You want your work experience, volunteer experience, and educational qualifications all laid out in the same way, with the position of each item providing a visual guide through your history.
The key points to include are:
Position title or type of qualification, ex. Bachelor's of Arts; Cashier; Diploma; etc
Company name or certification-granting body, ex. Vancouver Career College; Safeway; Family for whom you babysit; Red Cross; etc
Years employed or graduation year, ex. Expected graduation 2022; 2018 - 2021; etc
Examples for Education
Using the example of my Masters degree, here are four examples of how you can display your educational experiences. Note how I use white space (also called negative space - turn on your nonprinting characters in Word!), italics, bold, and punctuation to draw attention to the key information. Also note that some layouts take up more space vertically or horizontally. You can utilize these formatting tools to condense your experiences into the ideal one/two page resume. You can also use an accent colour or font. Mix and match the ideas below to create a layout that you like. Remember your goal is to display your history in a legible, visually-appealing way. PS - your certifications should be formatted similarly as well.
1.
Masters of Arts: Creative and Critical Writing | University of Gloucestershire | 2021
2.
Creative and Critical Writing - MA
University of Gloucestershire, Gloucestershire, England 2021
3.
Creative and Critical Writing Masters of Arts
University of Gloucestershire 2021
4.
Creative and Critical Writing (2021)
Masters of Arts
University of Gloucestershire
Certificate example:
First Aid St John's Ambulance 2020
Examples for Work/Volunteer Experience
You want your educational experience, ideally, to be laid out in a similar way to your work experience. Below are four examples. Again, you can mix and match these formatting techniques to create a layout that works for you. I will use my current position at VaCC as an example. I will discuss how to select your listed responsibilities/skills/tasks in another post. PS columns are an excellent tool if you have a bunch of skills to list - saves vertical space!
1.
Instructor 2019 - Present
Vancouver Career College, Surrey
Career and Employment Strategies
Customer Relations
Introduction to Computers
Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Word
Keyboarding
Office Skills
2.
Instructor - Soft Skills, Computer Skills, Research and Academic Skills
Vancouver Career College, Surrey
September 2019 - Present
3.
Instructor | Vancouver Career College, Surrey | 2019 onwards
Lesson planning from preset curricula
Record-keeping for grades, attendance, and behaviour
Resource creation to supplement provided material
Class sizes of up to 80
Simultaneous courses - up to 12 per week
4.
Computer Lab Instructor Vancouver Career College, Surrey
2019 - Current
Selecting, Including, and Pitching Responsibilities, Skills, Etc
Consider first your education. The easiest way to make a great, illustrative list of your scholastic accomplishments is to adapt your course names. I have used an imaginary Vet Assistant program outline for my example.
Outline:
Animal Handling
Animal Physiology and Anatomy
Office Procedures
Computer Skills Level 1
Medical Terminology
Translated for your resume:
Comfortable with animal handling for medical procedures such as injections or surgeries
Knowledgeable in animal physiology and anatomy
Experience using office computer applications such as Excel, Word, and medical record-keeping
Trained in all standard medical office administration
Conversant in medical terminology
Here's another example, using some imagined Early Childhood Education courses.
Outline:
Child Development
Mental Health Disorders in Children
Creative Lesson Planning
First Aid
Education Theory
Translated for your resume:
Familiar with the stages of healthy physical and mental development
Able to create lessons which promote positive self image and confidence
Incorporates educational philosophies such as Reggio Emilia into the classroom
Fully qualified in First Aid and maintaining safety standards
The important takeaway about including skills and/or responsibilities is to ensure they are relevant for the position to which you are applying. For instance, I worked at an optometrist's office during my undergraduate years, but my role as an instructor is very different; therefore, I need to remove or adapt the listed experiences for the position of instructor. Let's go through this process briefly.
Example responsibilities I could list for my work at the optometrist's:
Familiar with direct-billing to a variety of insurance companies by mail and online
Takes accurate pupillary distance and centre-of-vision measurements including for progressive lenses
Able to read prescriptions from opthamologists, optometrists, opticians, and general practitioners
Timely follow-up with patients for return appointments, prescription updates, and lens arrivals
Orders glasses to the taste of our customers using sales data and knowledge of current trends
Now, none of these are relevant for my current role - they are all hyper specific for the optometry field. Sometimes you'll have directly transferable experiences which don't require any changes, but that is not what we will look at here.
Okay, so what should I do with all of this "irrelevant" experience?
Option 1: Delete it
If it's not relevant and you have other experiences, fill your resumes with those instead. Keep a copy which has every little detail included for your own records in case you ever change fields again or find a position for which the experience is relevant.
Option 2: Make it less specific to the previous field
Option 3: Make it relevant to your new field
Can I phrase these experiences to better show they are transferable to my new work?
Can I think of current experiences which were built off these tasks?
Can I included jargon from my new field?
Examples of rephrased, condensed responsibilities:
Able to use and adapt to new software easily
Educated on all office procedures and precise with paperwork
Creates and maintains positive relationships with clients
Maintains inventory according to sales data and current trends
Consistently met deadlines
Detailed record-keeping and maintenance of confidential client information
And then, you move to your cover letter to pitch your most impressive experiences. See my cover letter posts for more assistance.