
A well-crafted CV can make a huge difference for job seekers searching for a new role, especially in competitive fields such as Marketing, eCommerce, Product, and Data. We recently ran a poll asking if people would find a CV template useful, with over 80%, at the time of writing, responding yes.
A few respondents from the Creative and Design industries responded expressing an interest, and although they can utilise some of these points, an aesthetic portfolio is more crucial than a detailed CV within this industry.
Introduction – Why you need a standout CV?
As of the fourth quarter of 2023, approximately 917,900 sales, marketing, and related associate professionals are employed in the United Kingdom.
However many people have been seeking new opportunities within Digital and Marketing industries, however they have found recruitment more challenging. The great resignation post-covid in 2022 was followed immediately by a cost-of-living crisis, which was greatly exasperated by 49 days of poor policy making, that directly led to redundancies across sectors in 2023 and filtered through to 2024.
If consumers spend less money, this directly impacts the economy – who knew?
A lot more senior professionals have been searching for new roles, however new career opportunities have been limited, and recruitment within these areas has become highly competitive. It has become critical for people to create CV’s that attract attention of hiring managers and talent acquisitions teams.
Also the rise of the use of AI to filter CVs can lead to candidates being disqualified for roles, despite having relevant skills and experience. This leads to questions about how to “game” ATS and Recruitment platforms, by tailoring your CV towards the job description and including “keywords”.
What does your CV require?
Your CV is a document to summarise your career experience and prove your relevance to a role. This needs to highlight what you can potentially bring to the table and why the hiring company should consider your application to be worthy of an interview.
Must-Have Sections:
· Contact Information (name, phone, email, LinkedIn profile, Town and Postcode).
The business should know how to contact you with updates regarding your application, scheduling interviews and more. It is shocking how many CVs I have seen that do not include a phone number or email address, which effectively makes an application redundant.
I’d recommend creating a 2nd email purely for job seeking, and removing any confidential information such as date of birth or full-address. Your town and postcode should suffice if a employer wants to check your commutability.
· Work Experience (reverse chronological order).
This is most crucial part of your application, and conveying your experience in the most effective manner will lead to more interviews.
Ensure your LinkedIn profile demonstrates the same information as your CV.
Other important information to include would be:
· Education (include relevant certifications).
· Skills (tailored to the role).
· Achievements/Awards (quantifiable results).
Nice-to-Have:
· Projects (especially if related to digital marketing or data analysis).
· Volunteer work (relevant to the industry).
Aim to keep your CV to 2 pages whenever possible, senior candidates may extend to a 3rd page, but keep it concise. Prioritise relevant content over CV length.
How to start your CV – Personal Profile
Your Personal Profile is your elevator pitch. It should be concise and impactful. It needs summarise your professional background and expertise, demonstrating your skills and ability relevant to the role you’re applying for, including industry experience, job titles, products, processes or environments that align to the role you are applying for. Try to keep it less than 3 paragraphs, as work experience should be more valuable.
IF you’re a recent graduate or completed a qualification relevant to the vacancy, you may wish to flag that early within your personal profile.
Avoid generic terms such as “hardworking”, “self-starter” or “go-getter”. I’m sure you’re all of those things, but this is an opportunity to differentiate yourself from other applicants so avoid clichés.
An example could be “Senior Marketing professional, with over 15 year’s experience leading teams in-house within Fashion, Accessories and Footwear. Proven track
record of delivering strong results in fast-paced working environments, building high-performing teams, and devising plans to reach and surpass commercial objectives.
You can mention budgets, p&l,, team sizes, industries, in-house, agency, reputable brands and more.
Experienced professionals, could leverage career highlights in between Personal Profile and Work Experience sections. Provide tangible successes and achievements that will capture attention. I recommend sticking to between 4 - 7 bullet points.
Utilise ROI on campaigns/activations, growth, surpassing KPI’s, driving sales/conversion, cost saving or growing teams. Include examples with £’s and %’s, whether increasing revenue/budget, reducing CPA/CAC, increased conversions etc…
Work Experience – using your experience to your advantage
Keep your formatting between roles consistent throughout your CV. The format that I feel works best is;
Company name
Job title Data (MM/YYYY)
I’ve seen a lot of CVs recently not including dates, this can make the reader feel a sense of uncertainty about your application. Also saying you cannot remember your employment dates over the past years, whilst describing yourself as highly organised on your CV will raise a lot of questions.
A sentence summarise your role/objective
5-8 bullet points summarising your experience.
These bullet points need to hammer home what makes you unique and hat you could be bringing to the role if you’re successful in your application. They should highlight the level of your responsibility, what your employer was expecting of you and what you achieved.
Why would the company you’re applying to want to recruit you? What makes you the best candidate? What prior successes/responsibilities align with the job description?
THINK budgets, savings, increased sales, commercial successes, YoY growth, P&L ownership, team management (hiring, firing, progressing), tendering processes, adopting new technologies, migrating across to new platforms, increased traffic/engagement/open rates/click through rates etc… There are so many things that you have done that is unique to your career and you CV needs to communicate this.
As mentioned above, in a data-driven landscape you need to leverage £’s and %’s to your advantage. Give impactful successes that will capture Hiring Manager’s, Talent Manager and Recruiter’s attention alike.
Examples of bullet points you can mention in bullet points can range from:
· “Proficient in analysing marketing metrics to drive strategic decisions.”
· “Adept at using tools like Google Analytics to track customer behaviour and devise on-going marketing strategies.
· “Track record of improving campaign performance through data insights.”
· “Delivered 115% YoY growth”
· “Managed an annual marketing budget of £600,000 across…”
Avoid Generic Language:
Be specific about your achievements or successes and avoid clichés. So instead of saying “results-oriented,” provide quantifiable achievements (e.g., “Increased website traffic by 30%”). Replace generic buzzwords or corporate jargon with industry-specific terms relevant to your field.
Some role Specific tips:
Marketing:
Marketing covers a wide array of duties, and businesses could have different expectations of roles with similar job titles.
Do you specialise in a particular area of marketing or are you a generalist? What do you cover hands on? Do you manage other team members, freelancers or agency partner in different areas? Do you work at an agency with clients across sectors?
Honestly critique what you bring to the table and ensure your CV appropriately reflects this!
Some things to think about:
- Reflect upon what channels/platforms are you responsible for? What are the expectations of your role? Did you hit or surpass your KPIs?
- Highlight campaign successes, digital marketing skills, and creativity. Do you collaborate with other teams or departments?
- Mention any experience with SEO, SEM, social media, Email/CRM management and content creation.
Branding
Branding is responsible for communicating your businesses values, goals, achievements and products/services. It establishes your business’ identity, differentiates your from competitors and helps customers understand your place in the market.
Business will usually define their brands based on research, evolve to match audience trends and look at a variety of ways to communicate to customers, from creating a memorable logo, creating a synergy between their website, social channels, emails, PR, events and Offline (Print, OOH, POS etc…), to identifying brand partnerships with other businesses or influencers.
Some things to think about:
- What activations have you worked on? How did they help to elevate the brand? Did you need to reposition yourself in the market? How?
- What budgets were you working with? What were the expectations (building brand awareness, generating sales etc…)? How did you track this?
- Did you need to reach new audiences? Was this based off qualitative, quantitative or a mixed research methodology? How did this inform your GTM strategy?
eCommerce:
Demand for eCommerce professionals has steadily increased over the past 2 decades and exponentially grew during and post covid. Yet recruitment within eCommerce has become far more competitive, and employers have become more open to considering applicants from other industries if they have demonstrable track record of delivering success.
Some eCommerce roles will also have Marketing responsibilities, and employers want to understand your commercial and technical acumen.
Some considerations:
- Are you focussed on D2C, B2B, Wholesale, Marketplaces or Concessions? Do you cover more than one area?
- Emphasise skills related to online sales/trading/digital merchandising, customer experience, conversion rate optimisation and e-commerce platforms.
- Showcase any experience with A/B or multi-variate testing, conversion rate optimization, or user experience design.
- What tools/CMS’s are you experienced in using?
Product:
The product team is the driving force for innovating a business, but ensuring any changes are functional, commercial viable and required.
The product realm has changed, and from a product development focus it has shifted to a more strategic role that understands the broader business objectives and ensure it caters to customers needs.
However, the fundamental skills and expectations of a product professional remains unchanged.
Some considerations:
- Focus on product management skills, product launches, and market research.
- Highlight your ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams.
- Showcase your commercial acumen and technological knowledge. Are you upskilling to keep abreast with the latest industry trends? How?
Data:
Data is invaluable to the modern workplace. It informs strategic decisions across all areas of business, and will continue to grow in importance in the AI age. It can inform decision making from marketing activities, understanding customer behaviours to increase sales and designing products to address customer needs.
At the same time, greater legislation means business require professionals to help navigate different laws and restrictions globally.
Some roles are more technical and require professionals to build the frameworks to examine and analyse data, or build algorithms/models to create functions for certain actions. Other roles focus on interpreting data to create strategic plans and actions.
Some considerations:
- Showcase data analysis skills, statistical tools (Python, R, Excel), and data visualization.
- Mention any experience with machine learning or predictive modelling.
Conclusion
We’ve covered the basics of how to create a winning CV, but this is an area that is constantly evolving. You do not want a CV that is oversaturated with irrelevant points, it needs to artfully explain your careers in a concise manner to illustrate what you can effectively bring to the table.
Ensure you include dates in MM/YYYY format, CVs only stating the year can hinder your search.
Make sure your CV and LinkedIn profile match and reflect the same information.
Include points relevant to the role you’re applying for.
Your CV doesn’t require your picture, your date of birth or other personal details.
Although there is no proven science to creating the perfect CV, you can craft a compelling on that will result in interviews.
Looking for a CV template? click this link here