Your digital marketing CV has one goal: To make you stand out from the hundreds of other applicants. But hiring has changed massively in recent years, and staying up to date is crucial to beat the competition.

For example, automation and screening tools have increased in use massively in recent years. These tools save recruiters and hiring managers time filtering applicants’ CVs. But if you don’t know how they work, then your CV won’t make it through this filter, and your CV will end up in the bin. 

Which is why it’s never been more important to understand how to make your CV stand out from the crowd.

Our Top 6 Digital Marketing CV Tips

The digital marketing job market has never been hotter, and it’s a great time to be looking for your next digital role. But with almost 10 million people in the UK looking for their next job at any one time, you need to make sure that your CV stands out from the crowd.

1. Identify Keywords and Optimise Your CV

As mentioned, some businesses that receive lots of applications use AI or screening tools to filter CVs for them. This is due to the increasing amount of applications businesses receive. Hiring managers simply don’t have the time to read through every application.

So you should take the time to scan through the job description and identify the keywords for the role you’re applying for, and make sure they’re included in your CV.

Here’s an example of a Technical SEO Manager job advert, with potential keywords highlighted. While you may have experience in these areas, if you don’t use the right keywords, your CV may never even be seen by a real person.

Not every company uses automation tools to filter through CVs, but you can’t be sure who does and who doesn’t. And tailoring your CV for the job you’re applying for is still essential. 

2. Your Career Summary 

Crucial to your CV is a good summary. A good career summary is one that captures your experience, your passions and what makes you unique. Providing hiring managers with a quick snapshot of who you are as a professional helps grab attention and stand out in the right way.

Your summary should cover the breadth of your experience, highlighting areas of interest to the particular job you are applying for, and give a little information about yourself. Like the example below.

3. List Your Key Skills

It’s no secret that many hiring managers only briefly consider your CV. In fact, the average manager only takes 6 – 7 seconds to look at your CV. This means your skills should be immediately obvious, and they should match the skills required in the job description.

Let’s look at an example. You’re a well-rounded SEO who’s looking to move into a technical SEO role. Then obviously you should focus on your technical SEO skills and the technical SEO parts of your previous role. While your content SEO skills are still good to show, they’re not the most important thing that your future employer is looking for.

4. Don’t Forget Your Soft Skills

Soft skills are an often overlooked but crucial part of your digital marketing CV. As you progress in your digital marketing career and move away from being hands-on with activation and day-to-day reporting, your soft skills become more important.

However we don’t always realise the soft-skills that we have picked up along the way in our career.

So it’s well worth considering both the soft-skills you have learned in your career a swell as the soft skills that will be most important in the positions you’re applying for.

The 10 most common soft skills we see requested by the digital marketing agencies and businesses we work with are:

1. Communication skills.
2. Management skills.
3. Creativity.
4. Multitasking.
5. Teamwork.
6. Attention to detail.
7. Work ethic.
8. Autonomous working.
9. Leadership skills.
10. Adaptability.

Read here for more information on the soft skills to include on your digital marketing CV.

5. Don’t List Your Responsibilities. List Your Accomplishments.

One of the most common mistakes we see people make is listing the responsibilities of their previous job experience. When instead, you should be blowing hiring managers away with a list of the amazing things you achieved in your last role.

Working in digital marketing, you are likely to have more experience than most with data analysis and creating reports. So it should come as no surprise when we tell you that hiring managers love to see data and statistics that back up your claims about efficiency and effectiveness.

Instead of saying “I posted regularly on the company social media and improved the company branding and outreach”, the CV shows exactly the impact they’ve had using data and statistics to back up their argument.

6. Work From Home/ Remote Experience

Digital marketing is one of the industries that was most adaptable to the shift from home working. This is likely to increase, as digital agencies and businesses are having to offer more flexibility and benefits to attract the best candidates.

This is most applicable to remote and hybrid roles, but it does show positives to hiring managers you may not have considered. It shows that you are flexible and adaptable. It shows you can work autonomously, and gives managers confidence that you work well regardless of location.

One of the greatest ways to improve your digital marketing CV is to speak to an expert. Our digital recruiters read hundreds of CVs a week, and we offer advice to all our candidates on how to improve their CVs. Reach out to a digital recruitment consultant here for a confidential chat about your career.

But that’s enough of the theory, let’s look at some digital marketing CV examples.

Using AI Tools to Help Write Your CV

This year we’ve seen AI explode onto the internet, and there’s also plenty of ways you can use it to help you in your job search. For example, helping to write your CV or resume!

Resume writing AI tools such as Kickresume can be used to create a CV that you can use as a template: But should be used as just that, a template for you to edit and fill in your own criteria and information.

All we did was put in a few key details and the title of the job we wanted to apply for and this was the result:

As you can see, it’s a great starting point. But that’s all it should be, as the information it contains may not be true and it won’t be an accurate reflection of you. So it should be used with care.

But there are plenty of AI resume writing tools to choose from, and plenty of other way to use AI. You can read our guide here, for more ways to use AI tools to support you in your job search.

Digital Marketing CV Example: Common CV Mistakes

This is an example of a digital marketing CV that we see all the time. The overall design of the CV doesn’t really stand out or grab attention. While it is cleanly presented and filled with bullet points, it’s also entirely forgettable.

While it contains all the right information, the presentation leaves a lot to be desired. Here’s a few steps you should take to avoid these classic CV mistakes.

1. Education and qualifications are relevant. But they’re not as important as your work experience. So we would advise placing your work experience further up, and education at the bottom. Better yet, would be leading with a brief ‘Career Summary’.
2. A ‘Career Summary’ immediately provides the person reading your CV with the relevant information they need, and makes you more memorable. This is crucial because you only have those 7 seconds to grab the attention of the reader.
3. The skills section here is filled with relevant skills for a content based digital marketing role. However, it is relegated to a footnote, almost an afterthought. Your skills section should be at the top and immediately apparent to whoever reads your CV.
4. The experience section lists all the responsibilities of the role. But it doesn’t impress the reader with how effective the candidate was, of the impact they had and what they learned as you grew within the role.

Of course there aren’t the only mistakes people make when writing a CV. Read here for more common CV mistakes that you absolutely need to avoid when writing your digital marketing cv.

Digital Marketing CV Example: The Right Way To Do It

Here is the same CV. The same information and experience, but presented in a way that is going to grab attention for all the right reasons.

1. Immediately noticeable is the CV is visually more striking, using colours to break up the contents of the CV into segments and highlight the areas of importance.
2. First and foremost is the ‘Career Summary’ that you can use to highlight the important parts of your CV and your experience. This section is one of the most important for you to individually tailor to the job you’re applying for.
3. Next up is the ‘Skills’ and ‘Technology’ sections. These are in their own section, placed near the top. Compared to the last CV, the skills listed are more specific, list the software and technology used, and it is clear that the candidate is applying for an SEO role.
4. The ‘Experience’ section has been trimmed to remove experience irrelevant to the position that the candidate is applying for. You may be tempted to include as much information as possible to impress the reader. But hiring managers spend only 5 – 7 seconds on average looking at a CV. So including only relevant information to the role you are applying for is more likely to get your CV read.
5. The experience section has also been edited to include statistics and data that support the candidates claims of effectiveness in the role. It also shows the long-term effects they had in their previous role.

Searching for your next job is no small task, and sprucing up your CV is just the first step. If you’re looking for your next digital role then we can help. Reach out to our team of digital recruitment experts to see if we can find your next role for you. Alternatively, have a look at our open digital roles to find the next step in your digital marketing career.