Community Manager Resume | Examples, Templates, Tips & More

If building a holistic PR and marketing communications career appeals to you, read on to learn how to write a winning community manager resume.

Community managers are growing in demand as more and more people interact with brands through multiple channels.

The role is a great transitional step for those looking to build a career in social media management, social media marketing, or communications. It also brings in a competitive average salary of $60,000 per year.

On the other hand, companies looking for community managers with relevant education, skills, and marketing experience. If you have these, then great!

But to stand out, you’ll need a resume that ticks all the boxes for recruiters to prioritize your application. Try our community manager resume template database to show off the proper credentials while saving yourself time and effort.

From formatting basics to highlighting your specialized skill sets, our community manager resume samples will help you get noticed in this super-competitive job market. Check out a sample below👇:

For more community manager resume templates, feel free to check them out here.

How to Make a Community Manager Resume

What should community managers put on their resumes? Generally, your resume must showcase your experience and strengths, which will make you an excellent fit for the job. Highlight your skills in brand communications and marketing strategies as well as project management.

Key sections in a resume include:👇

• Header
• Personal Statement
• Work History
• Skills
• Education

Feel free to add more sections that you feel will boost your credentials, such as awards or organizational affiliations.

What to Put on a Community Manager Resume?

The recruiter takes an average of six seconds to gloss through a resume - give them an easy time reading through yours.

Stick to easy-to-read fonts such as Arial and Times New Roman. Keep a clean layout by using headers and explain further using bullet points right below them, all in left-alignment and at 0.5-1” margins all around.

As for the content, you can explore three types of resume formats depending on which lays out your experience best.

Chronological resume formats are suitable for applicants who want to display their progression in the company as part of their selling points. If you’ve been promoted to team leader, for example, this is a great way to show your more significant roles and responsibilities.

In the chronological format, detail your most recent position first, followed by the previous job, and so on.

Functional resume formats are great for those who want to show off the diversity of roles in their career. If you have experience in different marketing departments, this type of resume will show hiring managers your proven track record in this field.

For those looking for the best of both, combination resumes would be best. Such a resume uses work functions as headers, then details the accomplishments under each in chronological order.

Have a Straightforward Header

Your header should be straightforward and complete. While it’s the simplest part of the resume, it is also critical to get it right, as this is how recruiters can get back to you for follow-up questions or interviews.

Here’s one of many resume examples of a header that lays everything out:👇

Important details for the header include your personal information, such as your full name, current title, contact number, and email address. You may also add your LinkedIn account or links to your professional portfolio for reference.

Keep the layout simple and readable, and put your name and title up top. You may also add relevant icons before each piece of information or lay all the information in one line to save space.

Meanwhile, here’s an example of a bad header:👇

Not only is this resume incomplete, but it also gives an unprofessional first impression. While cute emails were all the rage back in school, it’s time to shift to a professional one to be taken seriously. Create a more professional email address for job hunt purposes.

Photos are optional - should you place one, be sure that the image is professionally shot against a white or blue background (similar to passport photos), with you in professional attire.

However, in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., recruiters prefer to avoid resumes with photos: they might be accused of discriminating candidates.

Therefore, it’s better to leave it out if you look for a job in any of these countries.

Prove Your Experience in Social Media Management

Being a community manager is more than just using your social media accounts all day long. The role entails interacting with consumers through social media platforms and navigating online vectors to get the brand’s message across.

Your work experience description must therefore put your expertise in employers’ social media campaigns front and center.

Potential employers want proof that you can smartly engage with the market. This engagement can be done through key metrics of social media campaigns and community engagement, including brand awareness, audience growth rate, and engagement rate.

When detailing your achievements, back these up with measurable results.

You might be wondering - why is there so much focus on work experience? Well, it’s not like there’s a specific degree course for a community manager. As such, employers rely on work experience because it does the following:👇

• It shows your passion for the job.
• It shows your achievements in the real world outside of school.
• It serves as a networking badge.

Here is an example of an effective work experience section in a resume:👇

And this is an example of an ineffective work experience section:👇

Note how unspecific the bullet points are. The applicant has also failed to include their period of employment at SoundCloud. Such a lack of detail gives the impression that the applicant is not that interested in getting the job.

Describe Your Education

Recruiters will look at your educational background to assess your foundations for the community manager role. Courses along the lines of marketing, communications, and project management would have an edge. If you had stellar grades at university, now’s the perfect time to show them off.

For a community manager, the expected educational attainment is around university graduate level, but be sure to read the job application for specific requirements and match accordingly. You don't have to dwell on this section too much, though. It's usually the shortest part of the resume.

Some key features that hiring managers look for in educational attainment listings are:👇

• School name
• School location
• Degree obtained (if applicable)
• Course
• Year Graduated
• Academic or Extracurricular awards or recognition

You can apply this on your resume like so:

The Most Sought-After Skills in Community Management

Understanding the critical skills for a community manager is essential to put your best foot forward. The job requires many soft skills, especially “people skills,” with enough hard skills to handle communications technology.

Below is a partial list of community management skills from The Community Roundtable. We classify them as soft and hard skills here. These are the soft skills most vital to community management:👇

• Listening and analyzing
• Response and escalation
• Moderation and conflict facilitation
• Promoting productive behaviors
• Empathy and member support
• Facilitating connections
• New member recruitment and welcoming
• Member advocacy
• Behavior change and gamification

But engaging with people is only half of the job. The other half is analyzing the data you gather from that engagement to help your company market its products and services.

For this part of the job, you need some hard technical skills like the following:👇

• Data collection and analysis
• Technical support
• Member database management
• Platform architecture and integration
• Technology issue resolution
• Software and application programming
• Algorithm design and data manipulation

In addition, you need to have an intuition for trends and set benchmarks based on these trends. From the insights you gather, you should know how to develop and execute content strategies and engagement techniques to grow your brand’s community.

Write a Winning Professional Summary

The professional summary is a 1-2 liner at the top of the resume that details your profession, work accomplishments, and career goals.

This allows recruiters to assess if your goals are aligned with the hire they’re looking for, and if so, gives them the green light to continue reading.

It might be tough to summarize your career in a few sentences, so a good trick is to leave this task for last.

Instead, write your entire resume and pick out your top 2-3 achievements for summary up top. This way, the summary will flow well with the rest of the resume.

It’s also important to be as specific as possible. Substantiate your achievements with numbers for credibility and impact. See how this looks on a professional resume:👇

An entry-level Community Manager resume can look just as credible with the right professional summary:👇

Additional Sections for Your Resume

Don’t be afraid to add sections in your resume that showcase the skills needed by excellent Community Managers. See some examples of extra sections for a Community Manager resume below:

Volunteer Experience

If you've just begun to look for a job, you may also add volunteer experience, especially if these are in segments related to PR, marketing and communications, or customer care. This may be written as a separate section.

Having on-the-ground experience - paid or not - helps recruiters assess your capabilities in handling the role.

Certifications

There are various continuing education courses online and offline that you can take to further your knowledge in Community Management. If you’ve taken any of them and passed with flying colors, feel free to add these to your resume.

Languages

If you will be communicating with multicultural audiences, fluency in one or more other languages besides your native language is an asset. Some resume examples even include certifications to prove fluency.

And don’t limit yourself to oral fluency - written fluency in different languages would also count. Mention the languages in which you are fluent and briefly describe your fluency level in each.

Tips to Level Up Your Community Manager Resume

Some quick tips to remember to make the perfect resume:👇

• Read up on the job posting. Know exactly what the role entails for the specific company, and make sure your resume directly addresses them.
• Avoid formatting out of place or misspelled words - you only have seconds to impress the recruiter.
• When in doubt, check out our resume examples
• Let your experience do the talking - make sure it’s tailored to the job.

Key Takeaways: Writing a Job-Winning Community Manager Resume

Let’s wrap up with all the tips for a winning resume:👇

• Have a clear and concise header.
• Substantiate your work experience with measurable results.
• Include your education and skill sets that fit the Community Manager job role.
• Add in only relevant credentials that would boost your credibility.
• Put the best details in a snappy professional summary.

Complement Your resume with a Cover letter

The cover letter is an excellent way to personalize your resume even further. This tells recruiters that you deliberately applied for the company and are interested in what it has to offer.

The key to writing an excellent cover letter is to be personal. Do your research and include 1-2 lines about the company and how this spoke to you, then end graciously with the hope that your application will be considered.

Recruiters who read this will likely feel appreciated and want to read your application further.

If you’d like to write one, check out our cover letter of resume examples.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a community manager differ from a social media manager?

A community manager’s job involves creating a community around a brand and then integrating with that community to gain insights on users’ or consumers’ preferences and experiences related to the brand. The goal is long-term: to sustain people’s interest in and preference for the brand.

A social media manager, on the other hand, speaks for the brand, creating content, delivering news and announcements, and developing strategies that revolve around the brand. The goal is more immediate: to drive sales.

What are the most challenging aspects of a community manager’s job?

The most challenging aspects of a community manager’s job are:

• Keeping the brand's community active and engaged over time.
• Drawing in new members, directly or through brand ambassadors if there are any.
• Cross-promoting with communities formed around other brands which offer products or services that complement the company’s brand.
• Managing their time to accomplish those three primary tasks.