Experience Section

Before You Begin

You may find it helpful to create a list of all of your past and current experiences (including your duties, accomplishments, and any official recognition you received) before you start on the “Experience” section. By “past and current experiences,” Career Services recommends that you include:

• Full or part-time work.
• Military duty.
• Summer, volunteer, or classroom experiences.
• Leadership experience in student organizations or similar groups.

From this comprehensive list, you’ll be able to identify (and give the most space to) those experiences that are relevant to your target opportunities. Obviously, it’s best if your experiences are a direct match for your target positions, but if this isn’t an option, be sure to highlight skills that are applicable (or “transferable”) to your target opportunity.  For example, if you worked in a fast food restaurant and took customers’ orders, you have experience interacting with customers, understanding and fulfilling their needs, etc. You can match these skills to many possible positions (e.g. sales, public relations, marketing and communications, etc.) or use them to demonstrate your interpersonal abilities for almost any role. Don’t make a recruiter try to guess how things relate – spell it out by prioritizing the most relevant information (as identified through your research).

How to Present Your Content

The content in the Experience section is presented using “bullet points” – specially crafted phrases that clearly, concisely and favorably describe your contributions. Use the formula below to create your bullet points and match the content to the requirements of your target opportunity.
• Action Verb + Accomplishment + Results; for example:Exceeded sales quotas by 25% during internship.
• Begin each description with a past tense action verb (see a list of action verbs in F&MConnect) unless you still hold the position (then use present tense action verbs).
• If you held more than one position with the same organization, and they occurred one after the other, only list the organization’s name once.
• Quantify – when possible, show the scope of accomplishments by using US dollar amounts and/or percentages.
• Try to avoid having just one word on a line.
• Avoid repetition of the same word(s) in your bullet points. For example, try not to use the word “performed” more than once in your resume.

How to Improve Your Bullet Point Content

Tailoring the content of your bullet points for a specific opportunity or organization takes some effort, but it will significantly increase the effectiveness of your resume as a marketing tool. Career Services recommends the following strategies to help you improve your content.

Keywords

Recruiters usually search resumes for “keywords” that are associated with the opportunity for which they’re recruiting. Keywords can be anything from technical terms (e.g. C++) to personal attributes (e.g. self-starter). Increase the impact of your resume with recruiters by identifying the keywords for your target position and incorporating as many of them as you can into your resume bullet points.To identify keywords, review several job or internship postings  for your target position. Also, have experts review your resume and ask them which keywords they would recommend you include.

Professional Skills

Although recruiters will focus on comparing your skills and experience to their needs, they’ll also look for a standard set of professional skills. Therefore, as you create your resume bullet points, try to demonstrate your:

• Adaptability / flexibility

• Analytical abilities

• Communication skills

• Initiative

• Leadership

• Problem solving abilities

• Results orientation

• Teamwork / interpersonal skills

Examples

Say you worked in a hardware store over the summer. Your duties included:
• Assisting customers with finding and purchasing the right products.
• Helping the manager with inventory once a week.
• Making daily cash deposits to the bank each day.

If you were applying for a marketing position, you would want to focus attention on the sales aspect of this job. One of your resume bullet points might read:
• Generated $15,000 in sales by identifying customers’ needs and recommending appropriate products.

If you were applying for an operations position, you would want to focus attention on the inventory aspect of this job. One of your resume bullet points might read:
• Contributed to effective inventory control through weekly inspections, reducing errors by 10%.

If you were applying for a finance or accounting position, you would want to focus attention on the daily deposits aspect of this job. One of your resume bullet points might read:
• Managed preparation and recording of cash deposits averaging $5,000 daily.

Additional

The “Additional” section of your resume contains your skills (e.g., technical abilities, languages, etc.), extra-curricular involvement (especially if in a leadership role) and interests (e.g. sports, arts, etc.). Although you may feel that this section of the resume expresses the most about you, as a goal, try to make it no larger than half the size of the experience section.
• Include foreign languages only if you are fluent in them and they are required by your target position.
• Include computer skills only if you are proficient in them and they are required by your target position.
• Include relevant leadership experience, achievements, certifications, and memberships not included elsewhere on your resume.
• If your education or work experience is not in the US and you possess permanent US work authorization, include authorization status.
• If not included elsewhere in your resume, include interests such as sports, student organizations, and the arts.
• Don’t include religious or political affiliations. Even though these affiliations may be quite meaningful to you on a personal level, you can’t anticipate how a recruiter with differing affiliations may react to them. As with all things professional, it’s best to keep the focus on neutral (and business-relevant) details.