hey Don Georgevich here with job
interview tools in this video I'm going to show
you how to write your work experience on
your resume so let's get started in this
section I'm going to teach you how to
write your work experience in a way
that's going to help you impress
employers so they call you for an
interview
with a lot of cases people just they
don't know how to write their work
experience statement and they send out
their resumes and nobody ever calls them
so I'm going to teach you how to do it
so that people call you because that's
really what you want right you want the
interview so ideally your resume
shouldn't be any more than one page long
now unless you have a little unless you
have a lengthy career then you go ahead
and go go to two pages if you go beyond
two pages those resumes tend to be
better suited for scientific positions
people in the world of academia and
things like that now your work
experience is probably the most critical
section on your resume it's where you
get to show off your skills and your
strengths and your accomplishments and
much great in much greater detail than
you did in your skills summary and your
work history section is going to signal
your previous track record of past
performance to a potential employer it's
going to highlight all the things that
you're good at doing and it's going to
show an employer how long you've been
working and basically what your best
doing under each job you want to write
down everything that you did no matter
how big or how small now if you filled
out the resume worksheet exercise in one
of the previous videos you'll want to
take all that information from there and
that's where in this section we're going
to use that information and we're going
to turn it into work experience
statements if you don't have that resume
worksheet guide there should be a link
at the bottom of this video where you
download it so I suggest that you do
that get it filled out because that's
what we're going to be working from in
this video okay
and one thing to keep in mind here
employment emphasize this employers
don't care about your past daily duties
they don't care it doesn't matter to
them yet most people write their resume
like a like a job description instead
what you want to do is make an
accomplishment based resume that's
what's going to get you results that's
what's going to get employers calling
you so you should have already filled
out the resume worksheet that I talked
about and that's going to have all of
your accomplishments your contributions
awards achievements and stuff like that
and now we're going to use this AR
formula here to transform all the things
that you've done into accomplishment
statements it's very simple what was the
action that you did to solve a problem
what were the results was that a number
that was achieved was it a dollar figure
was it a milestone it doesn't really
matter and then how did the company
benefit from the results of your actions
so it's a very simple formula yet very
powerful so let's walk through it and
see how it works let's say for example
let's say you worked for an insurance
company and you were responsible for
reducing claims instead of saying
responsible for claims management
accountability what you want to do is
start your accomplishment off with a
good action verb like reduced then tell
them specifically what you reduced not
just claims but customer claps
then tell them the benefit of your
actions which is how much you reduce the
claims which is 21% now I just made that
up but I don't want you to make things
up I'm just making them up for
for the purpose of this example and then
you want to end your statement with how
did you do it and by improving
management accountability is how you did
it so when you're all done you have a
powerful and specific achievement
statement like this reduced customer
claims 21 percent by improving claims
management accountability very powerful
let's take that and add it to our resume
so we can see what that looks like so
we're going to start our work experience
section off here we're just going to
call it experience and we're going to go
ahead and bold that and then our company
that we worked at so I'm going to list
the name of the company then I'm going
to put my oops list of the name of the
company I'm going to list my position
and then I'm going to list my employment
dates I'm going to say I work there from
2014 to present because I'm still there
and what I'm going to do I'm going to go
like this and then I'm just going to
bold everything like this and there we
go America insurance company clients
manager there's my date of employment
and then I'm going to go in and I'm
going to list some of the Google things
that I did and then we're going to put
our first bulleted work experience
statement and that is reduced customer
claims from 21% and then we'll move on
the next now like I say here if you
can't make fit what you want to say into
this AR formula then you're probably not
writing an achievement statement but
instead a job description I mean you can
have some job description statements on
your resume but you really want to
minimize them because they carry very
little weight with employers job
descriptions statements are like review
expense reports and approve monitor
accounts receivable responsible for
payroll
fix the copy machine that's not what you
want to have on your resume you don't
want to have a Job Description the key
to writing powerful statements on your
resume is to use action words or verbs
near the beginning of the statement like
we did we used reduced very powerful you
also want to write what you did to
achieve the results use proven and
measurable results but list it by
listing the value of those results it's
also a good idea if you can to quantify
your results and use some numbers avoid
using whole numbers because they tend
not to be as believable you know I I
increase productivity by 100% not very
believable but if you say you increase
productivity by 17% Wow
that sounds a lot more believable so
let's take a look at some examples of
some good work experience statements
increase line capacity 29% by leading a
cross-functional team to improve the
manufacturing of telescopic hydraulic
cylinders very detailed very specific
has numbers in it as a strong action
verb that says we increased here's
another way to Goodwin developed sir off
the statement with a strong action verb
like developed and implemented cost
controls which were tested by Deloitte
and they placed us in compliance
very good here's another beautiful one
this one has numbers in it we managed
and monitored service delivery for
multiple online web-based learning
industry products resulting in 2.5
million dollars in sales beautiful stuff
beautiful love it love it here's another
one
created in streamlined project
documentation resulting in a 33%
reduction in end-user training so let's
take a few of these and let's drop them
on our resume so we can see what they
look like
and there we go
under the American insurance company is
Claims Manager we have five different
bullets that's probably the least I
would want to have with my most recent
job I would go then we go no more than
10 between 5 and 10 is a good number and
then we'd start off with our next
company that we worked at and let's say
our previous company was let's just go
with Geico and let's say we were a just
Egypt and we worked there from you know
2010 to 2014
well bowled all these and I like to
stick my dates just off to the side that
we might want to say what kind of we
might want to say claims agent claims
hate it there that looks nicer now
optionally optionally you can put where
the company was located so like American
Insurance Company we could say click
Cleveland Ohio that's where I live
and there we go and then we just do the
same thing under here with more bullets
we'll just stick these under here just
for and there we go so under our so if
we go to the beginning of our resume
here we have our heading we have our
objective we have our skills summary we
have our experience we have two
companies under there that we worked for
and that's really all there is to it so
on average you should have about six to
ten work experience statements for your
most recent job for subsequent jobs you
generally don't want to have as many
maybe four to seven is more appropriate
it really depends if it's a very recent
job within the last five years you know
then maybe you do have more for a second
job that you had now like I said these
are just guidelines I mean ultimately
whatever number of statements you need
is the right number
I mean if you need 12 then you need 12 I
might ask you to try to refine a couple
of those and get it down to nine but you
know if you really feel you need 12 do
that if you only have five you know then
go with five you know whatever fits but
I urge you to avoid putting down
statements that demonstrate skills that
are not relevant to the job you're
applying that's one of the biggest
resume killers people have is they've
got skills that aren't relevant to the
job they're applying to I mean maybe
just for example maybe you were a banker
and you worked in finance and you did
consumer loans and now you're applying
for a job as a as a salesman in demand
in fact in a manufacturing industry it
doesn't really fit so you don't want to
talk about all your financial skills you
want to talk about transferable skills
things that you did in your past job
that could be related to things you
would have to do in this job if they
were to hire you and think about this I
can't say this enough if you write your
resume based on the job you have you're
going to end up
getting the same job you have right now
but if you write your resume for the job
you want to have a much better chance of
getting something new all right that's
all I have for you on writing your work
experience now there's a lot more to
this I mean I've just covered the basics
with you in this video in the resume
masterpiece I go into a lot more detail
I mean I've got a 90 page book that
details all the different ins and outs
of writing your work experience but you
know what I'm giving you here today it
should be sufficient to get you through
the resume writing process in the
shortest amount of time so in the next
video we're going to talk about writing
your education section so I'll see you
then bye now