Crafting a CV that showcases your potential and stands out to recruiters in the competitive marketing sector can be daunting. Our guide offers expert insights and actionable steps to highlight your skills and experiences effectively, ensuring your application grabs the attention of top marketing firms.
- Applying best practices from real-world examples to ensure your profile always meets recruiters' expectations;
- What to include in your work experience section, apart from your past roles and responsibilities?
- Why are both hard and soft skills important for your application?
- How do you need to format your CV to pass the Applicant Tracker Software (ATS) assessment?
If you're writing your CV for a niche marketing intern role, make sure to get some inspiration from professionals:
How to ensure your profile stands out with your marketing intern CV format
It's sort of a Catch 22. You want your marketing intern CV to stand out amongst a pile of candidate profiles, yet you don't want it to be too over the top that it's unreadable. Where is the perfect balance between your CV format simple, while using it to shift the focus to what matters most. That is - your expertise. When creating your marketing intern CV:- list your experience in the reverse chronological order - starting with your latest roles;
- include a header with your professional contact information and - optionally - your photograph;
- organise vital and relevant CV sections - e.g. your experience, skills, summary/ objective, education - closer to the top;
- use no more than two pages to illustrate your professional expertise;
- format your information using plenty of white space and standard (2.54 cm) margins, with colours to accent key information.
Once you've completed your information, export your marketing intern CV in PDF, as this format is more likely to stay intact when read by the Applicant Tracker System or the ATS. A few words of advice about the ATS - or the software used to assess your profile:
- Generic fonts, e.g. Arial and Times New Roman, are ATS-compliant, yet many candidates stick with these safe choices. Ensure your CV stands out by using a more modern, and simple, fonts like Lato, Exo 2, Volkhov;
- All serif and sans-serif fonts are ATS-friendly. Avoid the likes of fancy decorative or script typography, as this may render your information to be illegible;
- Both single- and double-column formatted CVs could be assessed by the ATS;
- Integrating simple infographics, icons, and charts across your CV won't hurt your chances during the ATS assessment.
PRO TIP
Use font size and style strategically to create a visual hierarchy, drawing the reader's eye to the most important information first (like your name and most recent job title).
The top sections on a marketing intern CV
- Objective: States your career goals tailored to marketing.
- Education: Includes relevant marketing qualifications.
- Marketing Experience: Showcases past internships or projects.
- Skills: Highlights marketing tools and analytical abilities.
- Achievements: Focuses on measurable marketing successes.
What recruiters value on your CV:
- Highlight any relevant coursework or projects, especially those involving market research, digital marketing tools, or campaign management, to show your theoretical grounding and practical experience specific to marketing.
- Demonstrate your creativity and ability to think outside the box by including examples of innovative campaigns or unique marketing strategies you’ve conceptualised or contributed to even in a non-professional capacity.
- Showcase your proficiency with digital marketing platforms, such as Google Analytics, Hootsuite, or Mailchimp, as well as your familiarity with social media trends that are crucial for modern marketing intern roles.
- Include any experience with content creation, such as blogging, video production, or graphic design, as content is a cornerstone of effective marketing strategies.
- Emphasise your strong communication and teamwork skills through examples of collaborative projects or experiences where you successfully engaged with diverse groups, which is essential for a role in marketing.
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Making a good first impression with your marketing intern CV header
Your typical CV header consists of contact details and a headline. Make sure to also list your professional phone number, email address, and a link to your professional portfolio (or, alternatively, your LinkedIn profile). When writing your CV headline, ensure it's:
- tailored to the job you're applying for;
- highlights your unique value as a professional;
- concise, yet matches relevant job ad keywords.
You can, for examples, list your current job title or a particular skill as part of your headline. Now, if you decide on including your photo in your CV header, ensure it's a professional one, rather than one from your graduation or night out. You may happen to have plenty more questions on how to make best the use of your CV headline. We'll help you with some real-world examples, below.
Examples of good CV headlines for marketing intern:
- Digital Marketing Intern | SEO Optimisation | Content Creation | Google Analytics Certified | 1-Year Experience
- Social Media & Marketing Intern | Brand Strategy | Influencer Outreach | Hootsuite Expert | 6-Months' Experience
- Marketing and Sales Intern | Lead Generation | Market Research | CRM Proficient | 2 Years in Industry
- Public Relations Intern | Press Release Writing | Media Relations | CIPR Member | 1.5 Years' Experience
- Marketing Intern | eCommerce Campaigns | Data Analysis | Facebook Blueprint Certified | 1-Year Practical Exposure
- Brand Management Intern | Product Positioning | Market Analysis | CIM Accredited | Senior Intern with 3 Years' Experience
What's the difference between a marketing intern CV summary and objective
Why should it matter to you?
- Your marketing intern CV summary is a showcasing your career ambitions and your unique value. Use the objective to answer why your potential employers should hire you based on goals and ambitions. The objective is the ideal choice for candidates who happen to have less professional experience, but still meet some of the job requirements.
Before you select which one will be more relevant to your experience, have a look at some industry-leading CV summaries and objectives.
CV summaries for a marketing intern job:
CV objectives for a marketing intern job:
Lacking professional expertise: how to write your CV to highlight your best talents
Don't count on your lucky stars when you're applying for a role, where you happen to have less (or almost none) professional experience. Recruiters sometimes do hire inexperienced candidates if they're able to present their unique value from the get-go. So, instead of opting for the traditional, CV experience section:
- List any applicable expertise you happen to have - no matter if it's a part-time job, internship, or volunteer work. This would hint to recruiters that your profile is relevant;
- Focus your CV on your transferrable skills or talents you've obtained thanks to your whole life and work experience. In effect, you'll be spotlighting your value as a candidate;
- Separate more space for your applicable academic background and certificates to show you have the technical know-how;
- Ensure that within your objective, you've defined why you'll like the job and how you'll be the perfect match for it. Always ensure you've tailored your CV to individual applications.
Looking for more good examples for your first job? We'll show you how other candidates, with less professional experience, have created their job-winning CVs.
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PRO TIP
Order your skills based on the relevance to the role you're applying for, ensuring the most pertinent skills catch the employer's attention first.
Describing your unique skill set using both hard skills and soft skills
Your marketing intern CV provides you with the perfect opportunity to spotlight your talents, and at the same time - to pass any form of assessment. Focusing on your skill set across different CV sections is the way to go, as this would provide you with an opportunity to quantify your achievements and successes. There's one common, very simple mistake, which candidates tend to make at this stage. Short on time, they tend to hurry and mess up the spelling of some of the key technologies, skills, and keywords. Copy and paste the particular skill directly from the job requirement to your CV to pass the Applicant Tracker System (ATS) assessment. Now, your CV skills are divided into:
- Technical or hard skills, describing your comfort level with technologies (software and hardware). List your aptitude by curating your certifications, on the work success in the experience section, and technical projects. Use the dedicated skills section to provide recruiters with up to twelve technologies, that match the job requirements, and you're capable of using.
- People or soft skills provide you with an excellent background to communicate, work within a team, solve problems. Don't just copy-paste that you're a "leader" or excel at "analysis". Instead, provide tangible metrics that define your success inusing the particular skill within the strengths, achievements, summary/ objective sections.
Top skills for your marketing intern CV:
Content Creation
Social Media Management
Marketing Analytics
SEO and SEM Techniques
Graphic Design
Market Research
Email Marketing
Data Analysis
CRM Software Proficiency
Copywriting
Creativity
Communication
Teamwork
Adaptability
Problem-Solving
Time Management
Attention to Detail
Organisational
Self-Motivation
Critical Thinking
PRO TIP
Use mini case studies or success stories in your CV to demonstrate how your skills have positively impacted previous roles or projects.
Listing your university education and certificates on your marketing intern CV
The best proof of your technical capabilities would be your education and certifications sections. Your education should list all of your relevant university degrees, followed up by their start and completion dates. Make sure to also include the name of the university/-ies you graduated from. If you happen to have less professional experience (or you deem it would be impressive and relevant to your application), spotlight in the education section:
- that you were awarded a "First" degree;
- industry-specific coursework and projects;
- extracurricular clubs, societies, and activities.
When selecting your certificates, first ask yourself how applicable they'd be to the role. Ater your initial assessment, write the certificate and institution name. Don't miss out on including the completion date. In the below panel, we've curated relevant examples of industry-leading certificates.
PRO TIP
If there's a noticeable gap in your skillset for the role you're applying for, mention any steps you're taking to acquire these skills, such as online courses or self-study.
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Key takeaways
Write your professional marketing intern CV by studying and understanding what the role expectations are. You should next:
- Focus on tailoring your content to answer specific requirements by integrating advert keywords through various CV sections;
- Balance your technical know-how with your personal skills to showcase what the unique value would be of working with you;
- Ensure your CV grammar and spelling (especially of your key information and contact details) is correct;
- Write a CV summary, if your experience is relevant, and an objective, if your career ambitions are more impressive;
- Use active language by including strong, action verbs across your experience, summary/objective, achievements sections.
