Welcome back to part three! Last week we discussed the skills section, which your resume may or may not have. As for an experience section, your resume should have one no matter how you slice it.
Quite honestly, your skills and experience sections should work hand in hand. A skills section will showcase you have the skill, first and foremost. Your experience section will come in with the assist and demonstrate how and in what ways you’ve gained that skill.
For example, someone may list Salesforce as a skill they have in their skills section. While it’s great they have it listed, the skills section isn’t a great place to show how/why/where you got that experience. Adding a bullet point in your experience section like this will help better qualify the experience: “Maintained a database of more than 500 past, present, and potential clients utilizing Salesforce as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool.”
If you have soft skills listed as well in your skills section, such as strong communication, time management, strong organizational skills, etc., the experience section can help there too. This way, you can demonstrate how you emulate those skills instead of just listing them and leaving the rest to the hiring manager’s imagination.
When it comes to experience section logistics, here are some general rules of thumb I try to follow:
Try to list at least 3 bullet points per job explaining duties and responsibilities you performed, key accomplishments from your time there, etc. More are absolutely fine as long as they aren’t repetitive.
Leave off work experience that doesn’t contribute anything any longer. My experience as a cashier from Piggly Wiggly in high school is now firmly off my resume now that I have professional job experience in my field. If you’re trying to get into an industry but have no experience, leave your work experience on there to show good tenure in positions.
Space on your resume is valuable: do not have 4 separate lines for the company’s name, dates of employment, location, and job title. Try to truncate it into two.
Whether you decide on bullet points or paragraph format to list experience, ensure it’s not a blob of text. It will likely get ignored because of how daunting it looks on the page.
Jobs in the past should read as past tense, jobs you’re currently in should be listed as present tense.
For example: “Resolved level one technology issues for users” for past jobs, “Resolving level one technology issues for users” for present roles.
Jobs should be listed in chronological order according to start date, with the most recent job on top. Resumes in reverse chronological order are confusing and do a poor job of showcasing your current experience/role.
Try utilizing two experience sections if applicable.
For example, if you’re a college student with internship experience relating to your career AND prior work experience that does not relate. Title the related section “Professional ‘xyz industry’ Experience”, and the unrelated as “Other Work Experience”.
Your experience section is the one place that will clearly display how qualified you are for the position. If there’s not enough information, a recruiter or hiring manager likely won’t realize or understand your qualifications. Too much (ie large blobs of text or multiple pages of information) and the reader will likely be discouraged from digging out the information from the stack.
Being concise yet descriptive is key. Say what you need to say, but make it easily digestible.
If you’re unsure on what to write, look up resume examples or past job descriptions for the same role you performed. While you shouldn’t copy it word for word, these are some great ways to draw some inspiration.
Also check out my video on the resume writing tool in Microsoft Word, linked at the bottom.
By sticking all of these sections together, you’re well on your way to writing an effective resume that will make hiring manager’s want to see more.
Happy resume writing!
This article is my own and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of TEKsystems.
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