When looking for your ideal Marketing Executive, chances are you’ll be spending quite a lot of time sifting through CVs. As with any senior role, the first thing you’re going to look for when recruiting is an impressive, stand-out CV.
Searching through hundreds of CVs is a daunting task. It doesn’t take long for tunnel vision to set in, and after a while finding the right CV can feel like pulling teeth. How can you make the process of identifying quality CVs easier?
What To Look For
What should you look for in a Marketing Executive CV? As we know, quality marketers have a broad range of skills and experiences. These should be clearly outlined in their CV. It should be unique and easy to read. We’ve detailed some of the key points you should look for in your Marketing Executive CVs to identify the best candidates.
Experience
We all know that experience is important. But what type of experience should you look for? Ideally, you’ll want candidates who have experience working at the right level. There’s a big difference between junior or assistant marketing roles and senior marketing executive roles.
Also look at the form of experience they have. It’s always advantageous for candidates to have specific experience working in your industry or with your product/service. Strong product and market knowledge is invaluable.
So what if your candidate doesn’t have industry relevant experience? For senior roles, transferable skills can make up for this. In fact, transferable skills are perhaps the most valuable feature that a senior candidate can have.
Look at the diversity of roles and businesses that your candidate has worked in. Ideally, you want to find a good balance. Working in the same role or business too long can run the risk of institutionalisation and indicate a potential struggle to adapt to your organisation culture.
On the other hand, candidates who switch between roles too often may lack commitment and loyalty. It’s important to hire a senior marketer who can commit to the role and produce long-term positive results.
Finding a balance is important. Look for marketers who have experience in a few different industries or roles but also show commitment to their roles. This can be a strong indicator of great transferable skills.
Key Achievements
Achievements are everything. As we mentioned, experience is important, but you also need quality achievements to back that experience up. Look at your experienced candidate’s CV, what have they achieved in that time? Quality candidates are proud of their achievements and eager to highlight them and show them off in their CV.
Look for tangible figures where possible. The best candidates understand the importance of quantifiable results. They’ll state “I achieved X for my company by doing Y”. You want them to tell you what positive results they achieved for their business and what they did to achieve them.
Look for achievements like successful development and integration of marketing strategies, significantly improving profits/market presence, and improving business reputation.
You want to be sure that your candidate has had a positive effect on their business and can do the same for yours.
Skills
In one of our previous articles, we discussed the essential skills every Marketing Executive should possess. Of course, the specific skills you’ll require of your candidates depend on the nature of the role you’re offering.
Content marketing will require excellent writing and creative skills, digital marketing needs a strong understanding of technology, and so on. They should have good technical skills, for example experience working with CRM systems and other relevant pieces of software.
That being said, quality marketers should have a range of skills, they shouldn’t be confined to their specific marketing role. At senior level, transferable skills are perhaps the most important trait a candidate can have for any role, not just marketing.
Layout and Format
The actual structure, layout, and format of a CV is integral to its readability and comprehensiveness. Because of the way we scan through documents, order is important for catching the reader’s attention. Generally speaking, more important information should be presented earlier and should stand out.
For example, the most important things you’re going to be looking for in a Marketing Executive CV are skills, experience, and achievements. These should all be made clear and immediately noticeable when you first read the document.
This is important as it shows the candidate’s understanding of prioritisation. Formatting a CV to highlight the most important information demonstrates awareness of their own selling points, their own value to your business.
Design
One of the most common mistakes candidates can make is neglecting the design of their CV. This mistake is made by both junior and senior candidates. It’s so easy to focus so much on the actual CV content that you forget to spend time on the design. But a well-designed CV is vital to catch the reader’s attention.
Not only that, but CVs that are well designed are also often much easier to follow, especially when you’re searching through large amounts at a time.
Good design is a good sign of attention to detail in the candidate and a good understanding of the importance of presentation.
This is especially important in any Marketing Executive role with a visual aspect. Are you expecting your candidate to produce visuals such as documents, PDFs, or other visual marketing material? If so, the design of their CV can be very indicative of their ability to excel in producing quality visual content.
Personality Presented
Often CVs can be very bland. When you’re trying to stuff so much vital information into one short document, the result is often a dense piece of text. There isn’t always a lot of room to show personality. This is an issue. It’s important to consider candidate personality when recruiting for senior roles. This can be very important when it comes to cultural fit.
Good CVs will give you an idea of the candidate’s personality before you’ve met them. This can be very useful when narrowing down your candidates based on who might be a good fit for your culture and role.
Look at personality conveyed by their writing style, as well as what they appear to be most motivated by, and what they enjoy doing.
Writing Skills
Skim through the CV quickly. How well written is it? You want your candidate’s CV to be easy to read through and pick out vital information. Strong written communication skills are vital for content marketing roles.
In fact, it’s very easy to get a good idea of how good a writer your candidate is from a quick read of their CV. Their copy should be concise and informative. It should be engaging without coming across as long-winded.
The Cover Letter
A cover letter is a great way of adding personality to a job offer. Always give cover letters the attention they deserve when analysing your candidates. Look for cover letters that show the candidate has researched your business and opportunity and has given a lot of thought when applying.
The cover letter should tell you exactly why the candidate is perfect for your role, and that they’re interested in your opportunity, not just any opportunity.
The Best CV For Marketing Executive Positions
The very best Marketing Executive CV will include all of the above features. However, there are other things to look out for. Ultimately, each Marketing Executive position is different. The specifics to look for depends on the details of your business and role.
Having a good knowledge of the importance of these features will allow you to skim through CVs and identify quality candidates at an early stage.
For more tips on finding the best CVs, check out our 5 Tips for Understanding a Candidate’s CV.
