Professional job experience and relevant work experience are synonyms of your past work
experience.
Experience is like the heart of resume and can make all the difference between landing
up on your dream job or losing it.
So, this is one of the most important parts of a resume that calls for undivided attention.
In this section, you validate the claims that you make in your Objective Statement (if you
have one) and your Professional Summary by listing out the appropriate work experience.
Typically, people start writing a resume, starting at the Objectives, then follow through
with a Professional Summary and then list out their past work experience.
I recommend doing the opposite.
Start writing the past work experience first, then your Professional Summary and then the
Objective Statement.
This is because listing out your roles and responsibilities along with the tasks performed,
gives you a very clear picture of your achievements and you can then use that knowledge to easily
frame the other sections by making a summary out of it.
Now let’s look at how to actually list out your professional experience.
You can start listing out your experience after starting the section with titles such
as: • Experience
• Work Experience • Professional Experience
• Professional Background All of the above titles are appropriate and
you can use any of them.
So, what should you actually include in your experience?
Or in other words, what comprises of your experience in your resume?
Well, here they are: Work Experience Should Include
• Name of the company • Geographic location of the company
• Your Job Title • Dates of employment
• Responsibilities and duties allotted to you
Now that we know what to write about, another important factor here that can heavily influence
an employer to read through your experience is to provide these details in an expected
format, so that it is easy to scan and understand the information.
Let us see what this standard format is to list an experience.
List the name of the company you worked for, followed by the Job title that you held at
that company on the next line.
Both of this info should appear in the left-hand side as shown here.
On the right-hand side, list out the geographic location of the company, followed by the dates
of employment on the next line, as shown here.
Make sure that the name of the company and the geographic location of the company are
on the same line as shown here.
Also ensure that the Job title and the Dates of employment appear on the same line as shown
here.
It is very important to list out these specific details in the manner described as it is a
standard format and employers expect the information to be present at the right places.
If you happen to jumble up the information, then that can cause confusion and may require
employers to manually scan the resume costing them a lot of time in the process.
This can have a negative affect on your chances of being selected, so make sure you don’t
let that happen by following the standard format as shown.
Here are some key things that must be noted: When you mention the geographic location of
the company, you need to mention where you actually worked, rather than indicating where
the main branch or the headquarters of the parent company is located.
To understand this scenario, let’s consider an example.
Let us assume that you are a resident of Rochester, New York.
A company by the name “Random Housing” which has its headquarters located in Long
Beach, California, hired you to work at their branch located in San Antonio, Texas.
In this case, you would list the location of the company as “San Antonio, Texas”,
because you worked there.
When writing the Job title, if you were promoted to a higher rank during your work tenure,
then you could use that new title instead of the original one allotted to you.
To understand this scenario, let’s consider an example.
Let us assume that when you were hired, your Job title was “UI Designer”.
During your tenure, you got promoted to the role of “Senior UI Designer”.
In this case, it would be appropriate to indicate your role as “Senior UI Designer”, rather
than just “UI Designer” as the former represents your current or the most recent
role and status in the company.
Let’s look at how to write the list of Responsibilities.
Each of your work experience should contain at least a minimum of three duties or responsibilities
that lets a future employer get a good understanding of the work that you performed at your previous
job.
This helps your prospective employer in understanding where you might fit within their current job
requirement and their company.
There are some times when you may feel that you just did the work that was allotted to
you or maybe you handled just a couple of tasks and you have nothing else to write about.
But chances are high that you may have contributed more in some way or the other, but unable
to realize it.
If this is the case, then you may take the help of your peers or colleagues at work,
so that you can get some help in assessing your job role and then indicate the appropriate
ones in the resume.
Adding achievement is a great way to enhance the appeal of your resume.
Especially if you can include some numbers.
For example, if you are online marketer and using advanced techniques, you were able to
cut down advertising costs by 25% and increase growth by 2x times, then make sure you indicate
so.
For example, you can indicate this achievement as:
• Outperformed last year’s growth by 2x times and saved costs on advertising by 25%.
Now that you have a good idea of what to write about, start thinking deeply about your past
day-to-day duties and write a concise summary of your job achievements as your professional
job experience.