The Perfect Journalist Resume Writing Tips

Do you want to apply for a Journalist position to help you get closer to your career goals? Applying for jobs on Seek, LinkedIn, and other job boards can be a time-consuming process, however, to streamline the process, you can ensure your resume writing helps you to stand out from the crowd, and your online profile helps you to get an interview!

If a recruiter or hiring manager are looking for a Journalist, they are searching for specific transferable skills. With less than ten people being interviewed for the job and hundreds of people, just like you, applying, The Perfect Resume team have created Resume Writing Tips to help you stand out from the others.

What do recruiters look for in a Journalist resume or an online profile?

Tailoring your resume to a Journalist position is mandatory today to ensure that your application will pass Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). In doing so, your resume will be read by the prospective employer. Then, fingers crossed, you will be shortlisted as a potential candidate and be called for not one, but multiple job interviews!

Firstly, before you apply to be a Journalist, you need to be acquainted with what a Journalist does!

Journalists handle the news pieces, including investigating and reporting on current events, they also work on articles and features that update and influence public opinion.

Hiring Managers are looking for a friendly, self-motivated, and passionate  Journalist to assist in digging out the real story and uncovering the truth.

To be successful as a Journalist, you should have knowledge of necessary Advertising, Arts, & Media procedures, be open to learning, and have strong communication skills. Ultimately, a high performing Journalist should be able to achieve feature story placement and be a natural storyteller.

Knowing this, your resume and online profile should include the hard and soft skills that the recruiter or hiring manager is looking for in a candidate.

The Journalist position description template will also contain pivotal information about what the candidate will need to do daily. Such as:

• Assessing leads and pitching captivating story ideas to editors.
• Ensuring that you meet all regular and recurring deadlines.
• Reviewing and editing work for editorial approval.
• Using all your findings to prepare clean, concise, and factual articles.
• Adhering to the ethical code of the profession.
• Keeping records of all notes, interviews, and audio files.
• Creating trustworthy relationships with contacts and sources for use in future research.
• Keeping up-to-date on the latest news developments by attending events, studying different papers, opinion pieces, and social media.
• Collecting, verifying, and deciphering data.


You will also have some requirements and personal attributes that you will need to demonstrate in your resume to ensure your potential employer will take your application seriously, such as:

• Bachelor’s degree in journalism, communications, English, or a relevant field.
• Minimum of 2 years working experience as a journalist or reporter.
• Capable of maintaining an ethical and objective standard in reporting.
• Ability to meet deadlines and accurately fact-check information.
• Excellent observation and judgment skills.
• Superb communication and networking skills, along with an aptitude to effectively extract information.





You may also want to do some industry research to find out what other companies want in their Journalists.