Editor CV Example

An editor CV that includes all the necessary details and is tailored carefully to the job description puts you in a great position. It can help you pass the ATS screening stage, make a strong impression with the employer and reach the latter stages of the recruitment process. Next, we’ll go through the primary sections of a CV and explain how to construct them strategically while leaving room for personality and style.

Main sections of an editor CV

Your editor CV writing strategy may vary significantly according to numerous factors, such as your previous experience, your seniority and the requirements in the job description.

However, regardless of your seniority, an editor CV needs to tell a cohesive story of your professional growth. In the following sections, we’ll dive into each part of the CV step-by-step, starting with your header and moving through to your professional achievements.

CV Header

Start your editor CV with a header that features subtle, professional design elements and sets the tone for the document. Add your name, email address, phone number and location (your full address isn't normally needed). Additionally, consider adding a URL to your LinkedIn profile if you have one. This can help the reader to quickly access further information about your career and credentials that you haven't been able to add to your CV.

For UK jobs, it's generally not a good idea to add a photo or any other personal details beyond your basic contact information. This means leaving off details such as your age, gender, ethnicity and nationality, as these can introduce bias to the selection process and complications related to the Equality Act 2010.

CV Summary or Objective

Below your CV header, the next section tends to be a CV summary or CV objective. This paragraph briefly explains a few of your key skills and qualities, so employers can easily understand whether you're likely to be a suitable candidate for the editor job. While a CV summary showcases your key skills and achievements in the context of your career to date, a CV objective provides an alternative approach. It focuses instead on your ambitions for the future, making it ideal for junior candidates without much work experience.

Both a CV summary and objective should be concise, with an ideal length of two or three sentences. List your key skills, personal strengths and career achievements or ambitions, taking care to ensure the content reflects the requirements listed in the job description.

A good CV summary will highlight one or two key skills that match those listed in the job description, and show how you've put them to good use in your career to date. You'll want to set yourself apart from other candidates by focusing on unique qualities or particular areas of strength that have shaped your career to date. Here's an example of an effective editor CV summary, with evidence of your impact and neat, well-structured sentences:

Above is an example of CV summary that doesn't follow best practice, with some subtle shortcomings and failings. For a summary to make less of an impact, it might include generic or vague information, lack evidence of your impact, or fail to highlight specific personal qualities that make you stand out from other candidates. It may also lack tailoring to the job description or include long, poorly structured sentences.

Work Experience

Work experience is usually the most important section of any CV. Employers will be looking for evidence of how you've developed relevant skills in your career to date, and how you've used them to positive effect in previous roles. Always tailor this section of your CV, focusing on keywords and phrases that match the job description, so employers can assess how you might put the same skills and qualities to good use in the future.

List only your most relevant jobs, and go back up to 10 or 15 years, depending on your experience levels. List your job title, the name of the employer, its location and the dates you worked there. Also include bullet points for each entry, highlighting how you used your skills to add value for the employer.

The difference between an average CV work experience section and an outstanding one is the use of action verbs and quantifiable evidence. You'll want to show how your actions led to measurable positive outcomes for employers, and indicate a progression in your skills throughout your career. See below for an example of a strong work experience section for an editor CV.

Take a look at a less strong editor CV work experience section above. The work experience section could fail to make an impression if it's too generic, focuses on older or irrelevant roles or lacks tailoring to the job description. It's also important to avoid focusing too much on responsibilities that don't tell the reader anything of the value you added to the role.

Portfolio

For some applications, including a link in your CV to a career portfolio or examples of your previous work can be advantageous.

While portfolios are most commonly used for displaying visual or creative work, you could actually create a career portfolio to showcase work samples and projects of almost any nature, as long as you can host them online. Either add your portfolio as a link in its own section, or add separate links to examples of your previous work or projects. This could be on a company website, a personal website or your LinkedIn profile. Alternatively, if your portfolio is a particularly important element of your job application, you may wish to include a link to it in your CV header.

Education

With your education section, you'll draw attention to your most recent and highest qualifications, particularly emphasising any qualifications listed as a requirement in the job description.

Editor roles typically require candidates to have a relevant university degree, and you'll want to showcase this in your CV to confirm your eligibility. Add your Bachelor of Arts in English Literature or another related degree that makes you an eligible candidate for the position, in your CV. If you have any other degrees or qualifications that highlight proofreading grammar accuracy, HTML markup language proficiency or your most relevant skills, you could also add these.

When adding your qualifications to your education section, choose the highest relevant qualifications, and list them in reverse-chronological order, starting with your most recent. Add the name and level of the award, the institution, its location and your dates of study or graduation. If you have space or if you particularly want to emphasise your qualifications, you could add one or two bullet points under each entry, highlighting specialist areas of study, projects you worked on, awards you won or societies you were a member of.

If you have any specialist certifications or licences that are necessary for the role, or help you stand out above other candidates, you may wish to mention them here. When adding any special licences, it's a good idea to also reference their expiry or renewal dates, if applicable.

Key Skills

In your CV skills section, include a combination of the key hard and soft skills you possess, that make you a suitable candidate for the position. Make sure your skills list reflects the requirements specified in the job description, and include a few skills that are unique to you, and help set you apart from the pack. For an editor CV, you'll want to focus on the most relevant skills for the role that match your skill set, including time management and version control with GIT, to catch the reader's attention and show you're qualified for the editor position.

Hard Skills

Hard skills and technical skills are specialist skills that are essential for carrying out the main responsibilities of the role. You might acquire hard skills through study, or through on-the-job training, and some hard skills may require a certification or licence. For editor jobs, critical hard skills you've gained in your career can include proofreading grammar accuracy, and SEO keyword research. Firstly, check the job description, then add four or five key hard skills in your CV that help the employer to decide if you're a good fit for the role.

You'll want to include a list of hard skills that closely matches the skills listed as 'essential' or 'desirable' in the job description, while also reflecting your own strongest technical skills.

Take a look below to see the type of skills that are commonly listed in an editor CV hard skills section:

Soft Skills

Soft skills differ from hard skills because they tend to be more transferable and applicable to different roles. Soft skills are the personal strengths and qualities that define your style of working and determine how well you're likely to fit in with the team and wider organisation. The world of work is evolving at a rapid pace, changing the types of hard skills required for many roles, and therefore rendering soft and transferable skills more valuable than ever. Soft skills are also extremely valuable for junior and entry-level roles, where candidates aren't necessarily expected to have a wealth of relevant work experience.

Adopt the same approach as you did with your hard skills list, reviewing the job description to understand the requirements, before assessing which soft skills you can provide evidence for throughout your editor CV. Craft a list of up to five key soft and transferable skills that reflect the job description, while also including some of your strongest, most unique skills to stand out from the crowd.

Consider the following soft skills that frequently appear in an editor CV.

Certifications and Licences

Depending on the role you're applying for, and the type of qualifications you have, you might want to include a separate section for certifications, in addition to the education section. It can enhance your chances of success to show specific training and certifications. Not only do these prove you're qualified for the role, but they also indicate proactivity and a dedication to professional development. In addition, some roles require specific licences or training just to be eligible for the job, making the certifications section more important. This might include technical roles or positions which require the operation of specialist software, equipment or machinery.

Here is a list of some key certifications and licences that can be particularly useful for editor applications:

Language Skills

Adding foreign language skills to your editor CV can be a valuable addition that reflects well on you as a candidate. Even if language skills aren't listed as a requirement in the job description, if you speak a foreign language, it can be beneficial to add it to your CV. Within this section, list the foreign languages you speak to a reasonable degree of competence, together with an indicator of your skill levels.

There are a few acceptable ways of citing your foreign language proficiency levels. The simplest way is to assign a basic descriptive word to indicate your skills, such as:

• English: Fluent
• Spanish: Intermediate

You might wish to use an internationally recognised standard for your language skills, such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). This divides your language skills into the following categories:

• A1: Beginner
• A2: Elementary
• B1: Intermediate
• B2: Upper intermediate
• C1: Advanced
• C2: Proficiency

Additional Information

Adding optional sections to the end of your editor CV is a good way of showing you have the necessary skills for the job. Consider optional sections for your CV if you're looking for ways to show you're right for the job, beyond your work experience. Optional sections are particularly valuable if you haven't had the chance to build up relevant work experience, for example, if you're applying for entry-level roles or you're changing careers to a new industry or role.

You can find more detailed advice on tailoring your CV in our career resources, where we cover proven ways to highlight your skills effectively.

Hobbies and Interests

Your hobbies and interests can be a useful way of showcasing additional skills that are relevant to the job description, but that you haven't been able to prove via your work experience. In addition, hobbies and interests can showcase your personality, helping to differentiate you from other candidates. However, hobbies and interests can only add value to your CV if they provide evidence of skills and experience that you can use in the role you're applying for. As such, only add hobbies as a way of filling gaps in the skills you've developed or used through work experience.

Achievements and Awards

Creating a section for your achievements and awards can help you draw attention to the things you're most proud of in your career to date. If you've won any awards or achieved any key milestones in your career to date, you might want to mention them here.

Voluntary Work

Listing any previous voluntary work is another useful way of showing you have the necessary skills and experience for the job. If you don't have much relevant work experience, either because you're a junior candidate or you're changing jobs from an unrelated field, volunteering can provide valuable examples of your skills in action. In your volunteering section, use a similar structure to your work experience section.

Add your job title or a description of the volunteer role, the organisation name, its location and the dates you volunteered (start and end date). Under this, add bullet points to show the skills you used, and evidence of how they contributed to positive achievements for the organisation.

References

References aren't usually required on a UK CV, so leave them out in most cases. However, it's always worth checking the job advert and being ready to include them if requested. If you need to add them to your CV, include two or three references, adding their name, job title, organisation and contact details.

Be sure to ask their permission before you include anyone as a reference in your editor CV. Alternatively, you could simply add a line to your CV indicating you can provide references when necessary, such as 'references are available upon request'.

Best action verbs for an engaging editor CV

Using strong action verbs in your work experience bullet points is a great way to focus this section and show the impact you've made in your career to date. Starting each bullet point with an action verb that reflects the skills required for the role will help the reader to easily cross-reference your skills to the job description. Remember to always back up the action verbs you use with quantifiable evidence that shows the impact you made. You can use past tense for any action verbs describing previous jobs, with present tense for action verbs to describe your current role and responsibilities.

Example of an editor CV

Now you know how to create an editor CV for maximum impact, take a look below at this full, completed example:

To see how your CV might look after finalising its design and layout, take a look at our CV examples.

Guide to CV ATS optimisation

Employers and recruiters now routinely use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to ease the burden of the selection process. One of the key functions of these systems is CV screening, which reviews CVs and ranks them based on their likely fit for the role. By taking on this task, the hiring manager can reduce the time and resources they spend on the initial selection process, making recruitment more efficient and cost-effective.

With ATS apps becoming more prominent, it's essential for candidates to optimise their CVs to increase their chances of passing the initial screening stage. You can read a list of the top tips for ATS optimisation below:

• Include keywords and phrases that mirror the job description to maximise your chances of ranking highly in the ATS screening stage.
• Use clear, standard CV headings that are easily recognisable, such as 'work experience', 'education' and 'skills'.
• Choose a simple, standard CV structure and omit any design elements that might make your CV less easy to read by automated systems, such as text boxes and columns.
• Select a font that's widely used and maximises readability, including popular serif and sans serif fonts between size 10 and 12 for body text, and 14 and 16 for headings.
• Use bullet points instead of writing full sentences, to reduce the overall length of your CV, make it more keyword-dense and help ATS apps to scan it more easily.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by the steps to creating an ATS-compatible editor CV, but a few small changes can make a big difference. To smooth the process, use one of our expert-designed, ATS-optimised CV templates to increase your chances of success at this stage of the screening process.

Key takeaways for a successful editor CV

To give you the best chance of success with your CV, tailor it for every specific application, including keywords that reflect the job description. Pick a CV format that matches your experience level, and focus on showing the reader how you've developed relevant skills and put them to good use to add value for previous employers.

Finally, using an eye-catching, expert-designed CV template from Jobseeker can really give your CV an edge over those from rival candidates, helping you to achieve success in your job applications.

Sources:

1. National Careers Service, How to write a CV
2. Jobseeker, HR Statistics