Measuring the Listing of Experience on a Resume

When writing your own resume

For those who write their own resumes instead of paying a service to have one written for them, the goal is always to create a document that is as complete and professional as it would be if a professional resume writing service had written it; and in so doing self preparers [sic] have been known to embellish areas in an otherwise well-written resume in an effort to impress potential employers, but instead, end up defeating the intended purpose.

One of the embellishing mistakes made most often is that of the individual’s professional experience; so if you are one who prefer to write your own resume, make sure to consider the following questions before you begin writing:

• What is your career objective?
• Are you changing careers?
• Are you looking for professional growth?
• What experience do you have that will help in meeting your professional goals?

To get started in developing your resume, list all of your previous experience in chronological order, starting with your latest job on a piece of paper, in order of dates of employment, job title, full company name and location of your employment. At this point you can take a look at what you have written down and then consider (calculate?) just how much experience you have acquired based on the dates you’ve written down.

Good “best practices” rule

It has become more commonplace to change jobs more frequently and, as a result, folks are not able to build their careers in one place or with one employer; and as such, it is possible that someone with ten years of professional experience following college has had over three jobs.

Although this lack of continuity in employers does not seem that important to include on a resume, it certainly becomes significant to an individual with over 30 years of experience. It is for this reason that you should set limits on what you include and what you exclude from your well-written resume in the professional experience section.

Ideally, a well-written resume should not exceed two pages; and depending on the type of jobs you have held, as well as your responsibilities in those jobs, two pages don’t seem to account for a lot of space. So a good “best practices” rule to adopt when listing your experiences is not to exceed your most recent five jobs, despite the period over which you held them.

Always keep the length of your resume in mind when you’re deciding on the number of jobs you will list; and if your last five jobs and accompanying responsibilities will exceed one page, then consider paring down the experience to three of your most recent positions.

Avoiding embellishment

You could also consider the time you spent at each organization for which you have worked and– list up to the last ten to fifteen years of experience, if that appears a more suitable fit to the resume document.

In other words, it is not necessary to list every job you’ve ever had in order to showcase your qualifications and years of experience; but if you have a long professional career, just focus on the last three to five jobs and use the profile or summary at the beginning of the resume to highlight the number of years you have spent working, or the number of years you have spent in a certain industry acquiring specific skills.

Chronological Resume Template: Resume Solution, What you Need to Creat your US and Canadian Resume (Template, Resume, Functional, Jobs, Opportunities)

When listing your experiences, it is important that you do so in chronological order without skipping any of the jobs you have held; and while you may feel that certain jobs are not particularly complimenting to your current career objective, you should not avoid listing them on your resume.

Work on highlighting the responsibilities that are transferable across various industries in stead of omitting particular jobs or employers which might result in gaps being created in your employment history.

Resume quality over listing quantity

It is important to understand that leaving any unexplained gaps in your work history will raise questions by your potential employer; so don’t create gaps on your resume by listing your experience out of order or skipping jobs you have had.

Finally, make sure that your cover letter accounts for any additional qualifications you would like to bring to the attention of a potential employer that you didn’t include on the resume.

Your well-written resume should be concise, well written, and designed to sell you as the best candidate for any job you pursue. Just remember: It’s quality over quantity that actually counts.