You can craft stories, poems, articles, and scripts without a moment’s hesitation, so why does writing a resume feel so tricky?
We understand that creating the perfect resume is one of the hardest writing gigs you’ll have, so let us help you.
Below, we’ve put together a comprehensive guide packed with top tips and complete with a creative writer resume example.
Guide contents
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Creative Writer Resume Example
This Creative Writer resume example shows you the most effective layout for a resume in today’s job market, along with the type of content you need to include.
Stick closely to these guidelines as you write your own resume, to boost your chances of getting lots of responses, interviews and job offers.
Now lets dive into the details of how you write your own eye-catching resume…
Creative Writer resume layout and formatting
Formatting is often overlooked when writing resume, but it’s a crucial element of it”s success.
Creating a document that not only looks good, but is easily comprehended, is the key to gaining and holding the attention of busy hiring managers.
Use these formatting tips for best results.
How to format your resume
- Length: Think that submitting a 10 page resume will impress recruiters? Unfortunately it won’t… Even if you’ve got tons of experience to brag about, recruiters don’t have time to read essays, so keep it brief – around 2 pages is the sweet spot.
- Font & text: Complex fonts are a readers’ worst nightmare and will leave recruiters struggling to understand your message. Use a clear simple lean font in a color that stands out against the page, and break your text up with bullet points to make the content easily digestible.
- Design & layout: Hiring managers should be able to skim through your resume easily and pinpoint the information they want quickly. To help them do this, organize the page into clear sections with bold headings and dividing borders. The design should be clutter-free and professional-looking, with a calm color scheme.
- Photos: You are not obliged to add a photo to your resume in the USA, but it can be a nice way of adding some life to the document.
Quick tip: Achieving a professional look for your resume can be difficult and time-consuming. If you want to create an attractive resume quickly, try our quick-and-easy Resume Builder and use one of their eye-catching resume templates.
Resume layout
When you write your resume, include the sections below.
- Name and contact details – Pop these at the very top to ensure recruiters know how to contact you.
- Resume summary – An eye-catching paragraph which summarizes your most valuable attributes – placed near the top of your resume
- Skills section – A bullet pointed list of your most in-demand skills, enabling recruiters to see your suitability from a glance.
- Work experience – List some or all of your previous jobs in reverse chronological order – voluntary work and college placements can be included if you have no paid experience.
- Education – A summary of your professional training and academic qualifications.
- Additional info – An optional section for anything that may boost your application, such as relevant hobbies and interests
Here’s what you should include in each section of your resume.
Resume Contact Details
Keep your contact details short to save resume space and include the following.
- Name and profession title
- Cell phone number
- Location – Add your local area such as Silicon Valley or New York, unless you are looking for work in a different location
- Email address – Keep it professional and don’t use an old address that you thought was cool in high school, but now looks a bit embarrassing.
You can add a link to your LinkedIn profile if you have one – you do not need to include personal details like date of birth or marital status.
Creative Writer Resume Summary
Now it’s time to get into the real content of your resume, starting with the summary.
Your resume summary is a short paragraph at the top of the document, and its jobs is to catch the eye of hiring managers by summarizing all your skills and knowledge that are most important to the roles you are applying for.
3 tips for creating a resume summary that will get noticed:
- Keep it concise: Aim for a short punchy paragraph of 4-7 lines. This is just enough info to showcase why you’d make the perfect hire, without going into excessive detail and overwhelming busy recruiters at such an early stage in the resume.
- Tailor to target jobs: Recruiters will be scanning for the creative skills and knowledge they mentioned in the job description, so add as many as you can to your summary.
- Don’t use cliches: Recruiters look for facts in resumes, such as hard skills and qualifications – so, leave out the meaningless cliches like “hard worker who works well in a team and individually“
Example resume summary for Creative Writer
What info to include in your Creative Writer resume summary?
- Summary of experience: What type of organizations have you worked at? What types of roles have you done and what have you contributed to previous employers?
- Relevant skills: Highlight your skills which are most relevant to Creative Writer jobs, to ensure that recruiters see your most in-demand skills as soon as they open your resume.
- Vital qualifications: Showcase your level of education with a quick mention of any qualifications that are essential for the Creative Writer roles you are applying to.
Quick tip: Choose from hundreds of pre-written summaries across all industries, and add one to your resume with one-click in our quick-and-easy Resume Builder. All written by recruitment experts and easily tailored to suit your unique skillset and style.
Core skills section
In addition to your resume summary, your core skills section provides an easily digestible snapshot of your skills – perfect for grabbing the attention of busy hiring managers.
As Creative Writer jobs might receive a huge pile of applications, this is a great way to stand out and show off your suitability for the role.
It should be made up of 2-3 columns of bullet points and be made up of skills that are highly relevant to the jobs you are targeting.
Top skills for your Creative Writer resume
Writing to brief – Ensuring all copy is written in line with the requirements outlined in the brief and meets the clients’ expectations.
Commercial & Marketing Copy – Highlighting key areas of expertize such as specialising in commercial and marketing copy.
Editing & Proofreading – Writing clear and concise copy for virtually any audience and any industry and carefully checking for errors in copy before it is published or shared.
Research & Interview – Researching appropriate topics and interviewing key individuals to create compelling and engaging copy directed at the target audience.
WordPress – Highlighting experience with key technologies and software programs used in the position of Creative Writer.
Quick tip: Our quick-and-easy Resume Builder contains thousands of in-demand skills for every profession that can be added to your resume in seconds – saving you time and greatly improving your chances of landing job interviews and getting hired.
Resume work experience section
So, you’ve grabbed the recruiters’ attention with your summary, now it’s time to show them what you’re really capable of in your work experience section.
List your previous jobs from current to oldest, showing off the impact you made at each organization.
If you have tons of experience, you should just list the most recent an relevant jobs – but if you have little or no experience, add it all and even consider putting in voluntary work.
Structuring your job descriptions
It’s easy to overwhelm readers when writing about a job you have been doing for years or even months.
Break the information up like this to keep it simple for recruiters to understand.
Job outline
Each role description should begin with a qucik summary of the job and company, along with how the job fits into the strucuture of the organization.
Key responsibilities
The bulk of the role description should be comprised of bullet points that explain all of your duties in the job.
Keep the sentences short and simple to make them easy for recruiters to digest.
Key achievements
Finish each role by highlighting some impressive achievements you made whilst in the role.
Anything that benefited the employer can be included from making financial savings, to winning new customers.
Quantify your achievements with facts and figures if you can, e.g. “reduced call wait time by 10%”
Example job for Creative Writer resume
Outline
Work as part of a team of Creative Writers at global justice organisation Amnesty International, composing short articles and long reads about current campaigns for online and physical publications.
Key Responsibilities
- Plan, write and develop engaging and non-expert friendly short and long read articles to explain and promote various campaigns
- Follow assignment briefs and consistently meet submission deadlines
- Conduct in depth research to inform article content and ensure validity
- Maintain records and accurately reference other publications, resources and online links within articles
Quick tip: Create impressive job descriptions easily in our quick-and-easy Resume Builder by adding pre-written job phrases for every industry and career stage.
Education section
Towards the bottom of your resume, add your education section.
Here you should list your professional qualifications and academic record, such as high school diplomas or college degrees.
If you have lots of work experience, you can keep this section brief (because recruiters will be more interested in your career. If you have little/no experience then you should bulk this section up with plenty of detail.
Additional information
The bottom of your resume is a place to add any “additional info”
Any other info that didn’t fall into any of the previous sections can be added here.
If you have hobbies that are related to your profession or any awards or publications – add them here.
Writing your Creative Writer resume
Following the steps in this guide will help you to create a winning Creative Writer resume and bag lots of interviews.
If you want some more help through the process, try our quick-and-easy Resume Builder for expert guidance and tons of pre-written resume content.
Good luck with your job search!