5 Hacks for Drafting a Killer Content Marketing Resume

“The challenge of life, I have found, is to build a resume that doesn’t simply tell a story about what you want to be, but it’s a story about who you want to be.”

• Oprah Winfrey

Now that’s a powerful thought from one of the most powerful personalities of 20th century. Let’s face it, how many of us have written or have come across resumes that talk about the persona and who that person is trying to become. I can hardly recall any. What about you?

The thing is that most of us write a resume keeping our objective of securing a certain job in mind, and yet what we end up doing, is making a list of all the things that we’ve done, basically a laundry list of everything that we have ever done that’s somehow connected to our professional life.

Let’s face it, most resumes are basically just long boring lists of stuff done over a long period of time and most things don’t connect with each other or tell a story about the persona.

There, I said it, most resumes are nothing but a listicle. Don’t worry, I’ve been there too, so you’re not alone in this and no, I’m not judging you.

“Resume: a written exaggeration of only the good things a person has done in the past, as well as a wish list of the qualities a person would like to have.”

• Bo Bennett

Being able to write a compelling resume as a Content Marketer becomes even more crucial. If you’re presenting yourself as an expert on content, then assessment of your content skills starts right from the way you’ve written your resume.

As a Content Marketer, you’re supposed to have a grip on the communication strategy and the underlying important detailing not only to capture but also to keep the attention of your reader. A glance over your resume could open the conversation, or kill your chances from the word go, more so if you’re applying as a Content Marketer. Think about the first impression being the last one.

Hence, it’s quite important that you apply all your content marketing expertise, knowledge and strategies while writing your Content Marketing Resume, and let your resume do the talking about your skills, even before you’ve met your prospective employers.

In this article, we would go through 5 basic yet extremely important and helpful hacks to help you draft a killer Content Marketing Resume.

Writing a Killer Content Marketing Resume

1.) Develop a Communication Strategy for your Resume

Develop a content strategy for your resume

You’re a Content Marketing expert. You make your living by helping companies create a successful communication strategy. You consult and help others with refining their communication strategy and elements even if it was a simple birthday email to your friend’s boss.

So why won’t you help yourself, apply your Content Marketing skills and develop a communication strategy for your resume?

Just like you would approach your Content Marketing projects, you should first set out to identify, define and thoroughly understand your target audience, for whom you’re writing your resume.

This will help you understand what is that they might be looking for and you would get the direction that your resume should follow in order to leave a positive impression.

Also spend some time into thoroughly understanding the business that your prospective employer is in, its challenges, and how your skills and experience could be applied to create value to your employer to address their business requirements and challenges.

Needless to mention, you should completely understand the position and the job description for the job that you’re applying to. What career achievements and projects would you go about mentioning and highlighting in your resume would be decided according to the position that you’re eyeing, so that your resume can establish you as the right fit for the position.

Approaching your resume as a communication and content project, would help you put together a winning strategy and plan of execution. That’s exactly what a lot of your competition would be missing out on and you would be creating an edge for yourself even before you’ve written your Content Marketing resume.

This way, you would writing a resume completely aligned with the business that you’re looking to work with. Could there be any better way to write a resume for a job that you want to land?

2.) Your Resume should be Obsessed with Your USP

If everything is your USP, then nothing really is. You might be good at many things, you might excel at few of those and you absolutely kill it in one of two of the arena. That’s the playground you should choose to play on.

Identify those two or three key areas that you can call as your USP and your resume should be centered around those. And when my section titles states that your resume should be obsessed with your USP, I’m not exaggerating it. I mean it.

Everything on your resume should connect with, highlight, underline and reflect your USP to the screening team. They would be able to know it with absolute clarity what’s your biggest strength, why it is your biggest strength and what you’ve been able to achieve in demonstrate in your professional career with that strength.

It would work as a good indicator for what you’re capable of delivering when it comes to those areas where you’re the A player.

Knowing your biggest strength and the ability to use it when needed, is not a very commonplace trait. It’s the sign of the winners and your recruiters are looking to recruit winners.

3.) Write a “Skimmable” Resume 

Since you’re a Content Marketing expert, its given that you know your way around written content very well. You would already know how to present the content in a compelling and attractive manner so that it catches the attention of the viewer in the first attempt. You would be an expert on understanding how people read and absorb content. Afterall, you’ve built yourself a career around these skills.

Now is the time to put those skills to use to serve yourself. Write a “Skimmable” resume for yourself. You know that there are many applicants out there and you would get that tiny chance where your resume gets noticed and stands a chance to be shortlisted. Your resume literally need to break the clutter and stand out.

Befriend your bullet points, embrace brevity and preciseness, help you reader skim through your resume within few seconds and make them pay attention to the most important aspects of your resumes. If you have written an impressive “skimmable” resume, you’ve already won half the battle against your opponents.

Writing a “skimmable” resume is a crucial and yet often ignored aspect of resume writing. People lead busy and hectic lives and owing all the digital advances, our attention spans have really shortened.

You “skimmable” resume goes a long way in showing your employer that you care about your reader’s time, attention and you know how to make the right thing stand out and catch the attention of your reader.

What does an impressive “skimmable” resume demonstrate?

That you’re a killer Content Marketer and you know how to rock your communication and presentation. Exactly what your employers is looking for. Congratulations, you successfully demonstrated your Content Marketing chops to your prospective employer just by submitting your carefully written resume.

You’re welcome.

4.) Put the focus of Resume on Results and Achievements

What is one common mistake repeated by counts of applicants over and over again?

Making your resume by listing out all the activities that you participated in. While it helps you showcase your varied interest and establish yourself as a versatile professional, what it doesn’t help you with is to showcase you the go to person to get things done.

There is a stark difference in attempting something and showing results and achievements out of those attempts. You employers need you to drive results, not mere actions or attempts. And that’s what your resume need to tell them that you’re the person who drives results, that you’ve achieved many things that you aimed for, and that you’re the go-getter who can help them take their company in forward direction.

Focus your resume around the concrete results and achievements that you’ve achieved in your professional life. These results could be in both tangible and intangible forms. Your resume should be able to highlight those properly. Clearly mention what was the role that you played in a certain project, what value you brought to the table and how that affected the outcomes.

This way, your resume would become the document that showcases what you are capable of and your employers would not have to spend time and techniques on assessing that during your interview.

It also establishes that you’re well aware of what you’re capable of and that’s as important as being capable of. Go ahead, let your resume speak out loud about your results and achievements.

5.) Create Your Resume Like Michelangelo: Chip Away All That’s Not Necessary 

Now, you’re done with writing a killer resume that you had set out to do. So you think that you’re done. But not yet.

“David was always there in the marble. I just chipped away everything that was not David.”

• Michelangelo

  

You might have heard this story of someone asking Michelangelo about his creative process and him answering in this quote (or something like this quote). While it’s debatable whether this story is true or not, what’s not debatable is the strikingly simple truth in this quote.

When you’re creating a masterpiece, you need to approach it like this and pull off a Michelangelo. Even when it’s something as routine as a resume.

When you feel that you’ve written your resume, it’s time to make it a masterpiece resume. At this point, you need to do multiple rounds of thorough critique and revisions chipping away everything that isn’t adding weight to your resume.

Remember, if it’s not adding weight, it’s weighing down. Take away all the necessary burden and let only the absolutely important aspects of your resume shine.

When there is no distraction, your most important aspects will stand out and will strengthen your case like nothing else will.

When you’ve chipped away everything that’s not the resume that you want, you’ve created your masterpiece resume.

It’s Your Turn to Write that Killer Content Marketing Resume

Now that you’ve learned all that you needed to write your killer Content Marketing resume, what’s stopping you. Go ahead and just do it when you apply for that coveted Content Marketing job.

What are your hacks to write a killer resume?

Share with our readers in the comments and contribute into making this world with delightful resume of delightful professionals.

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