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Writer's pictureCaitlin Baird

resumes: how to format experience

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:

  1. Position title or type of qualification, ex. Bachelor's of Arts; Cashier; Diploma; etc

  2. Company name or certification-granting body, ex. Vancouver Career College; Safeway; Family for whom you babysit; Red Cross; etc

  3. 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.


For further information about pitching "unrelated" experience, see this post.



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