Revamping your resume can feel daunting – “where should I put my contact information, is my experience in the right spot, do I need a summary?”
Luckily for you, as recruiters, we look at resumes all day and know the perfect recipe to create both an informative and creative resume. Here is a breakdown of how to revamp your creative resume to land your dream job.
Contact Information
One of the most common mistakes we see when people submit their resumes to our open positions is forgetting to include your contact information. It takes an average of 6 seconds for a recruiter to scan your resume and decide if you are fit for the role. If a recruiter is interested in you, you want to make it as seamless as possible for them to contact you.
We suggest that underneath your name, the header, include your contact information. Your contact information should include: the current city/town in which you reside, phone number, and email address. Another popular placement is at the bottom of the page, but we recommend keeping it at the top for easy access.
Summary
A summary is not a requirement for a resume, but it is a way to explain/showcase your background and experience without getting into the nitty gritty. You should place your summary directly beneath your name and contact information at the top of the page.
Your summary should be about three sentences explaining your areas of expertise and niches in your field. Think of this as a way to stand out compared to other candidates – what makes your skillset and experience more significant for the job than others?
If you have an objective on your previous resume, we suggest replacing it with a summary of your experience instead.
Experience
Your experience should be the first section of content on your resume. The most relevant information about your background is your work experience, so it should be the first section (after your contact information and summary).
Include the company name, job title, and month/year you started and ended your position. If you are currently there, then do month/year – present. Put your experience in order from the most current to the least.
When creating the bullet points/overview of your experience, write your current role in the present tense and other experience in the past tense. The best advice is to use as many metrics and quantitative data as possible. Essentially you are selling your product (yourself) to a business, so in what way can you provide value? The best way to do this is by providing statistics and data on your successes.
Education
The content section to follow experience should be education. Include your undergrad and graduate information here by naming the university, your degree, and the years it took to earn that degree. We recommend refraining from including GPA because it is unnecessary for most creative positions.
If you have not received a degree but a certificate for your area of expertise, include that certificate/certification in the education section.
Skills
The bottom of the page should include both your hard and soft skills. We recommend listing the skills/programs you use most often in your area of expertise. For example, that could be Adobe Illustrator if you’re a designer or Sprout if you’re a social media manager.
Whether you are a beginner, intermediate, or advanced in the skillset, you should include all of your skills in the list. We suggest listing your hard skills first and your soft skill second.
If you are to take any advice from this, edit and tweak your resume for each job you apply to. We know this sounds exhausting and time-consuming, but recruiters and hiring managers are looking for keywords and skills for the specific job description. The easiest way to do this is to use the keywords in the job description and place them where they are relevant in your resume.
We wish you the best of luck in your job search!
Clutch is a creative staffing partner. We connect digital, creative, and marketing professionals with companies looking for freelance, temp-to-hire or direct hire resources.
