Your work experience is central to a resume.
It is where you showcase your professional experience and status by listing your past positions, responsibilities, and specific accomplishments.
This article discusses these aspects of your resume and provides:
- Work Experience Resume Sample.
- Professional Experience Summary Examples.
How should you write your experience section in a resume?
Think what an employer might be looking for as s/he starts on today’s pile of resumes.
The employer wants it clear, short and to the point –
Something to catch his eye in the first 30 seconds or so when looking over the resumes and before he can focus on a selected few.
Employment history is the part where you demonstrate your actual, hands-on experience and accomplishment in the field.
This section looks good in a resume when it is organized, relevant, and provides just enough professional specifics: numbers, percentage, and technical terms.
Accomplishments vs Responsibilities: Whenever possible, list concrete accomplishments – Accomplishments are better proof of your ability, knowledge, than general job descriptions.
How to write a work experience section that gets noticed?
This article will guide you on writing an effective work experience section, with many tips for crafting a strong professional experience section.
Continue reading.
Showcase Your Professional Experience:
Essential Tips for Writing a Strong Resume
Use these quick tips –
- Style and Format: Whatever it is, write it down in a professionally precise manner. Use easy-to-follow layout, like bullet format for lists of accomplishments or number format for list of responsibilities.
- Begin with the header: position / responsibilities, time period, name of organization – Provide job title, company name, and (briefly) name your responsibilities.
- Previous Employers: Instead of making it one long line (difficult to follow), break it into two lines, with the organization name and address being the second line.
- Then, use a bullet format to list accomplishments below.
- Accomplishments: Let your actual accomplishments speak for you.
List concrete achievements – A project you finished successfully, an initiative you followed to closure, a problem you solved, an improvement you suggested, designed, and deployed. - Use action verbs: Begin your accomplishments with them: achieved, accomplished, managed, initiated, solved, developed, increased, improved, etc.
- Be succinct, specific, and professional: provide facts, numbers, percentages, dates, names.
- Concise and Precise: Each entry in the experience section should be concise, as well as precise.
- Be succinct, specific, and professional: provide facts, numbers, percentages, dates, names.
- Be Honest: Always be honest. This is very important to both experienced and inexperienced job seekers. Employers are experienced in correlating resumes with interviewees. They are shrewd enough to see when someone is trying to hide or exaggerate experience.
- Relevancy: List everything of relevance, in the proper order according to the resume experience format you have chosen. Even if you have little significant experience, mention it.
Mastering the Art of Writing a Winning Work History:
Examples and Guidelines
Professional Experience: Resume Sample
[Job Title]
[Company details], [Location] 2006 – present
Core Responsibilities and Achievements
- Successfully managed large scale x-z million-dollar budget projects.
- Led cross company R&D teams in developing innovative ABC solutions.
- Consistently exceeded goals for sales, and maximize customer base, inventory management, and productivity.
- Initiated change management to increased profitably doing XYZ
- Designed and developed XYZ which generated a 30% increase in products Quality Assurance, resulting in customer satisfaction and revenues.
- Maintained daily contact with [industry/market] leaders to communicate company brand, goals and promote products campaigns.
- Maintained daily contact with customers to communicate to measure sales progress and maximize service performance.
As you can see, each sentence begins with an action verb and describes an impressive job achievement.
Summary of Professional Experience
You may also opt for summarizing your professional expertise at the top of your resume.
- During the last 7 years, led software development projects including – initial requirements, UI design, launch and implementation. Sound expertise and reputation for teamwork, high-energy work ethic and the ability to deliver large, complex projects on-time and on-budget.
- 15 years’ experience in software development with Strong understanding of the technical aspects of administration software, including software algorithms and initiating positive changes to the system protocols.
- 8 years of combined experience in legal and financial aspects of M&A, having deep knowledge of deals and transactions, including assessment and management of risk.
Professional Experience Examples with Work History and Accomplishments
Here is an example of a job history entry with relevant accomplishments:
Sales Experience Resume Sample
[Sales Executive]
[Company details], [Location] 2008 – present
- Managed business development and accounts of software sales for [COMPANY].
- Saved $15 million annually by reducing fixed spending; 10% and variable overhead spending; 19% through a variety of cost-improvement initiatives through better utilization of resources.
- Developed and implemented client service program, which expanded small-to-medium client base by 35%.
Points to consider:
- This is an effective way to list your professional experience. Give the general responsibility, as well as specific job title and geographic area in one brief sentence.
- Then, provide two good accomplishments with relevant technical detail.
- Since you are a sales executive, having saved a substantial sum of money for your company is a real testimony to your competence. Your explanation of how you did it testifies to your truthfulness, knowledge, and creative initiative.
- The second accomplishment gives an example of your effective client orientation.
- It is clear and to the point and makes good use of action verbs like “developed” and “implemented.”
- Always list the company name along with your period of employment (e.g. 1998-2008 or 2015 – Present).
Sample Resume Experience section
Professional Experience/Work History/Employment
[Job Title]
[Company details], [Location] 2007 – present
Responsibilities and career achievements
- Performed X Y Z with a variety of market leaders, partners and customers.
- Discovered and developed marketing opportunities for ABC.
- Built strong lasting relationships with market players etc etc.
Have you noticed the action verbs written at the beginning of sentences? refer to Resume Action Words and Resume Keywords.
See many more examples at the free resume samples sector of this website.
Writing the resume experience section this way, even the simplest job will look professional and of some significance. You will show yourself as a person who is willing to learn from every experience and advance up the ladder.
Instead of saying: “worked in a parking lot”
You say – Parking Attendant and Team Manager.
- Content: Below the header includes specific tasks and accomplishments. This is a good place to use bullet format. Be concise and use specifics – numbers, projects, precise responsibilities:
For example:
- Supervised quality control of XYZ products.
- Proposed and implemented XYZ improvements in the ABC product line.
- Provided 50 department workers with instruction on XYZ.
Employment Resume Examples
Good and Bad Examples of Employment History in a Resume
Take any job. The principle is always the same.
Art Teacher – Bad Example:
- Many years of resourceful and imaginative teaching at Ben Franklin Junior High in Pasadena.
This job history does provide the school name and address, but your actual merit as a teacher remains a little vague.
“Resourceful and imaginative” does not inspire trust. It is unsupported by any professional specifics. No action verbs have been used to indicate what you actually did in your employment.
You may indeed be an excellent professional teacher, but the description is not specific enough for the employer who is sifting through hundreds of similarly written resumes.
Art Teacher – Good Example:
- Enhanced subject-matter learning and gained pupil attention by using various techniques including Smart Boards, movies, music, and student performance.
This is a much better example of work history which actually provides an example of an accomplishment. This is much more likely to arrest the employer’s attention.
It uses teaching concepts, such as “subject-matter learning” and “pupil attention.” It shows that the employee is familiar with specific teaching responsibilities.
It is important to list specific activities with concrete objects in order to demonstrate creativity and resourcefulness on the teacher’s part (instead of merely saying “resourceful”). Using an action verb such as “enhanced” will convey enthusiasm for the subject.
Let’s take another example: Sales Resume.
Salesperson – Bad Example:
- 10 Years experience selling various products, with excellent ability to increase business growth and handle daily business operations.
This example gives us the number of years, but that is the only real professional specific. The rest of the sentence could refer to a million other candidates. It says what any salesperson should be. But it does not show what you, as a salesperson, are yourself.
Sales Person – Good Example:
- Initiated new marketing strategies and designed innovative advertisements by taking advantage of the company’s 2.3 million in used car inventory, increasing sales that year by 5%.
The example begins with another excellent action verb – “initiated.”
It shows creativity, confidence, and independence. It is backed up by enough specifics to suggest that the employee knows what he is talking about.
It gives specific areas of interrelated activities and says exactly how the sales professional used company property and achieved concrete results (which can be verified).
The bottom line is:
spend time writing your employment history carefully, with much attention to detail.
Don’t try to suggest a big, but vague picture. It is better to give a few specific projects you successfully and verifiably completed.