Copywriting Resume Writing Guide With Tips And Examples

Copywriting is a great career choice today, owing to the high demand as more brands grow their digital presence. With different niches to specialize in, flexibility in work setups, and high-paying opportunities, there’s a lot to be desired in the copywriting space. However, competition is also intense, so you’ll need an attractive copywriting resume to stand out among others.

Much like how marketing copy should convince readers to take action, your resume should be persuasive to convince employers to hire you. Having the right skills and qualifications is one thing, but these are all for nothing if you’re unable to communicate them properly. In this article, you’ll learn more about how to create an effective resume to increase your chances of landing copywriting jobs.

Copywriting Resume Examples

To start, here are some examples of copywriting resumes to give you an idea of how you should structure and organize yours.

This resume uses a clear and simple format, beginning with the writer’s personal information and a quick summary of their background. Following this is a list of their skills, followed by their work experience in reverse chronological order. Notice how there are hard numbers included in the achievements under each role, which is helpful to show employers what impact you’ve delivered in previous jobs.

In this resume, you’ll see hard numbers featured more prominently in the work experience section. This is a great way to highlight the extent of your contribution in different roles, showing employers how much work you’ve done and what results came out of those. Similar to the previous example, there’s more emphasis on work history, showcasing the writer’s past roles.

How To Format A Copywriting Resume

The first step to creating your resume is formatting it correctly. Generally, big companies use Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to filter through resumes more quickly, so formatting is critical to ensure their software picks up information accurately. Smaller companies spend more time looking at resumes, so formatting is less of a concern but still important for readability. Here are a few general tips:

• Use a professional and readable font in 10-12 point size
• Choose a clean layout and use white space between sections
• Use bullet points to highlight work responsibilities and achievements 
• Separate key sections with headers
• Keep your resume to one page unless you’re a senior or have extensive experience

Structuring your resume correctly also helps you create a strong first impression and tailor your resume to the job you’re applying for by emphasizing your most relevant skills and experiences. Below are three of the most common formats you can use for your copywriting resume:

Chronological

The chronological resume format is a popular layout that presents your work history in reverse chronological order, putting your most recent role at the top. This format places more emphasis on your experience, providing employers with a clear picture of your background and career progression. It’s simple, easy to follow, and shows that you have relevant experience for the job.

That said, one big downside to this format is that it makes employment gaps more visible, potentially raising questions from employers or clients. It also focuses more on job titles or roles rather than skills, which may be unfavorable if you don’t have traditional experience.

Overall, the best situations to use a chronological resume format are when:

• You have a steady and progressive work history that shows your breadth of experience and commitment to different roles
• You’re applying for a position with the same nature as your past roles
• You’ve held traditional copywriting roles with recognizable titles and responsibilities that employers can easily understand

Functional

The functional resume format emphasizes your skills and achievements over your chronological work history. It’s great for showcasing transferable skills that work for different roles, useful if you don’t specialize in a particular niche. Employment gaps are also less visible, allowing you to present a more professional image. 

The main concern with this format is that it might be harder to read since it isn’t used as commonly and may appear vague. It also doesn’t provide much detail about your work experience, making it difficult for employers to see how you applied your skills in real-world projects. 

Ideal situations to use a functional resume format are when:

• You’re changing careers (e.g. moving to a different type of copywriting) and want to highlight relevant skills instead of unrelated past roles
• Your background is in freelance or contract work, which usually means completing multiple projects instead of having a stable employment history
• You have employment gaps that you’d rather highlight skills

Combination

As its name implies, the combination resume format combines elements of the chronological and functional resume formats. It highlights your key skills while also displaying your work history, providing employers with a more holistic view of your background. Depending on what you want to emphasize, you can easily tailor your resume to fit your employer’s needs more.

That said, combination resumes tend to become long due to the level of detail they contain. There’s also the risk that you repeat certain points in the skills and work history section, so you need to be careful with how you organize your information.

Since this format is flexible, it’s versatile and works in a variety of situations, including when:

• You have a diverse range of experiences that wouldn’t fit very well with a chronological format
• You’ve gained skills from pathways other than professional jobs, such as education, internships, or freelance work
• Your background is in freelance or contract work and you want to highlight skills while also showing your project experiences

Writing Tips For A Copywriting Resume

Once you’ve chosen the right format for your needs, check out these tips to create a strong and organized resume to attract employers.

Create A Compelling Resume Summary

The resume summary is a short blurb highlighting your background and expertise. Think of it as your opening pitch to provide a quick snapshot of your career and give employers a reason to continue reading. Much like a headline in copywriting, a compelling summary allows you to leave a strong first impression and grab people’s attention.

Ideally, you should highlight your most relevant skills and achievements—just enough to tease the readers without going into every little detail. Your resume summary should be concise and straightforward, typically just three to five sentences.

Customize Your Resume

Tailoring your resume to every job application allows you to demonstrate why you’re a good fit for a particular role. By highlighting your most relevant skills and experiences, you can easily show that you have the qualifications they’re looking for and stand out from other candidates. 

Based on the role you’re applying for, you can adjust your resume summary, work experience, and skills. Read the job description thoroughly to look for keywords like skills, qualifications, or phrases that may have been emphasized. Using these keywords and adopting a similar language will help your resume pass through scanners and catch employers’ attention.

Highlight Your Skills

Copywriting doesn’t require professional education, so highlighting skills will be extremely important to demonstrate your fit for the job. One good way to build out this section is to scan through the job description to find key skills required for the role. Using the same keywords increases your chances of passing through applicant tracking systems (ATS), which many companies use to filter through resumes.

To help you out, here are some of the main skills copywriters should have:

• Research skills
• Writing skills
• Creativity
• Strategic planning
• Time management
• Digital marketing knowledge
• SEO knowledge

Quantify Achievements

When listing out achievements on your resume, make sure to quantify them whenever possible. Doing this provides concrete evidence you’ve accomplished in previous roles, showing employers that you can deliver tangible results. Numbers and statistics are also more eye-catching, giving you a competitive edge over other candidates. As a copywriter, check out these examples of quantifiable achievements:

• Increased website traffic
• Improved conversion rates
• Boosted social media engagement
• Increased email open rates

Use The C-A-R Method

The C-A-R method provides a structured framework to help you present your job history and qualifications more effectively. Many tend to default to a laundry list of tasks and responsibilities when creating a resume, but this templated approach doesn’t always show what contributions you’ve made or the challenges you’ve solved. 

Instead, you can use the C-A-R method to write your work history and demonstrate what impact you’ve made in different roles. It consists of three main steps:

• Challenge. Start by identifying a situation or challenge related to one of your responsibilities to provide some context.
• Action. Discuss the specific steps you took to resolve the problem, providing enough detail to show what role you played.
• Result. Explain the outcome of your actions, quantifying the results whenever possible. If you’re unable to provide hard numbers, you can still highlight other ways you’ve made a meaningful impact in your role.

Below is a section from my resume to illustrate how it works. This isn’t a copywriter’s resume (I train copywriters as part of what I do), but you can still use the structure and formatting as a guide.

Before the three bullet points above were consolidated into a concise section of my resume, I listed all of my work experiences and completed the C-A-R exercise from Blue Sky Resume’s onboarding questionnaire.

Let’s use the first bullet point as an example: “Set up infrastructure to reliably launch ads on Google Search and Shopping networks, and conversion tracking implementation.”

The challenges I listed:

• Account setup procedure & conversion tracking
• Unlike setting up Facebook Ads for our clients, Google Ads is much more complicated to get set up.
• Most Facebook accounts are very simple, like a “one-click install”. All you do is copy and paste a tracking code and that’s it.
• Google is much more involved, requiring integrations of several accounts. Including:
  • Google Ads
  • Google Analytics
  • Google Merchant Center

The actions I took:

• I spent a significant amount of time reading documentation to figure out how to get the account integrations to work properly.
• Conversion tracking was not documented very well, so I went through several iterations of tracking implementations before I found the best way to approach setting up tracking for our client’s stores.

The result:

I now had the infrastructure to reliably launch ads on the Google Search and Shopping networks, and measure their performance.

Add A Link To Your Portfolio

In copywriting, your portfolio is just as important as your resume. The nature of this field is highly output-based, so most employers will also want to see your past works to get an idea of your writing style and skills. Some applications may specifically ask for your portfolio while others don’t, but in any case, it’s best to include a link on your resume at all times. You can place this in a designated portfolio section or add it to the resume header for more visibility.

Include Relevant Information Only

When writing your resume, it’s crucial that you only include the most relevant skills, experiences, and details that show why you’re a good fit for the job. Adding irrelevant information will only clutter your resume, making it more difficult for hiring managers to see if you have the right qualifications. With a concise and well-targeted resume, you better your chances of getting noticed and landing the job.

Proofread Your Resume

Just as you would double-check your copy, you should always proofread your resume before sending it out. Typos, grammatical errors, and other mistakes may create a negative impression and lead to confusion, so make sure to review your resume carefully. An organized and well-written resume goes a long way in showing your professionalism and commitment to whatever role you’re applying for.