Making the Most of Professional Experiences on a Resume

Making the Most of Professional Experience on a Resume

"The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions." - Confucius

Boiling down years of experience into a resume can be a challenge. So can filling the page when substantial experience is yet to be gained. Yet both challenges can be met with the right approach toward developing the professional experience section of a resume.

Located below the skill summary section at the top of the page, the professional experience section is a place to support the career highlights and qualifications referred to in the skill summary. It provides an overview of work experience that is relevant to the job seeker's current career path, and reveals how the worker obtained the skills he or she has listed in the skill summary.

Before they begin work on the professional experience section of their resumes, job seekers should be clear on the purpose of the section and establish goals for making it effective. The following are suggested goals for this key part of any resume, with tips for making it as powerful a selling tool as possible.

Goal #1: Convey an overall message of employability

Since resumes can be reviewed by quite a few people in different roles - recruiters, recruiting managers, HR coordinators, hiring managers, managers of the department that is hiring and their supervisors, and managers of other departments that may have relevant job openings - they should, more than any other message, communicate that "this candidate would be great at any job, and especially the one they are applying for". This can be done by using work examples that demonstrate team contributions, initiative in improving processes or creating new programs, the ability to reduce costs or bring in more money, and a progressive increase in responsibility and skill throughout the candidate's employment timeline. Communicating such a message gets a resume past screeners and into the hands of decision makers for specific jobs.

Goal #2: Show a timeline of relevant work experience

A potential employer wants to be able to quickly go over a candidate's employment history to get a sense of their background. As he or she reads the professional experience section, they look to see:

• What job titles the candidate held at what companies
• If the candidate has previous experience in the industry, with the company, or with competitors
• If the candidate seems overqualified or underqualified for the job level and compensation
• If the candidate occupied positions of increasing responsibility over time, and how quickly their career progressed
• How long on average the job candidates has stayed with jobs
• If the candidate has shifted between careers several times
• If there are lengthy gaps between jobs that are not explained
• What skills the candidate developed through their experience
• If the candidate uses revealing terminology that shows they are familiar with the role or industry
• What the candidate's overall experience reveals about how well they would fit in with the culture of the organization and the others with which they would be working
• How easily they will be able to "sell" the candidate to other decision makers

If the resume has been received in response to a specific job opportunity, a potential employer will evaluate the candidate's employment history to see how well it fits in with the requirements of the job opportunity.

Gaps in employment history may not give reason to discard a resume, depending on trends in unemployment, the level of competition for the job, the kind of position available, the overall promise of the candidate, and the hiring preferences of the organization and involved decision makers. Instead, they may just become something to ask about during the interview.

Note that professional experience on a resume does not mean all experience - just relevant experience to the candidate's current career path, or the specific job for which he or she is applying. Therefore there may be gaps in the timeline where irrelevant experience was obtained. (However, work experience should be made relevant whenever possible.)

For more guidance on creating and perfecting resumes, read Tips for Perfecting Resumes and An Effective Resume Fits Like a Good Suit.

Goal #3: Get the most out of work experience

Most workers who are focused on furthering their careers show up for work each day looking for things they can do that look will good on their resume. Therefore, a resume should make the most of all that hard work.

Depending on how tough the job market is in their field, or whether they've had discouraging experiences with previous employers, candidates may find it difficult to describe with confidence their unique experiences and contributions. Steps that can help a job seeker dig through his or her work history for treasures include:

• Conducting an inventory of all jobs - Look for work experience that is relevant or could be made relevant through creative wording. Make note of all responsibilities, tasks, team projects and accomplishments.
• Reading job descriptions - Job descriptions of
  Read job descriptions for refreshers on previous jobs and handy descriptive words.
  specific jobs, standard roles or targeted jobs can refresh the memory about responsibilities in previous jobs and provide useful descriptive words. (See Salary Wizard in the resources section below for detailed job descriptions.) When making small adjustments to a resume in order to apply for a specific opportunity, smart job seekers "do the math" for the employer by addressing the specific requirements in the position's job description with matching terminology. For example, if a requirement from a posted job is "Supervises all grant writing activity: ensures timely submission of all grant proposals, and is responsible for making sure grants are awarded", an applicant might tweak their previous work experience, which had read "Wrote and submitted five grants" to read "Solely responsible for writing and submitting five grants in a timely manner. Three grants were received without reapplication, and all five grants were eventually awarded."
• Researching the mindsets of supervisors - How would they evaluate the responsibilities and contributions of the job seeker?
• Identifying skills - What software packages, procedures, programs, projects, languages, etc. did the job seeker develop or learn during his or her experience? For example, a receptionist may have assisted with event preparation by compiling contents for binders through email and contacting contributors, printing or copying and assembling the materials, organizing them with tabs and binders ordered through an office supply catalog, creating covers using Microsoft Word templates and clipart, transporting them to the event and distributing them. They may have also made edits to a PowerPoint presentation that were provided by several people. This may have seemed like "busy work" at the time, but someone hiring an administrative assistant or secretary may be grateful to find someone familiar with this process.
• Describing accomplishments - More than just listing responsibilities and tasks, the professional experience section is all about demonstrating skill through example. Asking the question, "How did my employer measure my success?" can reveal accomplishments. Example bullet points might be: "Exceeded individual sales goals by 10% on average over 3 years", "Negotiated contract with new supply vendor reducing upfront costs by 50%" or "Worked one-on-one with over 50 troubled teens, 12 of which are now thriving in work or school."
• Making irrelevant experience relevant - Action words help a great deal with taking seemingly menial tasks or left-field jobs and turning them into applicable experience. Start each bullet point with one of these past-tense words (e.g. "Coordinated employee reviews and managed files of reviewed employees", "Planned and implemented a reworking of the mail distribution system within the company" or "Oversight of a 10-member call center expansion task force")
• Revising job titles - Sometimes a job title doesn't accurately reflect the true responsibilities of the employee, or is only meaningful within the organization. It is acceptable to revise a job title to make it more accurate and understandable to a larger audience.
• Highlighting the employer - If it might serve the job seeker to make a potential employer aware of the nature of the work a previous employer does, it is worth giving up some of the "real estate" on the page to a description of the employer. For example: "Tracked and reported audit issues for the IT department of one of the largest credit card processing companies in the US" could be listed as one bullet point under work experience for that company.
• Minimizing a message of age - A job timeline that reflects 20 or 30 years of work history will clue in a resume screener that the candidate is older than some other candidates. Unfortunately, this may deter some less enlightened decision makers from looking further into the candidate's employability. Focusing on relevant experience can help reduce the length of the timeline.

Goal #4: Make it easy to read

The average time spent reading a resume is 7 seconds. The professional experience section is where most of the attention goes, so it should be easy on the eyes and handle only the necessary facts. Layout tips include:

• Use bullet points for each unique item to condense, organize, and create white space
• Each bullet point item should be 1-2 lines in length
• Focus on key responsibilities (no need to list all responsibilities or accomplishments for a job - just those that are most relevant)
• Use keywords to catch the reader's eye and get the attention of resume searchers
• Use no smaller than a 9 pt font - sans serif fonts such as Arial make lots of text look cleaner and less overwhelming
• To fit more on a page, margins can be .8 inch (instead of 1.0) and still print and be hole-punched correctly
• To fill up a page, use "space before and after paragraphs" for bullet points and other lines
• Weed out all unnecessary words, then spell check, proofread, and ask others to review

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