Help Me Get This Awesome Entry-Level Marketing Job!

What jumps out at me the most is that you've explained what you did...but what did you DO? It's a lot like if I explained my job as, "Sat in my office, looked at records, typed a summary, and presented summary to Boss." Yeah, that's (kind of) what I do, but it's not what I DO. My resume would say something like, "Managed # concurrent cases, including analysis of blah blah blah, investigation of blah blah blah, comprehensive status reports for clients and attorneys, deposition preparation, and deadline management, in order to quickly and successfully resolve complex claims." (A little rambly, but yeah.) If you want to impress this (or any) potential employer, you need to show them that you can not only do these things but that you understand WHY you're doing these things, i.e., you understand the brand's goals beyond "I earned incentives." It's also very important to showcase concrete accomplishments (which my example does not do very well) as much as possible. (On preview, Crystalinne has great advice for doing just that.) I would cut the "wore a t-shirt" and/or find a way to make it sound less like you wore a t-shirt. (I'm sure there's some great way of talking about your in-person, live radio, on-campus promotional and branding activities--which is awesome experience--so stick it in there, but not as "I wore a t-shirt.") I would cut the "got offered a job from a client" thing; it screams "me me me." It sounds counter-intuitive to not be "me me me" in a resume, but employers want to know what you're bringing to their table, not to yours. Lastly, be consistent in your verb usage, e.g., you went from using gerunds to present-tense to past-tense all in one job. I'm the meanest recruiter in all the land, because that would put you in my "probably not" pile of internship candidates, as it shows a lack of attention to detail and potential sloppiness. Conversely, you write well, and I appreciate that you use straight-forward, simple language; as much as I nitpick inconsistent tenses, I usually won't consider someone who clearly spent a couple hours reconstituting every locution with a serpentine restoration from a promulgation-hampered online treasury of words (haha I wish I was kidding but I'm not). That is to say: it's cool to use a thesaurus but don't use words from it that you don't know. Good luck!

You've got some of this, but include even more numbers/facts/results. Can you quantify dozens? Is that "over 50" or "110" or something more specific? How many vouchers did you hand out?

If you already work for them, you don't need to describe what you do (they already know what your job description is), you need to describe what you've accomplished, and what you'll aim to accomplish. In your job descriptions, prioritize your successes first, your duties second. For this job, it sounds like anecdotes about relationship building skills (re: working with restaurants etc), leadership abilities (re: working with teams to set up beer gardens), and reliability (ie. you won't miss shifts or be late) would be great to add or clarify. If you have reference letters from any of your old supervisors, it can be effective to put excerpts from the letters right in your resume, showing who the quotes are from.

Wow! Thanks for the awesome help already. I gave away hundreds, perhaps thousands of vouchers and used vouchers/other promo items as leverage to trade / barter services from different university associations/groups (using vouchers to fund the food for an event, giving away swag as prizes at different events in exchange for a chance to promote, etc. ) For the more recent job, I spoke to more than 100 consumers an hour and obtained thousands of surveys from consumers through the 5 weeks. I also took amazing photos of/with consumers and did high quality reporting. It won me a $300 gift card, the top incentive of our region's team. How could I potentially include excerpts from the letters? Could I use quotes they've sent to me in emails about how well I'm doing, or things they've said to me in conversation? How would that look, formatting-wise? Would I need to include their information to verify their quotes, too? I'm receiving actual recommendation letters from both jobs soon, hopefully, but both of the supervisors have enthusiastically agreed to let me list their info as references for future positions. BTW: Quick question - how ethical or effective is writing a recommendation letter for yourself and having your supervisor endore it/ sign it? I've had profs/bosses ask me to do this and it icks me out, but if a supervisor has dismal writing skills or is it too busy, is this excusable?

Awesome, sounds like you're off to a good start - its so much easier when you actually do have accomplishments to show off!! Re: the quotes, i would only put in stuff that you explicitly have permission to use this way. So, either from a recommendation letter, or if it was more informal (like an email), you'd want to ask their permission. ("Hey, can i quote you on that in my cover letter or resume, as a reference?") I've done stuff like "Client Smith said "Kololo was the best Askme answerer during the night of January 15th"). Just add it in as a bullet point, or to provide credibility to a claim you're making. (ie. "Spoke with more than 100 consumers an hour, earning a reward. According to Susan, this was "the best she'd ever seen a rep do".) Writing your own recommendation letter is totally ethical if they've asked you to do it, and it's common place. It's an icky feeling to do it, but your supervisors are too busy to do it themselves. They'll likely read what you wrote and edit it a bit before they sign it, or they'll read it and then sign it, but either way, don't be afraid to toot your own horn if they aren't afraid to let you.

I'm really not trying to threadsit, promise! Amazing answers, definitely making me feel silly :P "Wore a T-Shirt"...Lol, really? What was I thinking? One more quick question though: I REALLY want to talk about how during my month-long contract with food delivery company, I was the ONLY brand ambassador at my whole uni while across the country, the company hired at least 2-3 per university campus (the other brand ambassador for my uni bailed last minute). I want to write that despite the fact I was given 0 structure, very little training and advice and even without a partner, I'd managed to meet my targets, promote at MANY different events across campus, keep in constant contact with my supervisor and overall, do the same amount of work as 2-3 people. How can I do this? Is this the meant for a cover letter/in-person interview?

Don't ever be negative about a former employer/boss/co-worker, no matter how good it makes your performance look. Keep it positive. Say something like: "With minimal supervision, singly promoted # of campus events with attendance rate of #. Met all assigned targets by doing X, Y, Z." When you get asked "tell me about a time you faced a challenging situation" at the interview, then you come in with, "Unfortunately, my promo teammate could not commit to the internship/position/whatever and there was no time to find a replacement, which lead to [this situation]. Accordingly, I [took these actions], which led to [this positive outcome]. I learned A, B, and C from the experience." Again, always keep it positive and try as hard as you can to avoid disparaging a former employer, even in the slightest. Resumes are hard, but once you hit the mark, the pay off is definitely worth it. I didn't mean to come down so hard on the t-shirt; it's marketing, it's promotional, and it's part of the job -- but if someone can genuinely ask "so, what?" to a bullet point on your resume, it needs to be improved upon. Each bullet point has to be both self-explanatory and concise, which is why resumes are hard. (For example, when I was in marketing, I had to attend plays. I couldn't just put "attended plays" on my resume, because...so, what? I had to think it through and really pinpoint why I was going to the plays and what it meant for my job and my employer. And then I had to decide if it was worth the space on my resume. It wasn't.)

Try an infographic resume.