Leaving university is an exciting and sometimes daunting time for graduates as they transition from student life into job hunting and full-time work.
You have spent the last few years studying your marketing degree and are now ready to share your talents with the world, so your first step is to perfect your interview-winning graduate CV.
The marketing industry is notoriously competitive, so it’s important to include the most relevant information by working to the following sections:
Contact details
You don’t have to go into great detail here, just a few lines at the top of your CV with your location, telephone number and email address will suffice. There’s no need to list your full address, just list a vague location such as ‘Liverpool’.
Profile and core skills
Your profile leaves recruiters with a positive or negative first impressions – so it pays to make sure it’s of a really good quality!
Start with a powerful summary sentence and include all of your most impressive information, without going longer than about eight lines, for maximum impact.
Your core skills should be listed next and the best way to present these are in short bullet points, which can be easily read when recruiters are scanning through high volumes of CVs.
Here, you’ll share your most relevant skills e.g. social media analytics, blog writing, website content management or any other relevant skills. Make sure to include which software you’re skilled in, for example WordPress, Photoshop or Hootsuite.
Relevant projects
With a limited amount of work experience under your belt, projects you delivered as part of your degree can be a good way to show your capabilities.
If you have relevant project work which links to what recruiters are looking for, whether it’s video editing or developing a content management plan, cover it in this section.
If you have any creative or technical personal projects such as blogging, photography or coding website, you should include them, here, too – these sorts of skills are highly relevant to a modern marketing role!
Education
If you lack work experience then you can expand on the details of your education, emphasising relevant modules and assignments you completed which show an aptitude for specific areas of marketing.
So, rather than just adding your degree grade, list information about the modules you studied to provide greater detail on your experience and knowledge.
Work experience
Even the part time jobs, volunteering or summer work you’ve done have provided you with experience that helps you to stand out from other applicants.
Think about the different tasks that you did and how the skills you used could easily be transferred into a marketing role.
For example, if you worked as part of a team, contributed towards meetings, organised events or wrote reports, then these are all relevant to the role and responsibilities of a marketer.
Marketing recruiters will be looking for someone who can show their creativity and passion for everything marketing related. Convey by filling the sections above with your most relevant skills, projects and experience to ensure that your marketing graduate CV wows recruiters.
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Andrew Fennell is the founder of CV writing advice website StandOut CV – he is a former recruitment consultant and contributes careers advice to websites like Business Insider, The Guardian and FastCompany.
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