Name in 14-point. City and state below — full address is no longer needed. Phone, email, LinkedIn URL. That is everything. No portrait, no objective statement under your name, no graphic flourish. Hiring managers want the read to start at the next section, not at decoration.
Summary Statement
Two to three sentences. Name your practice area, your seniority level, and the kind of work you have done. The summary is read first and frames the rest of the document.
Strong: "Senior communications director with twelve years across consumer technology and crisis management. Led media relations for three IPOs and a hostile-takeover defense. Built and managed a six-person in-house team."
Weak: "Results-driven PR professional seeking opportunities to leverage my passion for storytelling."
Cut the second kind on sight. Lead with what you have done. Description, not aspiration.
Experience
Reverse chronological. Title, employer, dates. Three to five bullets per role. Bullets begin with a verb and end with a measurable result.
Agency experience is formatted differently from in-house. Agency: name the firm, list the most-visible accounts you led under each role, and quantify the work — coverage, awards, retention, revenue. In-house: name the company, name the function you led, and quantify the same way.
For PR specifically, three lines carry disproportionate weight on the resume: placed coverage, crisis work, and executive visibility. Hiring managers read for these explicitly.
- Placed coverage: "Secured features in The Wall Street Journal, Wired, and Fast Company for [client] product launch."
- Crisis work: "Managed media response to product recall affecting 1.2 million units; reduced negative coverage volume 60 percent within ten days."
- Executive visibility: "Built CEO thought-leadership program producing 22 op-eds across Forbes, HBR, and trade press."
Every line names a publication, a number, a client, or a campaign. Generic claims — "drove brand awareness," "managed stakeholder communications" — carry no signal.
Skills
Short list, not a paragraph. Six to ten skills, named precisely. Media relations, crisis management, executive communications, product PR, financial communications, internal communications, public affairs, influencer relations — pick the ones that match what you have actually done.
Cut soft-skill claims. "Excellent written and verbal communication" is implied by the rest of the document. If your resume does not already demonstrate those skills, naming them in a list will not save it.
Education
Institution, degree, year. One line per degree. Graduate before undergraduate. If you graduated more than fifteen years ago, drop the year.
PRSA membership, APR certification, and journalism or communications-school awards live here as one-line additions under the degree. Do not invent a separate section for them.
One Page or Two
One page for under ten years of experience. Two pages above that. Three pages for almost no one — if your career genuinely cannot fit in two pages, the resume is the wrong document and a long-form bio is what the hiring manager wants instead.
The one-page rule is real and enforced. Hiring managers reading a stack of fifty resumes spend more time on the candidates whose work fits in one well-organized page than on candidates whose two pages have to be skimmed.
One font. Eleven or twelve point. Black on white. PDF, not Word. The PDF preserves the formatting; the Word document does not.
Margins half an inch on every side. No headers, no footers, no page numbers. The document needs to render the same way on every screen and every printer.
Color, graphic borders, headshots, infographic timelines — all distract from the read. Use them only if you are applying for a creative role at an agency that explicitly invites the format.
Common Mistakes
Burying the lede. Your strongest credential should appear in the top third of the page. If your most-cited campaign is on page two, the resume is structured backward.
Listing duties instead of results. "Responsible for media relations" is duty. "Secured 47 placements across tier-one business press in 18 months" is result. Hiring managers buy results.
Padding the experience section. Internships, college jobs, and pre-PR work do not belong on a senior resume. Cut them.
Generic verbs. Managed, oversaw, was responsible for. Use the verbs that name the work: pitched, drafted, negotiated, briefed, placed, secured, prepared, defended.
Missing dates. Every role gets month and year, start to end. Vague dates invite questions you do not want.
Cover Letters
A short cover letter still helps for senior roles. Three paragraphs. The first names the role and one sentence of why you. The second names two pieces of work that prove the claim. The third asks for the conversation.
Generic cover letters — the kind that could be sent to any role — are immediately recognizable and immediately discarded. If you cannot write a specific letter for a specific role, do not send a letter at all.
References
Do not list references on the resume. Do not write "References available upon request" — it is implied. Maintain a separate one-page reference document with three to five referees, their titles, employers, phone numbers, and emails, and send it when asked.
Brief your referees before the hiring manager calls. The strongest reference is the one who knows specifically what role you are interviewing for and what work to emphasize.
One page for under ten years of experience. Two pages above that.
Do I need an objective statement?
No. Replace it with a two-to-three sentence summary that names your practice area and seniority level.
Should I include placed coverage?
Yes — under the role where you placed it. Name the publication. Specific publications carry more signal than generic claims about media relations.
Word document or PDF?
PDF. The Word document loses formatting on a different machine.
Do I list every role I have held?
For under ten years, yes. For longer careers, drop roles that do not contribute to the story the resume is telling. Internships and pre-PR work get cut first.
How do I describe agency experience?
By account. Name the firms you worked for, then under each role list the most-visible accounts you led with the work and results that resulted.
How do I describe in-house experience?
By function. Name the company, the team you led, and the measurable outcomes — coverage volume, share of voice, crisis response time, executive visibility metrics.
What about awards?
One line at the bottom of the relevant role or under education. SABREs, Bulldog, PR Daily, PRWeek — name the award and the year. Cut awards more than a decade old.
Where do I link my portfolio?
In the contact block, as one URL on its own line. Beneath the LinkedIn URL.
Should I include references on the resume?
No. Maintain a separate document and send it when asked.
