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Draft a Copywriter Resume To Spotlight Your Wordsmith Skills
You create viral taglines, but when you sit down to write your own copywriter resume, you catch a case of writer's block.
As a copywriter, you know even the snappiest one-liner isn't effective if it doesn't make a sale. The same can be said for your resume. If you don’t sell your skills in written form, you won’t get called in for an interview.
More than 100,000 people trust Standard Resume to help draft a resume that converts (not unlike a well-written landing page). Below, we show you exactly how to write a resume to help you land an interview and, hopefully, your dream job.
What Hiring Managers Look for in a Copywriter Resume
Whether in-house or at an agency, every company needs effective writers. When drafting your resume to stand out from the resume stack, keep in mind the following tips in mind when drafting your resume:
1. Speak To the Projects You Worked on
Recruiters want to see evidence of the projects you worked on (and no, linking to your portfolio isn’t enough).
Whether you wrote blog posts, web copy, or email campaigns, discuss what you wrote and how it led to results. If you wrote an advertising or marketing campaign, find out how many impressions, page views, clicks, or inbound leads your copy earned the company.
Lastly, remember what makes a copywriter valuable in the first place: You know how to write what your colleagues struggle to say in written form. And, you can slim it down to one, beautifully-crafted sentence. If you wrote meaningful copy that connected with an audience or went viral, take ownership of that.
Here are a few examples of bullet points to include:
- For web copy: Wrote the website for a Y-combinator company with a $100 million valuation.
- For an email campaign: Wrote a six-part email series that led to $240,000 of inbound leads.
- For a social media campaign: Wrote the viral #ThisIsNotYourBody campaign, which lead to 5 million individual posts and a collected 25 million shares
2. Name Drop Your Most Notable Clients
Your resume is not a place to be humble.
If you wrote for a name-recognizable client, include the client name within your work experience section. In addition, if the job description says you'll write for clients within a certain industry, include related brands you worked on.
A note on name-dropping competing brands:
Wondering whether you should name-drop a competing client? Absolutely. If a company sees you earned tangible results for their competitors, they'll want you to do the same for them.
- For a public relations firm: Drafted 48 press releases for Fortune 100 companies, including Amazon and Apple
- For a nonprofit marketing agency: Led the content strategy and wrote an email marketing campaign for No Kid Hungry, leading to $800,000 in individual giving
- For an SEO (search engine optimization) agency: Wrote 85 blog posts for companies like ButcherBox and Greenvelope that landed on the first page of Google search results
3. Speak To Your Technical Skills (and Expertise)
Contrary to popular opinion, copywriting is not just creative writing. Copywriting involves strategy, tactics, and countless hours of proofreading.
Speak to the technical skills that could surprise your hiring manager. Show how you use Google Analytics to drive content strategy or how you utilize Facebook Business Manager to fine-tune your social media ads. If you’re well-versed in using a particular platform like Google Keyword Planner or WordPress, mention that in your work experience and skills section.
In addition, if you write copy for a technical industry, include that in your copywriter resume. In some technical fields, copywriters are in high demand. Discuss this unique expertise in your work experience (or your summary section, if the job description specifically mentions it).
- For a direct mail campaign: Implemented Postalytics to execute a direct mail campaign for a Fortune 500 client, leading to $120,000 of revenue
- For an e-commerce campaign: Launched and wrote a TikTok business campaign to target a younger demographic, leading to $65,000 in sales
- For a blog series: Ghost-wrote 16 optimized articles, seven of which landed on the first page of Google search results, to help influencers increase brand awareness
- For a technical niche: Wrote 83 blog posts on blockchain and Bitcoin, leading to 800,000 page views and 1 million social media shares
Copywriter Resume Format
Keeping the previous objectives in mind, it's time to draft your copywriter resume.
Your resume template will consist of five sections: a brief summary, contact information, work experience, education, and relevant skills. Here are several copywriter resume examples for each section:
1. Contact Information
Keep your contact information brief. List your first and last name, your most recent role, the city and state you reside in, and your email, phone number, and portfolio.
For example:
Carla Nayak | Copywriter | San Francisco, CA
carla.nayak@gmail.com | 222.222.2222 | CarlaNayak.com
2. Summary
Tailor your summary to the copywriter job you're applying for. Even if your past projects run the gamut between web, blog content, and social ads, narrow in on the niche expressed within the job description.
For example:
Web copywriter with seven years of experience publishing websites for tech startups. Wrote the entire website for five Y Combinator companies, each of which had a $50 million valuation. Well-versed in Google Ads, Facebook Business Manager, and Instagram Ads to write copy that converts.
3. Work Experience
Within the work experience section of your copywriter resume, display the projects you worked on, the results you earned, and the tools you used. Show your potential employer your writing skills — you can include viral campaigns and revenue.
For example:
- Projects you worked on: Wrote all email copy behind the "Build a better you" campaign, which lead to 300,000 page views for the client
- Results you earned: Rewrote website copy for a local Washington DC gym, boosting their site visits by 10,000 visitors a month and earning national recognition as a “Must-Visit Sweat Studio.”
- Tools you used: Used Google Analytics and Facebook Business Manager to collect personal data on the client audience, then drafted three separate email campaigns targeted to different segments
4. Education
Like your contact section, keep your education brief. List the school(s) you attended and the degree(s) you earned.
For example:
Butler University, Bachelor of Arts in Journalism, 2007–2011
5. Skills
For your skills section, list the tools you use to create real results for your company or client. This could include software, advertising platforms, or a second language you write in.
For example:
Grammarly, Google Analytics, Facebook Business Manager, Pinterest Ads, WordPress, HTML, TikTok for Business, Hootsuite, Buffer
Write a Copywriter Resume That Shows Your Skills
As you begin drafting your copywriter resume, we'll leave you with one final tip:
When writing your resume, treat yourself like your own client.
When writing for a client, you combine your deepest creativity with the best tools to write copy that converts. And when it comes to writing your resume, Standard Resume is the best tool.
To help your resume stand out to the hiring manager and land an interview, don't leave your resume writing to chance. Standard Resume helps people land coveted jobs at companies like Google, Square, and Dropbox. Use Standard Resume to build a modern, polished resume to sell your wordsmith skills.