Work Experience

• As a rule, you should only show the most recent 10-15 years of your career history and only include the experience relevant to the positions to which you are applying.
• No matter how long you’ve been in a job, or how much you’ve accomplished there, you shouldn’t have more than 5 bullets in a given section. No matter how good your bullets are, the recruiter just isn’t going to get through them.
• Remember that you should allocate space on your resume according to importance. So, if there’s a choice between including one more college internship or going into more detail about your current role, always choose your current role (unless a previous job was more relevant to the one for which you’re applying).
• Look at each bullet point and make sure it’s understandable to the average person. Remember that the first person who sees your resume might be a recruiter, an assistant, or even a high-level executive—and you want to be sure that it is readable, relevant, and interesting to all of them.
• Use as many facts, figures, and numbers as you can in your bullet points. How many people were impacted by your work? By what percentage did you exceed your goals? By quantifying your accomplishments, you really allow the hiring manager to picture the level of work or responsibility you needed to achieve this accomplishment.
• Then, take each statement one step further and add in what the benefit was to your boss or your company. By doing this, you clearly communicate not only what you’re capable of, but also the direct benefit the employer will receive by hiring you.
• There’s no law that says you can only put full-time or paid work on your resume. So, if you’ve participated in a major volunteer role, worked part-time, freelanced, or blogged? Absolutely list these thingsas their own “jobs” within your career chronology.
• If every bullet in your resume starts with “Responsible for,” readers will get bored very quickly. Use better verbsto mix it up: Controlled, Coordinated, Executed, Administered, Built, Charted, Conserved etc.
• Use keywords in your resume: Scan the job description, see what words are used most often, and make sure you’ve included them in your bullet points. Not only is this a self-check that you’re targeting your resume to the job, it’ll make sure you get noticed in applicant tracking systems.

What words shouldn’t you include? Detail-oriented, experienced, and people person—these terms are overused, and we bet there’s a better way to describe how awesome you are.

The deal is, even after including all of these, your CV should still be neat, brief, concise and well spaced. That’s where we come in.