Job Resume:
Deciding what goes in and what stays out

You need or want a job, so you need a job resume. What will go on your resume and how?

Let us deal first with the “what” and then go on to the “how.”

Your job resume should tell the reader about all the experience, knowledge and training you have which is relevant to the job for which you are applying.

It does not have to list every thing you have ever done regardless of relevance. It should explain the skills you have as related to this current opportunity.

Let us look at this in sections.

Firstly, we’ll consider your work history. Just about everyone understands that on a resume there should be a list of your previous jobs.

And this is true, you do need a list of previous jobs – up to a point.

You should list enough jobs to fill in the dates of the last 10 years, preferably with no gaps.

If you have been in the workforce for more than 10 years, it is your choice whether to include that older information.

My recommendation is:- do NOT include it if it is in work irrelevant to the job you a presently applying for- do NOT include it if it is just repetition of what you have been doing for the most recent 10 years- do not include it if there were many gaps, or an problems with employers etc.

DO include older work history if it has specific skills, experience or accomplishments that do not reappear in more recent work history.

If for example you once worked as a Supervisor in a retail location, but have for the past 10 years or more been working as an office administrator, and are now wanting to re-enter the retail field.

Your most recent experience as office administrator definitely has some skills you can transfer over to your new job, but your older experience in retail is obviously extremely relevant and so should be included.

DO include older work history in your job resume if you have been out of the workforce, for any reason, for any significant part of the past 10 years.

Put in enough older information to show you have extensive workplace experience, and of course, the more relevant you can make that the better.

Any jobs you have had, and decide based on the above guidelines to put in your resume, which are not directly relevant to the job for which you are applying, should be described more briefly.

However, if you consider the skills you used in that job that can be used in the new job, you will find that an “irrelevant” job can often have many great skills that are directly transferable to the new job.

If we take for example the scenario mentioned previously of someone who has worked in office administration going for a position in retail supervision.

What transferable skills, including soft skills, can you think of that will be appropriate to list on the job resume?

There will be a great many Communication Skills, since presumably our office administrator had to communicate with others in the office, probably customers and clients also.

There must have been times when conflict or at least difficult and stressful situations arose and were dealt with.

It will have included giving out of information clearly and concisely, of demonstrating good listening skills etc etc.

There is a very long list of communication skills that could be transferred from office to retail.

Then we have Organizational Skills, perhaps computer skills and sometimes sales skills.

These groups should all be broken down into individual skills within the categories and a very strong and effective resume could be built using these transferable skills from an “irrelevant” job!

Personal Self Management Skills are part of our personalities.

They include information about how we relate to other people, get along with coworkers, supervisors, how we work under pressure, deal with deadlines etc.

The challenge here is to write what is true for your, relevant to the job, and does not sound like every other resume.

Anyone can say “hard worker, team player, honest”.

Your challenge is to mention these where true and relevant to the job, but also give an example of when you demonstrated these qualities.

- Honest: trusted by previous employer to handle large amounts of cash and sensitive information on a regular basis

That would be an example of a line in a resume showing honesty.

This is an example of a soft skills and are rank very highly on the list of things employers are wanting in employees.

So look through the job description for the job you are looking for. If you don’t have one for this specific job, look online and find descriptions of similar jobs and use these.

Write down a list of skills, both the obvious and the implied that are being asked for.

Then write down which you have, and what example you can give of having it. Cover as many skills required for the job as you truthfully can claim.

If you don’t have a required skill, don’t mention it at all.

It is your job to tell the employer what you have. It is the employer’s job to work out what you don’t have. How to deal with that at the interview is a whole other topic.

So now you have your skills. How to put them into a resume.

You can use the chronological job resume if you have been continuously in the same type of work over the past 10 years, although I prefer the Combination Resume even then.

You can use a skills based resume if your work history has been varied.

Or you can use a combination resume if you are applying to government, recruiter, banks or other places that have not yet come around to the concept of the skills based resume.

Which ever job resume you choose, please remember, it’s not just about your job duties, it’s about YOU, your transferable skills and your personality.

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