For media and marketing roles
DO:
- Keep it simple:
- Fancy templates can be harder for the reader to review and can cause ATS resume screening software to get stuck and miss important information. Avoid formatted templates with left and right rails, columns, text boxes and stick with a simple clean word format that uses the whole width of the page.
- Contact information:
- Name, phone number, email, LinkedIn URL
- Exclude your home address, people don’t need to know your exact location. This helps eliminate bias on where you live and how far you may be willing to commute.
- Use a personal email address and consider if the email address you’ve been using since you were 16 is professional e.g., bunnyhopper@ or if the email platform you still use (and the CD it came on) dates you e.g., @aol.com.
- If the role is creative, and you have a professional portfolio, link it here.
- Profile
- This is your elevator pitch. 3-4 sentences summarizing your experience and core strengths.
- Skills
- 6-12 bullet points that reflect your key skills, HARD SKILLS ONLY.
- These should align with the keywords in the job description and is an excellent area to customize your resume to align with a job posting.
- Work experience
- Chronological, starting from current position and working backwards
- Title, company, start & end year.
- Aim for 4-5 key points for each position that include actions you took and results of the work you personally accomplished, include data where possible.
- Start each point with an active verb.
- Include awards.
- Avoid rewriting your job description.
- Education, additional course work & certifications, software proficiency
- Length
- Maximum 2 pages
- Print a copy of your resume and check formatting, this step is often forgotten.
DON’T:
X do not include your photo on your resume.
X do not include a career objective. This is a dated style.
X do not embellish the work you contributed to a role.
X do not say references available on request or list references.
