The 2 Things on Every Great Marketer’s Resumé

My company, The Mezzanine Group, is currently recruiting for a marketing director. Anyone who posts a job opening these days knows they'll get a ton of responses, and sure enough, our single posting on LinkedIn netted more than 250 applicants!

And that's great, because we're fortunate to have so many people to choose from. But it's also, of course, a problem. Getting through that many resumés is a monumental task, particularly for a team that's already so busy that we need to hire a new person. But we have a trick that whittles down this task nicely.

This is hardly our first time hiring for a marketing position. And when I've done first-round interviews in the past, I've noticed a consistent trend: really solid marketers invariably have two key things on their resumés. These vital elements seem rather obvious once you see them, but you'd be surprised how many marketers don't include them.

Now I look for those two things on every resumé I read. I've found that this is a great way to edit and get to a manageable list of people to interview—and one that I recommend to companies in any sector that are hiring a marketer. Here are the things you should look for:

NO. 1: SHOW ME THE NUMBERS!

Marketers who know their stuff quantify their successes with cold, hard numbers. Tangible data is the best way to show me what they have accomplished and why it should matter to me.

I want to know how many leads they have generated, the percentage by which they increased web traffic, the dollar amount in which they increased revenue. It comes down to this simple but crucial thing: I want to know exactly how much in his or her past jobs the applicant made the business grow.

NO. 2: WHAT ARE THE RESULTS?

Good marketers accomplish, deliver, produce. They don't just perform activities, they get results. That's what I want to see.

It matters less that an applicant performed competitive research for a client, and more that they measurably built business by researching the competitive landscape and positioning the client in a way that grew business in a tangible way. I don't need a list of activities—I know what marketers do. Our clients are paying for results. So I want marketers who are focused on the end game, who have a plan in which everything they're doing is part of a road map to a solid, positive result.

Read: 5 Questions to Put Your Marketing Head on the Spot

And that's it. Numbers and results. Looking for these two things is an easy—and remarkably effective—system for screening applicants. If someone doesn't include them, I won't be confident about their abilities as a marketer, and they won't get an interview. It's as simple as that.

You know, by revealing my hiring "secret," I've probably made my job harder. Getting my list of applicants down to a manageable number might not be so easy if they all know what to include. But I hope I've made it easier for employers to know what to look for—and for marketers to put together solid, interview-worthy resumés that allow their skills to really shine!

Originally published on PROFITGUIDE.com

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