As the photo states "You didn't come this far to come this far."

And that's what your experience should reflect. 

This article examines what to do with the content in the experience section of your resumé and other important sections, so that you stand out from the pack to the employer, and your potential shines.  The content mostly suits job seekers in North America. 

Let's get right into it. 

How do I write the experience section of my resume to stand out?

So you've crafted a tailored resumé with a solid highlights of qualifications section (typically for Canadian resumés) or profile and skills section (typically for U.S. resumés) that catches the employer's attention. 

Now that you've got it, let's not fumble the ball!

You can write your experience section to make you stand out, even if the rest of the candidates had similar job histories to yours!  Because your experience is your experience, and their experience is theirs. 

So how do you wrangle up your experience on paper to land that job you like?  You can start first by examining which experience to write about because it might not be so cut and dry.  And you will want to target jobs properly to make the most of your chances.  Then it comes down to how you write it. 

Experience on a resumé you send out is not just your experience.  It is your experience according to what the employer is looking for. 

And here are two ways it can go. 

What if I have no experience?

Huh?  How long have you been alive?  If you babysat and rounded up siblings to travel home, you have experience.  If you were in a sports team, band, or club, you have experience.  If you volunteered at a pet sanctuary, you have experience.  If you received an award at a science fair or merit at a writing competition, you have experience. 

But that isn't work experience... is it?  Who cares?  

Clever job seekers are not writing their resumés to show work experience, they're writing them to show experience, and experience is experience. 

When you're applying for entry-level jobs, unless they state "minimum X number of years required", apply!  And apply even if you fall shy of the number of years.  You never know.  Employers' job postings are more like wish lists anyways than they are requirements set in stone. 

The type of experience should only matter if the job you're interested in is asking for certain qualifications or hard skills that pertain to the job title, and even this can be attained through your education or training.  If the employer prefers "working experience" with these skills, again, apply.  You never know.  

If you lack "working experience", expand on your school projects, especially if they exposed you to sources outside of school or Google, like practical sources in your industry.  These could be phoning up or walking into the municipality's Lands & Surveys division for data on your mapping project, or it could be volunteering in a hospital waiting room to assist triage staff for your career studies project.  You can detail education entries just like you detail experience entries.  And away you go!

And about that education section, you can detail education entries to include courses you completed that you feel the employer would be interested in and would help them assess whether you'd be the right fit.  Mention these relevant courses even if you're in the process of completing them, e.g., "Toronto Library, Certificate in Technical Writing (in-process), March 2023" or "Red Cross, First-AID AED/CPR Class C, April 2023 to est. May 2023."

When you include certificates of education on your resumé, often the name alone on a certificate does not say enough.  And with so many education programs out there, employers can get confused even when they try to Google it. 

So help them out by giving a brief explanation of the program.  For example, if your program was "Advanced Diploma in Engineering Software", that might give enough specific information to an employer who is looking to hire a person who can plot survey points on a map to develop roadway corridors.  But if you mention which software you used, perhaps one with GIS mapping features or 2D or 3D modelling of land, and you explain briefly what you accomplished with them, this puts you leagues ahead of the rest who only listed the name of the diploma on their resumé. 

Under your education, you can even detail your capstone project for good measure because those always take exhaustive amounts of effort, aka work. 

And you'd be pleased to know that any experience, even if it is a co-op, internship or externship that you completed while you were still a student, is considered experience and you should include it under the experience section of your resumé, and of course, count it within the years of experience you claim to have in your industry, e.g., "Four months of experience in social work", or "Under one year of experience as an IT technician".  

Count experience even if it is from your country of origin outside of North America.  

And if you are in a regulated profession (e.g., physician, nurse, teacher, engineer, technologist, etc.), show the employer that you are continuing your career in North America by mentioning that you have joined the relevant regulatory bodies, and include whether you are enrolled in any bridging/equivalency programs to help you continue your career. 

 

Survival jobs (jobs that may not be in your field but help you pay the bills) are also important, especially if they are recent or current.  

Include them under your experience.  This indicates to the employer that you are a responsible person, you know how to keep busy, and you don't wait for opportunities to fall into your lap. 

What if I have too much experience? 

Then don't overwhelm the employer.  

If you're humble enough to go after an entry-level job so you can get your foot in the door at an employer you like or get your feet wet in the industry, focus more on the qualifications they're asking for rather than dazzling them with your five degrees. 

And if you're looking for survival jobs, do the same. 

You may also have multiple years over the number of years of experience the employer requires.  When in doubt, it is wise to stick to the language of the posting.  If they ask for two, say "over two".  If they ask for five, say "over five".  This shows you answering a job posting with relevance, and signals to the employer that you can interpret what's important, run with it, and grow with the organization. 

Just like you won't include all five of your degrees, the experience you detail won't include all of your past jobs.  And even if one or two jobs were all you had up to this point, perhaps don't overwhelm them with fifty-seven bullets in each. 

But isn't this limiting yourself?  

Well, limiting yourself would be giving the impression that the employer cannot afford you and your five degrees, or it can imply that you're not teachable when you go on and on about your experience in space orbit that is not too relevant to the work they do on earth.  If you have experience in space though, bringing that back down to terra firma where the rest of us live might be afforded by how you demonstrate on your resumé that you have transferable skills. 

What if you have a lot of experience in your industry?  Won't holding back on it seem like you're diluting your potential for future roles with the employer? 

There's a way to be clever about it.  Clever job seekers not only look for openings, but they also do thorough organization research when they find an employer they like.  This may include looking up their website for the kind of work they do, looking at possible career paths of jobs listed there or for similar jobs in the industry, and then including what is relevant to that career path on their resumé.  And career paths can vary.  A quick gander at the LinkedIn profiles of persons who are in your industry, or any industry for that matter, will show that.  

The majority of people's career paths start out one way and end up a different way.  And this is often because the person is playing their strengths.  You can too.  

So if you have strengths in multiple areas, showcase the ones the employer will want you to run with. 

For example, if an employer is a manufacturer of automobile parts, they may be more interested in your supply chain management certificate than your diploma as an airline cabin crew personnel.  If you choose to mention both, detail the first one more. 

Another example is if you have multiple careers or lines of work.  If you are an IT programmer as well as a technical writer, the employer who posted the operations manual writing job you're applying for might be more interested in your experience writing technical pieces than your extensive IT background, so detail the relevant jobs more. 

Speaking of which, here's more on detailing your experience. 

How do I detail my experience?

So you've picked the experience entries you want to mention, and of them, you've picked the ones you want to detail.  But how do you detail them?

Whatever you do, don't detail your experience with entire job descriptions. 

The employer already has a job description, for their job.  If they wanted a job description for your current or past jobs, they can search for it online using the job title.  They might find the posting for your job or postings of similar jobs.  And besides...

You're not a catalogue of job descriptions.  You're you.  And your resumé reflects you. 

Use the precious real estate on the page well because you only have two pages on a resumé to work with.  Be smart about it. 

Use the experience section to tell the employer what they cannot Google about your job. 

And I don't mean trade secrets here.  I mean accomplishment statements.  These statements show your contributions to that job that would differ from another person even if you both share the same job title at the same employer.

For example, if you're applying for a security guard position for an organization that provides security services for large events, and you and another candidate both served at Toronto's Pride Parade, you might have handled dispatch for missing persons, and the candidate might have been searching for them.  And if you were part of security at Wonderland's Rollercoaster Park, you might even have experience finding missing children.  And if, in your experience, you developed a sweeping strategy that helped find them faster... what are you waiting for!?  Put that down on your resumé!

These details will not only help you write your resumé but will give you solid talking points during your interview.  And speaking of the interview, you don't always have to limit yourself to discussing only the experience you included on your resumé.  You can pull your answers from just about anywhere.  Since employers are more interested in your relevant experience or recent experience, try to pull from those more.  Detailing your experience also works beyond the interview.  It can help you further apply yourself to the job when you've already been connecting yourself to it since drafting up a resumé. 

Summary

I've got you for a summary.  Here's a recap on how to write the experience section on your resumé so you stand out to the employer. 

1. Your experience is personalized to you and it is relevant to what the employer is looking for. 
2. If you feel you have no experience, you might be pleasantly surprised at what counts as experience on a resumé.
3. If you feel you have too much experience, there are ways you can write it to not overwhelm the employer, while still connecting to a potential career path they may have to offer. 
4. Include education entries that are relevant to the job.  And you can detail your education entries the same way you detail your experience entries. 
5. And when you detail your experience entries, use them to tell the employer what they cannot Google about your job, meaning use accomplishment statements, which are your unique contributions to that job. 
6. These details can give you talking points during the interview and help you in that job when you start it. 

Notes

This article contains no text pictures to ensure that every word can be read aloud by a text-to-speech application. And was tested using Google Chrome’s “Read Aloud” add-on.

Bio

Tiffany Persaud is a freelance writer and resumé writer who has helped dozens of people find jobs they like during the pandemic and coming out of it.

Resources

Want to land more interviews with your resumé? Book me for more information. Rates apply.

References