When you have experience working in public relations and marketing, you need to be strategic when creating your resume. On one hand, your skills are easily transferable between positions, and your accomplishments in both departments can be relevant to a potential employer.
However, PR and marketing are entirely different departments, so you need to prioritize one over the other. You’ll want to prioritize highlighting any of your work that matches the position you’re actively seeking.
Here are some quick tips for creating a resume that showcases your abilities in both PR and marketing in a way that communicates your relevant skills to potential employers.
1. Utilize resume templates
If you’re not sure how to word your skills and accomplishments, resume templates will help. To highlight your marketing skills, check out the marketing templates from Resume Supply and find a format you can use.
Once you have your template, change the content to match your skills and accomplishments. When you’re done, you should have a concise, short section of content detailing your marketing accomplishments.
Once your marketing section is complete, create a similar section to document your PR skills and accomplishments.
2. Be mindful of NDAs you’ve signed
Have you signed any non-disclosure agreements for work? If so, be careful not to violate your contracts. If you don’t remember the specifics of what you signed, review your NDAs before creating your resume.
Your contract might simply prohibit you from identifying your clients, in which case, it will be easy to word your resume generically. For example, instead of naming your specific clients, you can just call them “a client.”
If your NDAs prohibit you from showcasing your work, be careful not to share links or files. However, if you feel it’s important to share some of your work in your portfolio, it won’t hurt to ask for permission. Just be sure to get that permission in writing from someone authorized to provide you with permission.
3. Identify overlapping skills and accomplishments
When you’re experienced in both PR and marketing, many of your accomplishments will support you in getting into your desired position if you can word them correctly.
Public relations and marketing are two separate professions, but they do have some overlapping skills. For instance, in both domains, you need to be skilled with:
- Maintain positive relationships with an audience. The difference is, with marketing, you first need to identify a target audience while PR deals with everyone.
- Selling people on an idea. Both PR and marketing center on selling ideas. With marketing, you’re selling people on brand loyalty, services, and products. With PR, you’re selling the company’s reputation and vision.
- Communication—written and oral. Communication is a key skill in both PR and marketing. With PR, communications are generally between you and your company’s stakeholders. With marketing, communications involve customers and potential customers (leads).
- Long-term strategy and goal planning. Both PR and marketing aim to achieve long-term goals. This requires being able to see the big picture and create a long-term roadmap to get to a future goal. A long-term PR strategy usually consists of ongoing reputation management, while a long-term marketing strategy consists of building your brand’s reputation, generating leads, and managing sales funnels.
Identify your overlapping skills and present them in a way that supports the position you’re applying for. For example, if you’re applying for a PR position, share how your specific marketing skills will support the company in your PR position.
4. Follow basic resume best practices
Regardless of your industry, there are several resume best practices you should always follow. For example, try to fit everything on one or two pages at the most. If you can’t fit everything onto two pages, you probably need to eliminate some things.
Hiring managers are looking for an overview, not a detailed work history. Some details are important, but others you can elaborate on in an interview.
Stay positive and don’t get discouraged by rejection
Whatever position you’re applying for, stay positive and know that you are worthy of getting the job. Don’t get discouraged if you need to apply for multiple positions over a period of time. Some circumstances will be beyond your control.
Create your best resume possible and apply for all the jobs you can find. Put as many nets out as possible, and eventually, the right hiring manager will contact you for an interview.
