Advertising Director resume examples & templates

As an advertising director, your job depends on presenting brands in the best light. In the case of your resume, you are the brand! Think of your resume as your most important ad campaign. As a director, you may not be creating the copy anymore, but are marshaling the strategy for entire projects and must recognize fabulous ads and marketing ideas when you see them. You also have to prove that you are great at motivating, organizing, and budgeting in an advertising agency environment.

Entry-level

Mid-career

Senior-level

Use this template

Use this template

Use this template

A winning advertising director resume should call attention to your advanced communication skills, which allow you to speak effectively with your clients and understand their needs. Your ability to work well with others should be noted, as collaboration is a large part of this position. Your skill at effectively managing budgets and negotiating contracts should also be highlighted. 

Resume.io’s field-tested templates, resume guides and resume examples for 350+ professions, and resume builder tool, plus these helpful tips, will cover the following topics:

• What does an advertising director do?
• How to write an advertising director resume (tips and tricks)
• The best format for an advertising director resume
• Advice on each section of your resume (summary, work history, education, skills)
• Professional resume layout and design hints.

What does an advertising director do?

An advertising director oversees the entire advertising department from operations and technology to sales. This is a supervisory role, so directors are also responsible for creating and maintaining a goal-oriented and customer-focused environment. Advertising directors cultivate new clients and ensure that current clients are satisfied.

Because they run the department, advertising directors are also expected to take on a mentoring role to promote professional growth. 

Advertising directors develop the strategies their department will use to reach the company’s goals. The work collaboratively with the marketing department to ensure the company presents a singular image and that all sales leads are followed up on.

How to write an advertising director resume

Before you begin putting together the details of your resume, let’s look at the big picture. Your CV should contain the following elements:

• The resume header
• The resume summary (aka profile or personal statement)
• The employment history section
• The resume skills section
• The education section

Each new application requires you to personalize your advertising director to fit the job you’re targeting. Read further to learn how to do that and the following:

• Craft a profile that shows off your personality and professional talents
• Advertise the skills that will get you noticed
• Promote your professional image  with active verbs and specific data
• Use your creativity to personalize the look of your resume without turning off recruiters
• Create a resume that sets you up for a fabulous job.

Choosing the best resume format for an advertising director

We recommend the reverse chronological order resume format for most situations because it allows easy scanning by recruiters and makes it easier to apply online using Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). This format mostly affects the employment history section of your advertising director CV. 

Within this format, you should list your most recent position and work your way back. If you have just earned your early childhood education certification and are looking for your first job, you will find more information in this blog. One of the chronological or hybrid CV formats we suggest may benefit you if you are looking to re-enter the job market after a long gap, you are trying to change careers or you have a long, varied job history.

Resume summary example

You are an expert at punchy copy that says a lot with only a few words, so use your creativity here! This is the only text within your resume where you can apply your copy-writing skills. The rest of your resume will be formatted as bulleted lists, but this section is a short paragraph that illuminates your personality, achievements, and talents. You can also use your writing skill in your cover letter, which complements your resume.

Advertising Directors need to blend the creative side with the practical business side. Advertising Directors oversee sales teams, create new strategies, and foster beneficial partnerships to increase sales revenue. Think about your leadership personality as well as your creative talents and business acumen. 

Instead of simply describing your personality, inject those qualities into a sentence or two about your greatest achievement. Consider working a slogan you developed into your profile as a teaser, if you can. Or write a unique one to kick off this section.

See example content below.

Employment history sample

Your employment history tells the story of your career. Position yourself well by focusing on successful ad campaigns and happy clients. Show a progression of responsibility. Consider the variety of the skills in which you are proficient and try to get in as many impressive achievements as you can. Hiring managers want to know that you can learn and grow on the job.  

Each bulleted item should include a strong action verb and the results of your hard work. Use data to illustrate how big of a budget you controlled, increases in sales that can be traced to your ad campaigns, social media strategies that increased brand awareness, or any other specifics that tell employers what you can bring to their agency.

See resume sample content below.

Resume education example

Advertising directors come to the job with a variety of bachelor’s degrees but ideally should hold a degree in advertising, marketing, or journalism. 

List all degrees and certifications here. Any honors or distinctions should be noted here as well. If you hold a degree higher than a bachelor’s degree, you may leave out your high school diploma. You can list certifications here, or create a separate section highlighting them. 

See resume example content below.

Advertising director CV skills example

You may dismiss this as simply a list culled from your employment history, but that would be a mistake. Recruiters, like consumers, often scan text very quickly. That means that they will notice the words that stand out—and the Skills Section is a great opportunity to do that. 

Keywords are important here as the ATS – algorithmic software used by medium and large employers – will scan for words and phrases and rank your resume based on how often and whether or not they appear. This section offers the simplest way to personalize your resume since all you have to do is change the listings based on your analysis of the job description.

Start by brainstorming all your skills in a separate document. This “Master List” is dynamic, so keep it and add to it as you grow in your career. Think about soft skills, or the skills needed to be a productive employee in any field, and hard skills, or those that are specific to Advertising Directors. Try to find a good balance when you finalize your list of five to ten skills.

What should you focus on? First the soft skills:

• Communication: This umbrella category can be broken down into many components. For example, attentive listening, clarity, open-mindedness, providing constructive feedback, summarizing, or concise presentations. Good communicator is too broad.
• Organization: Again, break this down to scheduling, planning, time management, project management, delegation, and setting targets and goals.
• Leadership: Empathy, integrity, trustworthiness, decisiveness, decision-making, mentoring, motivating, dependability, and relationship-building are all necessary qualities in a leader.

Now, the hard skills:

• Budgeting: You may be responsible for your team’s expenditures and the client’s budget
• Contract negotiation: Whether you are building campaigns for clients or working on the sales side for a company, you have to be able to get the best deal possible.
• Market analysis: You must be able to conduct market research, analyze data and apply your conclusions to develop a clear advertising strategy
• Writing and design: Your instinct and knowledge for pinpointing the best campaign are of the utmost importance.

See resume example content below.

Resume layout and design

Show off your artistic eye here! Keep in mind that recruiters want clean, easy-to-read designs. Consider using one of the layout templates from Resume.io’s Creative category. Modern and Professional may be great as well, depending on the employer’s image. These designs will get the attention of recruiters and help you distinguish yourself from other candidates. 

Key takeaways for an advertising director resume

• Advertising directors hold the responsibility for all the company’s advertising goals and for the smooth running of the department.
• Aiming to earn more? Try adding the word “sales” to your advertising director title.
• Put your leadership style on display in your summary.
• You can create a master resume in just a few minutes with our expert-tested resume templates and builder tool.