At Tarsh & Partners, we've spent decades helping FMCG marketers navigate their careers, from Marketing Assistant to CMO, across global multinationals and innovative start-ups.
One of the most common questions we're asked is: “What do you think of my CV?”
There's no single formula for a perfect CV. Your experience, ambitions and the roles you're targeting will all influence how it should look. But there are some things that consistently help a CV stand out - and others that can hold it back.
Here's our guide to creating a CV that reflects your experience, demonstrates your value and gives you the best possible chance of getting noticed.
Your CV needs to make an impact quickly. Recruiters and hiring managers are often reviewing huge volumes of applications, so make it easy for them to understand who you are, what you've done and what you could bring to their business.
Keep the design clean and professional. Use clear headings, consistent formatting and enough white space to make the content easy to scan.
Two pages is a good target for many candidates, although three may be appropriate for more senior or extensive careers. The important thing is to include relevant detail without making the reader work too hard to find it.
I'm often surprised when candidates are advised to squeeze their CV onto a single page. I don't agree that shorter is automatically better, particularly for marketing professionals. A good marketing CV needs to do more than list job titles and responsibilities; it needs to demonstrate achievements, bring brand experience to life and show the commercial impact you've made. That's difficult to do if you're trying to fit an entire career onto one page.
Avoid complicated layouts, unnecessary graphics and design features that distract from your experience. Your CV is there to sell your professional credentials, not your graphic design skills!
Your opening profile should give the reader a clear sense of your professional identity and what you offer.
Think about your experience, areas of expertise, commercial strengths and the level at which you operate. What makes you different? What do you want a prospective employer to remember about you?
Keep it concise and specific. Statements such as “highly motivated team player with excellent communication skills” tell a recruiter very little. Your experience and achievements should provide the evidence.
This is where many CVs fall short.
Listing your responsibilities tells an employer what your job involved but showing your achievements tells them far more about you and what you brought to it.
Where possible, include evidence of your impact with meaningful numbers. That might mean brand growth, market share gains, successful product launches, improved campaign performance, budget management or the development of a high-performing team.
For FMCG marketers, commercial context matters. Explain the challenge, what you did and what happened as a result.
You don't need a spectacular result for every responsibility. Sometimes the value lies in the complexity of the challenge, the scale of the project or the stakeholders you brought together. The key is to give the reader a genuine sense of your contribution.
Not all marketing experience is the same, and employers will want to understand the context in which you've worked.
Think about the brands, categories, channels, markets and budgets you've managed. Have you worked in food and grocery, personal care, household products or another FMCG category? Have you launched products, developed brand strategy, managed agencies or worked closely with sales, category management and customer teams?
You don't need to include every detail of every role. Focus on the experience most relevant to the opportunity you're pursuing, while making sure your career history still tells a coherent story.
And remember: employers want to understand your individual contribution, not just what the wider team delivered.
Keep a master CV containing your full career history, responsibilities and achievements. Then use it as the starting point for each application.
Read the job description carefully and identify the experience and capabilities the employer is looking for. Make sure the most relevant evidence is easy to find.
Keywords can help your CV align with the language used in a job advert and may help when applications are processed through applicant tracking systems. Use them naturally and honestly, rather than simply repeating phrases or stuffing your CV with buzzwords.
Your CV and LinkedIn profile should tell a consistent story. Check that your job titles, dates, experience and achievements align, and make sure your LinkedIn profile reflects the professional impression you want to create. Your profile photo matters, too. We recommend a recent, good-quality headshot that looks professional but still feels like you. You don't need a corporate studio portrait, just a clear, approachable photo where you're the focus. Leave the holiday snaps, family photos, pets and heavily filtered or glamour-style selfies for your personal social media. LinkedIn is part of your professional brand, and the impression you create should reflect the image you want a prospective employer to have of you. It's a small detail, but it can say more than you might think.
Digital, data and AI-related skills may also be worth highlighting where they're relevant to your experience and the role. Be specific about the tools you've used and how you've applied them. Demonstrating how you've used data to understand consumers, evaluate performance or inform decisions is much more meaningful than simply claiming to be digitally savvy.
You don't need QR codes, video introductions or elaborate multimedia features to make a strong impression. Unless there's a clear reason to include them, your experience and achievements should do the talking.
Your CV shouldn't be something you dust off only when you're looking for a new job.
Update it as you complete significant projects, deliver results, take on additional responsibility or develop new skills. It's much easier to capture achievements while they're fresh in your mind than to reconstruct them several years later.
You may not need to change your CV every quarter, but reviewing it regularly helps ensure it reflects where you are in your career, and where you want to go next.
A good CV doesn't need to be flashy, and it certainly doesn't need to include every job responsibility you've ever had. It needs to tell a clear, credible story about your experience and the value you can bring to a business.
For FMCG marketers, that means going beyond the brands you've worked on to explain the commercial challenges you've tackled, the decisions you've influenced and the results you've delivered.
Be honest, be specific and don't undersell or oversell yourself. And remember that your CV is only part of the picture. It should open the door to a conversation, giving you the opportunity to bring your experience to life.
Need an honest second opinion on your CV or considering your next move in FMCG marketing? Get in touch with Tarsh & Partners for a confidential conversation.
