How to describe correctly work experience in a resume

Work experience is one of the most important characteristics of a jobseeker. Employers pay special attention to this part of a resume. That is why it is extremely important to present them this information in a proper way. In this post on work experience description we will advice you how to write work experience in resume correctly, especially if your experience is not big enough yet or you do not feel confident about it.

Your work experience should work on you. It is not enough just to enumerate your previous work places. This part of a resume should prove to the potential employer that you have all the required skills and you know how to use them.

Your work experience description should be maximally precise. Each place of work should have its own line with the period of work, name of the company, its brief characteristic, your position, duties and achievements.

Workplace

The name of the company should be written fully, avoiding shortenings and abbreviations. Do not think that this company is well-known to everyone. Write its sphere of activity or its departments. If the company has departments in different cities, you should also write about it.

Position

The name of your position should also be maximally precise. For example, if you write just “manager” or “head of the department”, an employer will have more questions than answers. Be clear: “sales manager”, “chief accountant”, “head of the IT department” and so on.

The work period

Resume writers of our resume writing service recommend to write the period of your work very precisely, up to a month, so that an employer could evaluate your work experience at this position in a certain company. For example, a period “2012-2013” can be interpreted differently according to the month of employment: you could work for almost two years or just for two months. Of course, employer can specify this question at the interview, but you should be invited for the interview first. And your ticket to the personal meeting is your resume. You can order resume at our resume writing company. Our experts will write an excellent professional resume for you.

Duties and achievements

When you describe your activity and achievements, you should be focused on the most important and essential points. Take into consideration what position you are applying for now. For this purpose read attentively the description of the vacancies you are interested in and define what your skills from the previous work place can help you to cope with this new job. It is better to delete the rest information so that an employer does not waste his time reading it.

If you used some special tools or software, you should definitely mention this. For example, “I used to do payroll preparation in a program 1C”. An employer will definitely pay attention to this fact, so if they need an employee who can work with 1C program, you will already have a big plus.

Pay special attention to your achievements. Do not use general and not clear phrases, such as: “department efficiency improvement”, “attraction of new clients” and so on. The fact that you used to do it, does not mean that you did it well. Use perfective verbs and prove your words with the facts and numbers. “I increased the department efficiency by 20%”, “I attracted 30 new clients to the company” – it looks much more attractive. Write a couple of such facts and your resume will favorably stand out from hundreds of other jobseekers’ resume. But remember that you should be able to prove these facts, so do not write false facts.

If working in a company you have got promotion or you have been transferred to other position, do not forget to write about it in your resume. Add this information as another work place, mention the dates, the name of your position, new duties and achievements.

Correct placement of accents, consistent and understandable form of presentation without doubts allows to stand out among other jobseekers and increases your chances for employment.

How to get a good job without work experience

To get a job you need to have work experience. But where can you get work experience if you can not be employed without it? What to do with this vicious circle? Even when you have higher education, it is hard to find a good job.

A lot depends on the employer, but usually it all is about a mere principle: a company needs an experienced employee, whom they want to buy as cheap as possible. However you want to sell yourself more expensively, but you can not do this because of the lack of experience.

Many people start to combine work and study, but they not always work in their specialty. And eventually you have to choose: whether you continue what you are doing now, or start everything from the very beginning. So what to do?

First of all you should decide in what sphere of activity you want to be occupied, and start looking for the appropriate vacancies. It is better to choose big companies, which many beginning jobseekers are afraid of. However, a big company is a big mechanism, where probably they will not demand much knowledge and experience from you. Inside the department you can learn everything in practice, there will be people who can help you. A small company of 10 workers for example, vise versa, needs specialists, who can do everything on their own from the very first day, and usually success of the company depends on each its worker.

Also staff of the big companies changes much faster due to their number, that is why it is easier to find a vacancy there. They grow faster and seek for new workers, some companies “cultivate” specialists, they provide people with paid internships.

It often happens that you get other vacancy, not the one you expected to get. However, having gained experience you will manage to get the desired position in the future. The most important is your desire to work and develop. If you do not know something or do not have necessary skills, do not be afraid to talk about it. In the working process you can learn everything, and lie can only harm you.

To gain experience it is necessary sometimes to get over yourself and work for low salary or even for free. Do not reject at once such options, consider them as investments in yourself. Start with the position of an assistant or general worker and move up the career ladder.

In fact, the companies and opportunities are much more than it may seem. If you have not managed to get into the company, dot not despair and do not give up. Vicious circle is not that “vicious” as it seems, all people begin their career somehow. Do not be afraid of difficult situations, look for vacancies, send resume and you will definitely find open doors.

Tell correctly about your achievements

Any achievement is experience that will be interesting to the potential employer. It is right to tell about your success and achievements, explain their importance. Your personal success is the success of the company.

Jobseekers are often asked to give the examples that can prove their successful experience. After all, facts and numbers can characterize you as a good specialist. All this should be briefly described in your resume and you should be ready to tell everything in details at the interview. Our professional resume writing service recommends you to prepare in advance as much useful facts about your previous experience as possible. For example, what legal documents, how many and of what complicacy you have prepared; how much you have increased the volume of sales; how many trainings you have hold; how many your articles have been published in a magazine; how many PR-companies you have organized and so on. Such examples present you in more favorable light comparing with other candidates.

For an employer it is important to know what contribution the candidate have made personally into the business development at the previous work places, and how a person can evaluate his forces. For this purpose a jobseeker should not be limited with the numbers only, he should also tell about the achievements and explain why he believes these are real achievements. You should always talk to the point, without discussing general issues.

Personal or professional achievements?

Your personal achievements are also very important. It is necessary to clarify the interviewer, if it was not mentioned previously, what achievements he is interested in, personal or professional. Achievements in various spheres can characterize you in different ways. You should understand what qualities reflect your achievements. A recruiter can judge about your leader and organizational qualities according to the achievements that are connected with your job. He can also judge about your sense of purpose, erudition, abilities to achieve the goals you set and so on.

What to tell about?

The question about achievements very often makes candidates confused. For example, what a graduate student can tell about his achievements if he does not have experience yet or he tries to get his first job. In this case, give examples from your student life and education, and also your personal life. You can tell about successful studying projects, complex research paper, or the projects you have been engaged in at your free time.

What can you tell if there was no concrete numbers or great achievements in your work, but only quality and regular performance of the duties? In this case it is important to realize it and not to be ashamed to explain the interviewer that quality everyday work is a really essential achievement. For example, at the previous workplace you prepared 3 annual reports and did it in time and without errors. The role of such achievements for the company is extremely important and demonstrates how your work has helped the business. Difficulties and challenges, new ideas, everyday labour and its results will help to evaluate correctly your experience.

Having read this post about how to write work experience in a resume, you know how to present this information correctly. So even if you have had doubts about your work experience, now you know what to do.