Tag: professional experience

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.

Your Resume and Its Importance to You


The resume in brief

A resume is a one- to two-page document summarizing your career objectives, professional experiences and achievements, as well as your educational background. The resume heading should contain your name, address and contact information. The resume body should be broken into the following sections: career objective, profile and/or summary, professional experience, achievements, scholastics, and references.

Your career objective should be brief, up to two sentences, and it should give your potential employers an idea of how you wish to move forward in your professional life. A concise profile or summary should discuss who you are and how your skills and experience best apply to the job you are interested in. The summary, as well as other parts of your resume, should not contain personal information that discloses ethnicity, sexual orientation, marital status, age, living situations or any other personal information that is not directly related to your career.

It’s your professional representative

Personal profile and/or summary should only contain a few well-written sentences that convey what you can bring to the table in terms of the specific job. Use this section to attract an employer’s attention, but don’t go overboard by trying to be too creative;– keep it professional. Your experience listing should include information on one to five jobs you’ve held, starting with your current or last job, and listing previous positions in chronological order.

The listing should include a date range of your employment, name of the companies or person(s) you have worked for, and the city and state where a referenced place of employment is located (full address of employment is not necessary). List your title and your main responsibilities, with emphasis on duties that are applicable to the type of work you are seeking.

Your education should include college, graduate and post-graduate work, as well as any courses or professional certifications that are relevant to your career development. Achievements, volunteer positions, publications and interests should only be listed if they apply to your professional work experience. References should be listed if requested; best practices suggest not to list generic statements about references being available upon request as this is understood.

Attention to detail will serve you well

In the competitive, internet-driven world of job searches, your resume represents you to potential employers; and it serves as your tool to attract attention, get the interview and/or get a job. A great resume will make you stand out from other candidates by showcasing your aptitudes. Think of your resume as your sales pitch, since you need to sell yourself in the best possible way. Invest some time and research into developing your resume.

You will want to make sure that your resume is error free, so– double check your grammar and spelling, make sure that all company and school names and cities are spelled correctly. A resume containing errors, no matter how minimal, will give your potential employer the impression that you lack attention to detail, that you don’t take time to double check your work, and that you are a poor communicator.

Additionally, make sure that your resume is formatted well. Stick to basic fonts, like Arial and Times New Roman; and keep the font size and color standard. Do not use large fonts or multi-colors in your resume! And don’t go overboard with bold, italicized, or large-cap text. Keep your format consistent and make sure that the resume looks great when viewed online as well as in hard copy print.

In short, a good one gets the job done

Keep your resume to one or two pages, as– any additional pages could give an impression that you either don’t know how to concisely summarize your education and experience, or that you are listing unnecessary information for the sake of taking up space. If you’ve never written a resume before, reference books, Internet resources and assistance from a professional resume writing service are all available and can easily be accessed.

A well-written resume can make the difference between being stuck at your current job and getting an interview to land the job of your dreams, or as close to it as you can get depending on what your dream job is.