Start from the job you want
Before writing a line, decide which job you are writing for. A resume aimed at "anything in marketing" reads as vague to every reader. Pick one target title, collect two or three postings for it, and note the skills and tools that come up in all of them. Those words are your checklist for the rest of the page.
Use the order readers expect
Recruiters and parsing software both expect the same order. Surprising them costs attention you need for your achievements.
- Name and contact line: email, phone, city, and a LinkedIn or portfolio link.
- Title and summary: the role you are targeting and two or three sentences on what you bring to it.
- Experience: most recent first, with role, company, dates and three to five bullets each.
- Skills: concrete tools, methods and domain knowledge, not adjectives.
- Education: degree, school and year; certifications if they matter for the role.
Write bullets that prove, not describe
A strong bullet names what you did, how, and what changed because of it. Start with a past-tense verb, keep it to one line where you can, and put the result where the eye lands.
- Weak: "Responsible for the onboarding flow."
- Better: "Redesigned the onboarding flow with the growth team, lifting activation from 38% to 51% in one quarter."
- No number to hand? Describe scale or scope instead: "for 40 enterprise accounts", "across three product teams".
Never invent a metric. An interviewer will ask how you measured it. A clearly phrased achievement without a number is better than a number you cannot defend.
Make the skills section searchable
List the skills a posting actually names, spelled the way it spells them: "A/B testing", not "experimentation" if that is the word they use. Six to twelve skills is plenty. Soft skills belong in your bullets as evidence ("led a team of four"), not in a list.
Keep the layout simple enough to parse
Applicant tracking systems read text, not design. A single-column layout with standard section headings, real text instead of images, and dates in one consistent format ("2021 – 2024") parses cleanly almost everywhere. Save as PDF unless the posting asks for Word.
Mistakes that cost interviews
- Two pages for less than ten years of experience.
- Photos, date of birth or marital status on applications to the US or UK.
- An "Objective" line about what you want instead of a summary of what you offer.
- Duties copied from the job description of your old role.
- Typos in names of tools and companies: read the page aloud once before sending.
