How to structure a creative CV

If you are looking for a creative career, a creative CV may support a job application far better than a CV which purely focuses on your employment history. There are a variety of ways to demonstrate you have writing experience or want to show you have had works published. A creative CV should identify and highlight the writing skills and experience you have, whether achieved in employment, through vocational activities or during your studies. But if you’re a graphic designer leave any elaborate graphics or designs for your portfolio.

There are tools you can use in order to include your work on your creative CV. The method you choose is often down to personal taste, whether you decide to use a skills profile, incorporate into your employment history or add an additional page. Always tailor your CV to each role you are applying for. Unless you are creating a third additional page, solely of reference work, your creative CV needs to be no more than two pages long.

Contact details

For your creative CV, always ensure your contact details are at the top of the first page. Nothing frustrates recruiters more than having to search on a CV to find the contact details of a candidate.

Skills Profile

Sometimes, before listing your employment history, you may decide to highlight a number of skills. On a creative CV, if you have a limited amount of creative writing, this might be the first place where you mention this.

For example:

Written and edited over 100 blogposts for jobs.ac.uk website, focussing on careers and employability

Employment History

If you’ve already been employed in roles where you had creative responsibilities or work published, then, providing there aren’t too many references, it may be best to include these under the relevant employment position. This way you integrate all your writing under the relevant job title. Remember if you choose this method your creative CV still needs to be no more than two pages long.

For example

Website Editor, jobs.ac.uk, 2022 to present
Writing and editing a weekly 750-word blogpost for the website https://www.jobs.ac.uk
Or
Editor and Writer, jobs.ac.uk publishing, 2022 to present
Responsible for creating and writing 3 books a year.
Recent Publications include:-
How to write for a website 45,000 copies
How to train to be a creative writer 30,000 copies
How to write a creative cv 10,000 copies

Vocational Writing

As part of your creative CV, if you want to incorporate your vocational writing, you can do this as part of either an ‘Interests’ section or a broad ‘Other Information’ section, which might include interests or other extra-curricular activities.
For example

Other Information

Since 2019, I have been writing weekly 350 word blogposts for the local cat charity, ensuring they are edited and proofread correctly.

I have written over 1000 blog posts for a university news website, receiving over 25,000,000 views. These covered items of local interest, politics, social events and restaurant openings.
I am currently in the process of writing my first novel entitled I am a CV superstar.

I’m a published author, my book Cats I have known and loved was published by jobs.ac.uk in 2021 and sold 20,000 copies.

I regularly write poems for a small greeting card company. Over the years I have contributed 300 different 4 line poems covering birthdays, weddings, celebrations and bereavement.

Additional page of referenced work

The alternative to incorporating all your written work in under your employment history, is to add a third page to your creative CV solely for your writing. This is often the best route to take if you have a considerable amount of published writing you want to reference. This also the preferred method if you are an Academic and are applying for other academic works which require you to have been published in journals.

Portfolio

As well as your creative CV, compile a creative portfolio of your work, either in print or online, so you have a personal archive which you are able to share or take with you to an interview. This will help support any job application.

Format

Whenever you reference work in your creative CV, it is important to remain consistent in how you reference each item. If you use URLs, always check they work every time before you send out another copy of your CV. As well as being annoying, having URLs which don’t work reflects badly on your ability to fact-check. If the work is no longer available online then remove the URL.

Blogposts and Newspaper Articles – it is fine to reference the website you were writing for, and if you have the information, and are not breaching any confidences, add the number of views or traffic.

If there are several key posts you wish to highlight, give the title of the blogpost and then the URL.

Blogpost: Applying for Jobs in Europe, jobs.ac.uk, https://career-advice.jobs.ac.uk/jobseeking-and-interview-tips/applying-for-jobs-in-europe/

Academic or Scholarly Journals

Although this is a creative CV, having research or work published in a journal may be a requirement of your employment or an essential part of your job. The references should always be exactly the same format. If you have written works of a different type (e.g. a blogpost or a book), follow this same format throughout. You’ll find that this way of referencing works is standard throughout most of the world.

The name of the article (in bold), The name of the journal (in Italics), May 2022 (month and year of publication) Vol 1085 or Series 35 Issue 5 (the volume or issue number) p55-65 (the page numbers)

Books

If you have written or published a book or contributed to someone else’s title, you may wish to include this in your creative CV. As with academic work, the way to reference each book has a standard format.

The name of the book (in bold), The name of the journal (in Italics), May 2022 (month and year of publication) Vol 1085 or Series 35 Issue 5 (the volume or issue number) p55-65 (the page numbers)

Finally, always remember to check and double-check any spelling or grammar. Don’t rely on spellcheck as it won’t pick up if you’ve used an incorrect word. Most employers who recruit those with writing skills expect you to be able to complete a competent first proofread of your own work.

More CV tips: