Email marketing CV vs resume — what’s the difference?
First things first.
There are 2 types of documents that people use to show their experience and abilities when they want to apply for a job: CV and resume.
The difference is that:
First things first.
There are 2 types of documents that people use to show their experience and abilities when they want to apply for a job: CV and resume.
The difference is that:
Recruiter at Selzy
So it looks like what you need for email marketing specialist vacancies is a resume, and that’s what we’re going to break down.
Now let’s go through each of them in detail.
A resume header is the first thing a recruiter or employer sees when they look at your resume. It’s nothing complicated, you just have to place all the required info in one place and format it right.
Add in the header your:
Place the header at the top of the document or align it to the left or to the right creating a column. Whatever the case, make it discernible.
The main rule: always check and recheck your contacts. The thing is, a header is not a rocket science part of a resume as such but even a small mistake made there can cost a lot and derail all your efforts.
Recruiter at Selzy
I had a case like this when I was looking for a job myself and I made a mistake in my phone number (back in the days when phones were really important). For two days I had been totally distraught like “Why isn’t anyone calling me? Am I such a hopeless case or what? What’s wrong with me?”
Finally, it dawned on me. I changed one figure, started to get calls from employers, and finally landed a job.
A resume summary is 3-5 sentences that you place in or near the header and whose point is to make a manager read the whole document. So pay special attention to the summary.
Tell about your experience, skills, and achievements and why you think you suit this job. Choose your words wisely as hiring managers will expect outstanding copywriting from you.
A good summary is catchy, concise, and concrete.
A good email marketer is a precious fusion, a specialist who’s versatile. They are a bit of a geek, an analyst, a creative, and an entrepreneur at heart. So show both hard skills and soft skills in your resume.
If you analyze job descriptions for email marketing specialists, you’ll notice a pattern.
Recruiters will expect from you these hard skills:
As for the soft skills, HRs usually want someone with:
Some employers are looking not so much for marketers as for newsletters creators. In this case, they rather need skillful writers so technologies fade into the background. Needless to say, it really depends on the job description. If a company is essentially looking for a writer and designer, don’t try to impress them with your abilities to create outstanding sales funnels, that wouldn’t be relevant. Rather find what matters in their particular case. Maybe they want a highly motivated self-starter? Or someone with a deep knowledge of working with databases?
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Do specific tools matter? Like if you have experience with Mailchimp, then is a Hubspot job out of your league?
The truth is, the specifics don’t really matter. Even if some two ESPs are different, a marketer can learn a new platform in a matter of weeks or months at the most.
The point is that it’s better to mention specific tools and platforms in your resume if they are mentioned in the job description (if you have relevant experience, that is) because HR specialists sometimes search by keywords.
To select candidates, HR specialists use keyword searches as there is no time to read each resume from start to finish. See what skills and competencies are required in your job description and add them to your resume. The more accurately you get into the list of key phrases, the more likely you are to get an invitation for an interview. Yes, you will have to change your resume for different companies and vacancies.
Ever wanted to write some memoirs? Well, a resume is not particularly the place for it, but it’s your chance to tell your Story and Journey (the career ones, of course) and to provide some details for all those skills you mentioned earlier.
In the experience part, tell about your previous work responsibilities and your greatest achievements, show how you kept track of various KPIs, developed new approaches, and analyzed the outcome of each email campaign.
Don’t copypaste skills into work experience. Rather, provide a different perspective, indicate the real tasks that you faced at each workplace, like:
How to write about achievements?
Many talented marketers are great at promoting products but not comfortable with praising themselves for something they did because it sounds like bragging to them. There’s one best way to write about your achievements though to stay modest and please HR managers.
Always describe your results using numbers.
A company wants to know what they will get if they hire you. They don’t need A/B testing, email sequences, or new subscribers as such. Employers need sales, repeat sales, and new customers.
For example, imagine you have implemented new software or service or created a new kind of email campaign or an automation series. Write down what goal you achieved and how it affected the results (“as a result, costs decreased from … to …”, “conversion increased from … to …”, etc.).
Here are some ideas on results:
Write the real results of your work. Don’t appropriate others’ achievements or exaggerate your own.
How many places of work to mention?
In your resume, mention 1-3 previous workplaces that seem the most relevant to the position you are applying for. There’s no need for you to tell about all your experience starting from selling cookies in the 3rd grade.
Best choose places where you have spent at least 6 months because 6 months is about the minimum that you need to really understand what a job is all about and start to bring profit. Don’t mention 2-3 months tenures, unless that’s all you’ve got. In this case, note why you’d spent so little time there.
What if you have no experience?
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What to do if you have no relevant experience? Send an empty resume? Of course, not.
Let your resume be short and include even the non-relevant work experience, but you have to be clear on why you mention it. For example, you want to be an email marketer but have worked only as a sales manager. Sales management doesn’t sound especially relevant, right? You can change it by adding that you learned how to find a way to any person, communicate goals, etc.
It’s your skills that should be relevant, not your exact job duties at the previous workplace.
If you’re a student and have no work experience at all, tell about your activities during studies, courses, trainings, achievements. They should be relevant too.
Having analyzed a number of job descriptions, I found out that most hiring managers search for email marketing specialists with a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent working experience. The preferred university fields are Marketing, Business, Communications, or related areas. Some are fine with a High School diploma but demand more in terms of experience.
Along with your degree, you can also include additional certificates you’ve acquired to expand your knowledge. The following credentials will help you stand out as a person dedicated to email marketing:
Some companies favor applicants with:
Others need specialists with the knowledge of foreign languages like Spanish or German.
HRs say that resume screening is important but time-consuming as there are many responses. HR managers can process more than 80 resumes per week for 1 vacancy.
Recruiter at Selzy
If we work according to a certain scheme for evaluating a resume, then it usually takes less than 1 minute to understand if a candidate suits us.
If the resume is really logical and concisely built, then there is a need to devote more time to this resume and go into details.
A good structure will not only help an HR manager to quickly understand what your offer is about, but it’ll also act as a sign that you’re a professional. HRs expect good structure from you as an email marketing specialist.
You don’t have to design your resume from scratch though. There are services on the web that have ready-made templates that you just have to fill in and maybe tweak a bit. For example, Canva’s resume builder. It has dozens of quality templates with different blocks, but all clean, stylish, and logical:
Avoid extensive wording, ambiguous meanings, and long paragraphs of text. Use bullet points, and small text blocks. Don’t cram it all up in the style of early 2000s web design.
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At first glance, it is immediately clear whether I will read the whole resume or not.
Structurality. The marketer must have a structure in their head. No overlong blocks of text without paragraphs. An email marketer is all about conciseness.
We talked about the hesitance to promote oneself in the Experience section, but let us stay on it a bit longer.
The marketer must understand what information is selling the “product” (in this case, them as a candidate). If this is not in the resume, it is unlikely that they will be able to sell products well, working for a company.
Recruiter at Selzy
Don’t be afraid to praise yourself, write: “My accomplishments”, “I did it”.
Just use numbers and facts to describe your performance.
This is probably the most important rule of resume-making and a golden one: tailor your resume according to the specific position.
Every phrase should be clear, and every fact is appropriate. If some information makes you ask “Why should the employer know this?”, just delete it. “Does this have something to do with this job?” If not, delete it.
If you write that you worked with a company, indicate its name. If you use an abbreviation, decipher it. Try to avoid professional slang and complex abbreviations.
If you use one of the templates like on Canva, they are pretty concise from the start.
A cover letter is a short story about yourself and your suitability for the job. In your resume, you describe your experience, professional knowledge, and skills. And in your cover letter, you need to explain why you think you are suitable for becoming a part of their workforce, how you can be useful to the employer, and why you should be invited for an interview with an HR.
What to do:
What not to do:
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A cover letter is a sign of respect for a company and for yourself. It shows that you spent time researching a company and you understand your goals.
A cover letter is great if you have no work experience because there are hundreds and thousands of responses for jobs with little or no experience and you need to stand out. Write what you find interesting about the company, the vacancy, and what you can do.
Analyze their website, what they do, what are its values, what others tell about it.
Make a cover letter short — no more than several paragraphs. Don’t copy info from the resume.
No mistakes, no sloppy copy.
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Make sure there’s one typeface, you have periods and commas in all the right places, lists.
Be consistent: don’t make one list capitalized and with no periods and make others look different.
A couple of resumes for your inspiration: one for email marketing specialist and one for an email marketing manager.
How to become an email marketer:
