Social Media Manager CV Examples & Writing Guide

This CV is for a social media manager at a mid-sized consumer brand who came up through a coordinator role at a restaurant group. The name is made up. Every bullet point names a platform, an audience size or budget, and a metric the marketing director already tracks. That is what separates a social media manager CV from a list of apps.

The hiring manager for this role is usually a marketing director or head of brand who has been burnt by a hire who could post but could not report. They read for evidence you moved numbers they care about. Four things decide the interview.

• Accounts, audience and budget. Name the platforms, the follower counts when you started and when you left, and any paid budget you controlled. "Managed social media" tells them nothing; "Instagram 380K, TikTok 190K, £28K a month paid" tells them your scale.
• Metrics that match their reports. Engagement rate, reach, video views, follower growth, click-through rate, cost per result, ROAS or cost per lead, response time. Pick the ones the advert mentions and show a before and after.
• Content you can show. A portfolio link, a case study, or at least the handles. Marketers will look at your feed and your own accounts before the phone interview.
• Range. Organic and paid, video and static, B2C or B2B, community management, creator programmes, reporting. A manager needs someone who can cover most of the week's work, not one speciality.

“I scan for the follower counts and the engagement rate before and after. Then I open the handles. If the feed backs up the numbers, we talk. If the CV only lists platforms and tools, I assume they scheduled other people's content.”

A personal statement is three to four lines: your years and the kinds of brands, the platforms and audience size, one or two headline results, and your paid budget or team size. Skip career objectives unless you have never run an account for an employer; the no-experience section below covers that case.

Weak bullet points describe the job ("created content and managed accounts"). Strong bullet points state the platform, the volume, the change you made and the metric that moved. Use a before-and-after number whenever you have one.

List 10 to 14 skills, and name the tools inside them. Hiring managers filter by tool because switching from Hootsuite to Sprout costs a week; switching from Later to Meta Ads Manager costs a hire.

• Platforms, by depth: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube (Shorts and long-form), Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, X, Threads, Snapchat, Reddit, Discord. Say which you have run for a brand, not just used personally.
• Scheduling and management: Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Later, Buffer, Meta Business Suite, Sprinklr (enterprise), Agorapulse.
• Paid social: Meta Ads Manager, TikTok Ads Manager, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, Pinterest Ads, Google Ads for YouTube; audience building, retargeting, pixel and conversions API basics.
• Analytics: native insights, GA4, UTM tagging, Looker Studio, Tableau or Power BI if you built dashboards; attribution basics (last click, promo codes, post-purchase surveys).
• Content production: CapCut, Premiere Pro, Final Cut, Descript, Canva, Figma, Adobe Express, Lightroom; phone filming and lighting; captions and accessibility (alt text, subtitles).
• Community and listening: moderation policies, escalation to customer service, crisis response, social listening in Brandwatch, Talkwalker or Sprout Listening.
• Writing: hooks, captions, brand voice guides, scripts for short video, replies that sound human.
• Management: briefing creators and freelancers, usage rights, #ad disclosure under the CAP Code and ASA/CMA influencer guidance, competition and giveaway rules, content calendars, cross-team planning with product, PR and customer service.

Soft skills the field values: judgement under speed (knowing when not to post), taking feedback on creative, and calm handling of an angry comment thread. Show them in a bullet point, not as a list item.

No qualification is required for this job in the UK, and none replaces results. They help in two cases: you are early in your career, or the advert names a platform you have not run at scale yet. List only ones you actually hold, with the issuer and year.

• Meta Blueprint certifications: Meta Certified Digital Marketing Associate (entry level), Meta Certified Community Manager, Meta Certified Media Buying Professional (paid). These are invigilated exams.
• Google: Google Analytics Certification (GA4) through Skillshop; Google Ads Video certification if you run YouTube campaigns.
• Platform vendor certifications: Sprout Social, Hootsuite Social Marketing Certification, HubSpot Social Media Marketing Certification (free). Fine for a CV, weak on their own. CIM and IDM run social media and digital marketing qualifications if you want a UK-recognised award.
• LinkedIn Marketing Labs courses and certification for B2B roles; TikTok Academy courses for short-form and TikTok Ads.
• Education: a degree in marketing, media, communication, journalism or English is typical but not required; many managers hold unrelated degrees or none, and some come through a Level 3 or Level 4 marketing apprenticeship. List the qualification and year; put a portfolio link above it.

"No experience" in this field usually means no paid job with the title. It rarely means no results. If you have grown any account, run a society's Instagram, filmed for a friend's business or sold anything through social, you have data. Marketing leads will hire an entry-level assistant or coordinator on the strength of a personal account with real growth and a clear write-up.

1. 1Pick your best account (yours, a society's, a family business's) and pull the numbers: followers at start and now, best-performing posts with views, engagement rate, anything it drove (sign-ups, sales, event attendance). Put it in a Projects section above Education.
2. 2Build a one-page portfolio (a Notion page or PDF is fine) with 6 to 10 pieces of content and the numbers behind them. Link it in your header.
3. 3Take two free or cheap certifications that match the platforms you want to work on: Meta Digital Marketing Associate and Google Analytics, or HubSpot Social Media Marketing. List them.
4. 4Write your personal statement around what you have made, not what you want: platforms, audience grown, formats you can produce, tools you know.
5. 5Offer a small paid or volunteer project for a local business or charity if you have nothing yet: 30 days of content and a report is enough to write two strong bullet points.

Marketing teams use applicant tracking systems like everyone else (Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS), and the hiring manager then reads on a phone. Design flair belongs in your portfolio; the CV should parse and scan.

• Length: one page for assistants, coordinators and junior roles; two pages, the UK norm, once you have several years, brands or teams to show.
• Order: header with portfolio link, personal statement, experience, skills and tools, certifications, education. Projects section above education if you are early-career.
• One column, standard font, no photo, no date of birth, no marital status. Light colour on headings is fine; icons, columns and text boxes often break the parser.
• Keywords to mirror from the advert: the platform names as written, "content strategy", "content calendar", "community management", "paid social", "influencer" or "creator", "analytics" or "reporting", "brand voice", "short-form video", "engagement", "KPIs", and the tool names (Sprout, Hootsuite, Meta Ads Manager).
• Spell out both forms where they differ: "UGC (user-generated content)", "ROAS (return on ad spend)", "CTR (click-through rate)".
• Save as PDF: Jordan-Whitfield-Social-Media-Manager-CV.pdf.

Run the file through the cvplex ATS checker with the advert pasted in. It flags platform and tool names you left out and any header the parser could not read.