How to Write an Events Manager CV / Event Management CV

In your Events Manager CV / Event Management CV, you have a number of important messages to communicate to your next prospective employer. The more you can address these before actually writing, the better, because adequate preparation will give your CV the depth and power that it requires.

For help with your Event Manager CV see our CV writing services. We have considerable experience in producing interview-winning CVs for people in event management.

What Must You Show on an Events Manager CV to Get an Interview?

An Events Manager's CV needs to be excellent, because it will be crucial to help you gain event management jobs. This is especially true if you are working on a freelance or contract basis, as you will be applying for many different short-term contracts.

Consequently, you will be updating and reviewing your CV far more frequently than somebody in a permanent or longer term position. Here are some of the challenges you face when preparing your Event Management CV:

1. You have to demonstrate your knowledge of certain kinds of events and show that it is applicable to the employer's particular needs.
2. You also need to convince the employer that you are a great planner and that you can analyse problems before they arise and conceive solutions that will either prevent them occurring or resolve them quickly if they do.
3. At the same time, you need to present evidence of your previous success in planning events within budget and on an adequate timescale.
4. The employer must be convinced of your leadership abilities, as you will be persuading and organising others to follow your plans.
5. You need to create a successful marketing document (your Event Manager CV) rather than a long, boring list of previous events you have organised.
6. You have to convince the employer that you are the best person for the role and that you are worth the fee they are paying (or that you are asking them to pay).

We consider below how you can address these challenges in your Event Management CV.

What Planning Skills You Must Demonstrate on Your Event Manager CV?

The interest in these kinds of roles is considerable. The majority of people who gain these positions have been involved in a number of events management jobs before, so it is vital that you clearly demonstrate your experience and knowledge if you are to beat the competition.

Background knowledge is important because it means you are thoroughly immersed in this kind of work - there's no knowledge like that gained through direct experience. Here are just some of the areas you need to be covering.

• Strategic planning.
• Liaising with different organisations.
• Budgeting and cash flow projection.
• Researching and selecting venues.
• Negotiating contracts for services.
• Hiring, training and supervising staff.
• Marketing the events.
• Designing public relations campaigns.
• Reporting on project outcomes.

Indicate the level of your direct involvement with clients and highlight the areas where you have held personal responsibility for particular aspects of the events you have worked on.

Depending on the contract you are applying for, you will select the most relevant points and highlight them within your Events Manager CV, from the Profile through the Achievements and Employment History.

In addition to your planning knowledge and skills, you must demonstrate that you have seen events through from start to finish, dealing with the unexpected problems or changes that happen along the way.

Events Managers must be able to respond to a brief, know how to respond to the clients' needs by shaping an event, before organising and overseeing it. This means offering a blend of logistical awareness and skill with a level-headed, unflappable approach.

A particular strength is being able to do this in highly pressurised situations without losing their ability to think clearly.

Your Event Planning History

It is not enough to simply say that you can offer such skills, knowledge and personal qualities - it must be evidenced through the history of your event management.

This means that you have to produce far more than a list of events you have worked on. Indeed, your previous events may not all be of interest to this employer.

You need to select only those that will say something by presenting a comparable event to that which the employer wants organised. You are therefore going to have to angle your Event Management CV differently, depending on which event coordinator jobs you are applying to.

You need to make sure that every section of your Events Manager CV is relevant. You can still mention other events you have worked on, but do not go into detail about them. Under the Employment or Career History section, you can list the relevant contracts, including the others in another section called Other Experience. This will prevent you leaving unexplained gaps in your employment history.

Focus only on the important contracts from the past decade. For the relevant contracts that you are highlighting, provide a basic overview of your duties, with major projects and outcomes clearly defined.

These contracts should also provide the material for your Achievements section. Your five or six achievements should also be emphasising your key strengths in planning and managing the events, as well as your ability to work with clients. Each should be supported with quantitative evidence that further illuminates your work, by providing a stronger picture of the event and your input.

Please see our executive CV service if you'd like some help with your Events Manager CV.

Your Management Abilities for an Events Manager CV

As the events manager for this employer, you are going to be responsible for a significant budget and will be heading a team of people working towards a common goal.

You need to be offering the personal attributes that make you capable of motivating others and keeping a tight team working efficiently under pressure. As well as describing your 'hard' skills in planning and managing an event, you need to convey leadership qualities and 'soft' people skills on your Event Manager CV.

The employer can gain a sense of your professionalism and personality, your working style and the strengths that you engage in completing a job to satisfaction.

Your CV Format on Your Event Management CV

As already stated, your Event Management CV should not be a long list of events, but should a powerful marketing document that gives a rounded view of your versatility and multi-skilled professionalism.

A version of the chronological CV format that includes an Achievements section is extremely useful for your kind of role, as it allows you to truly colour your experience and persuade the employer that you will be able to achieve sound results for them too.

Here is a brief outline of the sections required in your Events Manager CV, looking briefly at each section and offering some tips as to what should be included. (We provide a more generic, detailed description of each section in our other articles on CV writing.)

1. Contact Details

Include your name in a large font. This will help recruiters to register your name, as well as the confidence with which you present yourself. Ensure you have a highly professional sounding email address. You might even have a link to a professional portfolio web page that shows pictures of some of the events you have organised successfully.

2. Event Manager Profile

This is where you can really convey your personality and the energy with which you make things happen. Follow the 'rule of three' by highlighting your three most relevant - and marketable - experience areas (i.e. kinds of events or industries), planning and management skills, and personal attributes. Know what the employer is aiming to do and amend your profile accordingly.

For example you may need to match your job title to an employer's job advert, the job can be titled: Event Manager, Event Coordinator, Event Planner or even Special Event Co-ordinator.

When writing your profile, bear in mind the working environment of the events industry, i.e. fast-paced, highly pressurised, and typically with multiple tasks / projects being managed simultaneously.

Therefore the qualities you mention might be communication and negotiating skills, your strong customer focus, problem solving skills, attention to detail, financial awareness and scrupulous cost-watching, working under pressure, willingness to put in long hours - particularly as the event approaches, high levels of energy and motivation, plus your ability to relate to a very wide range of people.

Quantify what you are offering on your Events Management CV by specifying the number of years' relevant experience you can offer, the range of events you have handled and the scale of events you have worked on. If you have relevant experience in your non-working life, then it is worth mentioning this too.

3. Achievements on Your Event Management CV

You need to well and truly capture the employer's attention with an impressive set of highly relevant accomplishments from recent years.

Undertaking event planning for a leading, well-known employer is worth including on your Events Manager CV. Active language will emphasise the fact that you made things happen.

Provide detail on the context and scale of events, where appropriate. As always with achievements, quantify wherever possible: number of attendees, number of employees involved in running the event, size of budget, etc.

It would also be wise to highlight the outcomes of the events, in terms of corporate or organisational objectives that were furthered. This might be an increase in sales or membership achieved directly through the event.

Create impact on your Event Management CV by indicating the importance of the events you refer to in the calendar of their particular industry sector. You should also refer to any groundbreaking work you may have completed.

For example, co-ordinating the first of a particular conference or exhibition, or highlighting projects where an event has been successfully repositioned, perhaps by attracting a significantly wider range of sponsors or exhibitors than in previous years.

If unexpected obstacles came up, describe how you responded to a major challenge. This will start to answer the employers' 'what if' concerns about how you will cope if anything fails to go to plan.

Quantifying your own achievements can be difficult, professional CV writers can help you identify the achievements that will interest an employer and make them want to interview you.

4. Employment History on an Events Manager CV

When creating detailed entries for relevant contracts, try to create further achievements for each bullet point within the Employment History section of your Event Manager CV.

Outcomes and results are what count here. Remember to tie these to your relevant strengths, but try to avoid creating near identical achievements for each event detailed. The most relevant come first, but after that you can back these up with broader accomplishments.

Do not be afraid to give details in this section with regards to budgets, types of events (trade shows, exhibitions, breakfasts / lunches), and type of audience (senior management, CEOs, new employees and industry professionals).

5. Education and Training on an Events Management CV

In this line of work, your experience is vastly more important than the studies you undertook, unless you are at the start of your career. Include only your college or university, along with the qualification and results on your Event Management CV.

The title of a thesis or dissertation is worth including, if you are prepared to talk about it at interview. Postgraduate study and certified training should also be included, especially if it relates to your consultancy work.

Do not go overboard with very short, one or two day in-house courses, include these only if they truly add to your application. Otherwise, stick to what really matters and say something about your scope as a consultant.

6. Personal Information

It is no longer conventional to include personal information, due to anti-discrimination legislation.

If you do include these details, you risk appearing out of touch and your CV will appear unprofessional.

However, if you feel some personal information will actually strengthen your Events Manager CV, then you could consider including it. This might be sports or unpaid activities that demonstrate leadership or team qualities, as well as a genuinely motivated personality. Be prepared to answer questions on these at interview.

The Best Events Manager CV is a Polished Marketing Document

Your ultimate challenge, then, is to produce a superb Events Management CV that pulls all of the above together. This is ultimately a PR job, so the employer needs to know that you will be effective in making them look good through the event organisation.

To truly stand out from the other candidates, you need to polish and refine the end results. This involves writing fluently, utilising strong sentence construction and good grammar. Spelling mistakes will only put the employer off by making you look slipshod.

Powerful language, usually in the form of active verbs, will help you to come across as a more proactive and focused planner whose actions have focus, purpose and direction.

In some sectors, particularly in the technical industries, 'buzzwords' will also confer industry specific knowledge to your CV. Employers need to know that you, quite literally, talk their language and can do well for their people, customers or associates. If you have experience in the sector you're applying to, then you will probably be familiar with the language already.

Finally, ensure that you have your Event Manager CV prepared in a number of formats, so that you can respond exactly to the employers' requirements. With a large number of applicants for each vacancy, it is important that you give them no excuse to reject your application.

Pages to view if you're an Event Manager:

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