5 Resume Must-Haves for Digital Media Professionals

How will you stand out?

With recruiters looking at a resume on average of six seconds, standing out from other prospective employees can be challenging. To ensure your resume receives the necessary face time (instead of ending up in the immediate “no” folder), make sure you have adopted these five “must haves” for media sales professionals into your resume: 

1. Include a skill set summary at the top of your resume.

Don’t send recruiters hunting – let them know what value you bring to the team within the first few lines of your resume.  Make your skill set summary sexy so that recruiter wants to keep reading. Our team suggests borrowing four of the five “Ws” from your friends in journalism:  Who are you? What skills do you have (e.g. Salfesforce.com)? Why should you be considered for this role? 

2. Showcase your accomplishments with data and an online portfolio.

As a media sales professional, recruiters want to see quantifiable data embedded in your resume that demonstrates your ability to deliver on sales goals. Provide details around how you were measured in previous roles and how you performed against those benchmarks. If you have created sales training, won awards or participated as a speaker at a sales event, highlight your accomplishments in an online portfolio or LinkedIn, and provide a link to view within your resume. Sharing an online portfolio is also a great tool to showcase additional content around your experience that wouldn’t fit on a single page resume. 

3. Create a custom version of your resume that aligns to the current company and job description to which you are applying. 

The purpose of a job description is for an employer to communicate the skills, knowledge and experience required to fill a need within their organization. Instead of having a blanketed overview, you should take the time to tailor your resume to the requirements necessary to fill the role. For example, media sales professionals need to have strong consultative selling experience. Those job seekers applying to a media sales role should highlight examples of when they have assessed a problem, proposed a solution and affected results. Also, be sure to include accurate date ranges for the experience you are sharing – recruiters are looking for both current ability to perform and skills progression.   

4. Follow the golden rules of grammar and formatting.

When updating your resume, your goal should always be to quickly help the recruiter understand why you are the best fit for the opportunity over the other applicants. One way to do this is through formatting.  Use bolds, italics, indentions and white space to create a path for the person reading your resume.  Updating a resume can be deceptively easy, and simple grammatical errors are difficult to bounce back from once in the hands of a recruiter. Before submitting your resume for an open job, always have a friend or family member proofread it on your behalf first.

Looking to put these skills to the test with a career at a successful media sales organization? Cox Media is always looking for top talent to join our team. Learn more about job openings and potential career opportunities here.