on Data
Increasingly, marketing management is an analytical function. Hiring managers and executives expect measurable ROI and an advanced understanding of data analysis and market measurement tools. Be sure to highlight your past successes in context of the specific ROI that they delivered as well as listing any and all technologies that you used in campaign creation, delivery, or measurement.
7. Include your Marketing “IP”
While not every marketing position involves creative development, marketing roles at least influence the direction of creative campaigns. Marketing professionals have the luxury of having highly tangible projects on their resume. Make sure that you include the specific details about your campaigns – include your marketing “IP” (intellectual property) like slogans, brand statements, messaging, etc… It is very import to quantify your impact, but it is as importance for the person reading your resume to understand the emotional impact of the campaigns you managed. Don’t be afraid to quote marketing literature and copy that you developed or influenced.
Putting together your resume can be a scary thing for a marketing professional – you might feel as if people are judging you on the medium of the message as much as your experience itself. Do your best to flesh out your functional experience with the depth and emotive impact of your campaigns – let hiring managers and recruiters get a taste of your real work, not just an overview of your background.