So you’ve just graduated and now it’s time to find a job. You’re going to need a professional resume to get noticed by recruiters and hiring managers. You know how to create awesome media for the digital world. But for some reason, you’re struggling to create a digital media resume that will sell your services effectively, and get you hired. Don’t fret! F.I.R.S.T. Institute is here to help.
5 Tips to Create a Digital Media Resume That Sells You Effectively
To transform your basic, everyday resume into a killer resume, you need to do some pre-planning. Just like with your digital media projects, there needs to be a plan of action. These five tips will walk you, step-by-step, through how to create a digital media resume, from planning to completion.
1. Determine Your Target Jobs and Target Audience
This is the first step to planning for a killer resume. Write out a list of various job titles within your industry that you’d consider. For ideas, simply visit a job site with digital media positions, such as Indeed.com, and do an industry search.
Once you’ve determined which jobs are good fits for you, go through some of the job postings and check out the requirements. Look for required skills and knowledge you currently possess. These will be added to your resume. If there are qualifications you’re simply familiar with, or are currently learning, you can add that information as well. You want to be sure that your resume includes the skills you need for the jobs you want.
Now, you can determine who your target audience will be… in other words, who will be reading your resume? Figure out what types of companies you’d like to work for as you create your digital media resume. This will also help you to shape the message properly.
Questions to Ask Yourself
Here are some ideas for questions to ask yourself to help determine your target audience. Basically, you want to determine what type of company you would like to work for.
- Do you want to work with a small company, entrepreneur, large agency, marketing team, etc…?
- Interested in employment with a small business that’s hoping to grow sales through social media?
- Thinking about working for a large, established marketing firm with a big name in analytics?
- Seeking employment in a structured, traditional, energetic, fun, or outgoing setting?
The answers to these questions will help you craft a resume that targets the types of companies you want to work for in the near future. Now, you can be sure to highlight skills and traits and parts of your background history that these businesses would find interesting and useful.
2. Determine Your Value to the Digital Media Job Market
There’s something unique about everyone. You need to determine what makes you uniquely valuable to your industry and target audience. Tap into your own personal unique blend of experiences, characteristics, skills, and digital media education. Figure out what makes you and your attributes so different from others applying for the same jobs.
This could be technical skills you have an in-depth knowledge of, such as coding or application development. Maybe you created digital media online, such as a viral video, and your stats are quite impressive. Or, perhaps you possess extensive analytical skills that would add to your value in a digital media job.
Once you determine your unique position, you can use this information to add more value when you create a digital media resume. This will also help you create an introduction paragraph for the start of your resume that should truly impress hiring managers and recruiters.
3. Decide on a Resume Strategy
Would you start a digital media marketing campaign without having a clear strategy? You need to have the same course of action when creating a digital media resume. You need to strategize the message behind your resume to make it capture the attention of your target audience. Here are some things you need to determine:
- What type of resume structure would be best for your industry, target audience, skill set, and education? The four main types of resume formats are chronological, functional, combination, and targeted. Click here to learn more.
- What are the keywords your target audience will be using in recruiters’ searches online? For example, a recruiter for a social media marketing specialist job may search keywords like “Google+ analytics,” “Facebook ads,” etc…
- Do you have real-life examples of campaigns you’ve run, ideas you’ve come up with, social media strategies with good analytical results, etc…? Your target audience will find this information valuable.
4. Create an Introduction Paragraph Which Quantifies Results
The digital media industry is one where everything can be analyzed and measured. Use this to your advantage. Recruiters and hiring managers are very busy professionals with very little time to spend looking for the information they need in a resume.
That’s why it’s so important that you impress them within the first couple of lines to avoid losing their interest and attention. You can also use a little bold text to draw attention to the most important part of the information.
Replace Your Resume Objective
See the first few lines of the resume? The creator starts things off with some really impressive results. He bolds the most valuable parts, which contain actual data facts. This is his introduction paragraph. In his second intro paragraph, he goes on to list a few personal traits that recruiters may find very useful for the job to which he’s applying.
These days, many people in analytics-driven industries have replaced the Objective sections of their resumes with these two introduction paragraphs. Hiring managers and recruiters are less interested in your overall career objectives than they are with what type of value you can bring to the company.
Note: Be sure to place emphasis and focus on numbers and results throughout your digital media resume. Avoid rounding numbers out too much. Don’t be afraid to use true numbers. This makes the data more realistic. For example, it’s okay to help grow databases by 189% and increase traffic by 43%.
5. Create Your Digital Media Resume
You can use an online software program, Microsoft Word templates, a plain document, or any method you prefer to create a digital media resume. Whichever you choose, these are the sections we recommend you add to yours:
- Contact Information – Just like with a general resume, be sure to include your name, address, contact number, email address, and URL to your professional website or online digital media portfolio.
- Introduction Paragraph – A few lines that highlight results, numbers, and/or achievements your target audience would find impressive.
- Second Intro Paragraph – The job seeker in the resume example added a second paragraph which highlights his personal traits which recruiters may find valuable.
- Professional Skills – This is where those keywords you came up with in step 3 will be placed. Hiring managers use keywords to search for qualified candidates in job sites. Make sure the keywords your target audience uses for your target jobs are listed on your resume for bots and people to see. If not, they will never find your resume during searches. If they do stumble upon your resume, you want your skills to stand out immediately.
- Job History – Now, as a new graduate, this can be a little tricky. You want to show that you can maintain employment, but you don’t want a resume filled with irrelevant jobs. As you list old employers (no farther back than 10 years), try to include job duties and accomplishments that are relevant to the jobs to which you plan to apply. For example, maybe you worked for a dry cleaners, but oversaw all social media marketing. That takes what seems to be an irrelevant employer and transforms it into a relevant job for your digital media resume. Be sure to include relevant volunteer work and internships here, too!
- Education – Because many job candidates have not attended digital media school, you have an upper hand here. List your higher education information here, including name of school, its location, graduation date, and credentials earned.
You’re Just Persuading Them to Buy
When you create a digital media resume, you are basically selling yourself to hiring managers and recruiters. Your education has helped you learn how to analyze results to determine what makes people buy. Now, place yourself in the role of the product or service being sold.
You are essentially selling yourself as a solution to the problem, with the problem being “they need a qualified employee who will fit in with their company’s structure, community, and atmosphere.” Convince them that hiring you solves that problem.
That means taking all the information you compiled in steps 1-4, and strategically placing it all within the various sections of your resume (step 5). This digital media executive resume makeover is another excellent example of taking a basic resume and transforming it into one that will impress and help you get hired.
Interested in what other F.I.R.S.T. Institute graduates have been up to since walking across the stage? F.I.R.S.T. Institute highlights some of the spotlights and achievements of both its faculty and graduates regularly. Check out the F.I.R.S.T. Institute Graduate Spotlights for inspiration and motivation today.
