Client Landed a Role At a Global Digital Marketing Agency Without All The Necessary Experience They Were Looking For
Looking for a Bigger Opportunity In The Digital Marketing Space
Prior to working with me, Victoria was currently working at a boutique digital agency in the Toronto area to get her start in the digital marketing field. In this role she was able to grow her Search Engine Marketing and Social Media marketing skill set improving conversion rates for the agency’s roster of clients.
However due to how small the agency was, she knew her experience and growth would be capped here and wanted to gain a position at a larger agency to be exposed to a wide variety of areas and in turn grow her skill set in the process.
Rejections and COVID-19
She started applying in the new year to multiple opportunities that she was interested in; however the response she was getting was not what she had anticipated. She was only getting responses back from small digital agencies, similar to where she was currently working at and was hearing nothing back from the larger agencies she wanted to work at.
However she was able to get a referral at a large agency, and the large agency gave her an interview. Unfortunately the hiring manager stated that she lacked the experience she was looking for and did not want to pursue her further as a potential candidate.
To add salt to the wound, COVID-19 hit and the agency she was working at was hit hard and her hours were cut back, decreasing her monthly income.
Creating a Strong Resume and Optimizing Her LinkedIn Profile
Victoria reached out to me to see if I could take a look at her resume and LinkedIn profile to provide some guidance on how to improve it.
When I reviewed the resume she was using to apply to jobs, she definitely had a lot of valuable work experience; however the resume lack cohesion and the punch it needed for her to be a stand out candidate when she was applying to jobs. This is where I came in to help her.
Resume Modifications
1) Her Summary and Achievements Section Was Too Long
There’s nothing wrong with having a summary and achievements section, the problem with hers is that it took most of the first page, making it a two page resume. Recruiters get a ton of resumes for their job openings and do not have time to sift through each and every one of them in detail. That’s why you need to have your work experience as close to the top as possible.
What we did was condense her summary into a few bullet points and highlight her hard skills that every digital marketing agency looks for such as being certified in Google Ads, Social Media Advertising and being able to lead teams.
We removed the achievement section of her resume as we will highlight quantifiable results throughout the work experience she currently has.
2) Quantifiable Results in Her Work
Many professionals resort to listing a bunch of responsibilities in their role which doesn’t make you a stand out candidate, all it does is tell the person reviewing the resume that you know how to do the job, but doesn’t tell them what results you were able to bring in.
We condensed her work experience into 3 quantifiable bullet points in her current role and 1-2 bullet points for her older roles as generally the main focus on a resume and during an interview is on your most recent role, if you’ve been there for at least a couple years, which she has.
She originally had digital marketing terminology in bold in her work experience bullet points (e.g. had optimizing landing pages in bold). I knew why she did that, to make it stand out that she knows what she’s doing, but it makes the resume very hard to read. When it comes to applying to jobs, especially online when you don’t know the person, you want to make it as easy as possible for the person on the other side to read the resume.
3) Cut Down On Her Education/Professional Development Section
She had her Master’s degree, which is fine but then she listed a lot of professional development certifications and courses that were unnecessary such as presentation workshops and a Twitter course that she took. I’m all about self-improvement but these types of things should be discussed in your interview as a way to sell yourself, not to be put on a resume.
Once you have at least a couple years of work experience, the main focus should be highlighting your work experience, with a few lines of education at the bottom of your resume. The reality is, that recruiters more often than not will always focus on your work experience over your education.
Education proves that you know the job, work experience proves that you can actually do the job.
In summary, we cut down her resume from 2 pages to 1 and it was a much better representation of what she’s done and what she’s capable of doing.
The resume was complete and we both liked how it turned out. Instead of a 2 page resume that had no focus, we turned it into a 1 page sales sheet highlighting her incredible results and the hard skills she has acquired to be successful in digital marketing. With that, the next step was optimizing her LinkedIn profile.
LinkedIn Optimization
1) About Section
Her point of view was not cohesive. The first paragraph was in third person (which I never recommend) and the rest of her About section was in first person.
Although LinkedIn is a platform for professionals to market themselves, it doesn’t follow the same rules as a resume. LinkedIn is more about telling your story to not only showcase your experience but to make it personable with your target audience.
In the case for Victoria, any recruiter that was thinking of messaging her for an opportunity was her target audience and you can never be personable if you write your About section in third person, it makes you seem distant.
I also told Victoria to position her About section as an elevator pitch, which is something that is easy to digest and knocks off all the points she would like the person to know about them from both an experience and results perspective in 30 seconds to a minute.
In addition, I recommended to her to list 3 of her most proudest accomplishments in bullet points that she would like to focus on in her About section.
Finally, at the bottom of the About section, close it off by telling readers something personable about them, in this case she’s into photography in her spare time. Everyone focuses too much on selling their work experience on LinkedIn, but the About Section is really the only place you can talk about something that you enjoy that’s outside your career, humanizing your personal brand.
2) Work Experience Section
For a resume, you want to condense it as much as possible, I always recommend a resume to be 1-2 pages at maximum depending on how much experience you have; however for LinkedIn you have more room to play with and you can expand on your story a bit to provide more context.
For Victoria, I recommended to her, that for each role she was in, to provide a short paragraph, providing an overview of her responsibilities in the role with a few key accomplishments/responsibilities below each role.
You also want to keep keywords in mind when writing your work experience so recruiters can find you, but don’t go over the top where it looks as if you are keyword stuffing.
By helping her optimize her resume and LinkedIn, not only did she have two stand out marketing pieces that shows her career accomplishments in the best light, it also helped her become more confident in telling her career story effectively at interviews.
When she was using her old resume at interviews, she would tend to ramble making it seem as she didn’t know what she was talking about and wasn’t confident in her abilities. By having a strong resume and LinkedIn profile, this tends to translate into a great foundation on telling a good career story at an interview.
New Revised Resume and LinkedIn Profile Results in Larger Companies Taking Notice of Her as a Candidate
With her new revised resume and LinkedIn profile, she went from feeling frustrated to becoming more confident and determined in her job hunt to get that role that would take her digital marketing career to the next level.
When she started applying to roles again, she was getting more interest at larger companies and this one in particular wanted to bring her in for an interview. It was an international digital marketing agency with offices in Canada, US and parts of Europe and she applied for the Digital Media Specialist position.
Although the interview process only took around a few weeks, it was a very grueling process with 4 interviews and a take home assignment.
After the final round they told her that she didn’t have all the required experience they were looking for, but since she did extremely well in the interviews and was able to tell her career story effectively, they created a new position for her in a form of a coordinator role.
They wanted to train her and help her get to that specialist position that they were originally looking for, believing that she already had the tangibles to succeed at the company, but needed experience and guidance to get there.
Although it may seem frustrating when you see these job ads asking for a ton of experience and skills, just know that you don’t need to have everything they are looking for, but just enough to get in the door so you can sell yourself on why you will be a standout team member and help take their business to the next level.
