Employment history section of your resume

Employment history is the most important section, the core of each resume. As your space is limited your work history should be brief, concise and to the point. Before creating a resume, we suggest making a resume draft where you write in detail all past job duties and responsibilities and then you can easily tailor it to any position you’re applying for. Making the first draft is essential as you can be sure you’ve covered the employer’s needs. But if you build a resume by putting everything in a couple of lines, you can miss some significant facts.

First of all, you should choose the right resume format that will work best for you by highlighting your strengths and de-emphasizing your weaknesses. If you’re a highly-qualified candidate with a stellar track record or many years of work experience in the same field, choose a chronological format or 1resumewritingservice. This resume format is effective for candidates with clear qualifications who continue to move in the same career direction. But if you have no or little work experience, want to change career fields or have huge gaps in employment history, choose a functional resume. This format will help you highlight your skills and achievements by putting emphasis on qualifications, not on the experience.

If you had one employer, you have the luxury to dedicate the whole employment section to that job by going into detail and mentioning all job duties you performed. However, having several job titles can significantly increase the financial value of a resume. So if you had more than one employer there is no need to dedicate the same amount of space to describe each one. Focus on jobs that are similar or related to the one you’re applying for. Once again it makes no sense to write about your bartender experience back to school if you’re applying for a sales manager position.

Each job listed on your resume, according to the resume building website, should include the following information: job title, the name of the company/employer, location, employment dates and main duties and responsibilities. Head each entry with the job title and next to it include employment dates. The name of the company and the location can be placed below the job title. You can format both the name of the company and the job title in bold or all caps to emphasize elements. Just make sure to format each element the same way for each employer. For instance, if you format the location in italics in one entry, format the locations in all other entries in italics the same way.

When describing your duties, include several bullet points and try to use phrases rather than complete sentences as this will make the content brief and easier to scan. It’s best to use verbs to describe main responsibilities. Remember to use Past tense for past experience (obtained, completed, designed) and Present tenses for current duties (supervise or supervising; manage or managing, maintain or maintaining).

If you want to look like a desirable candidate just show how you produced positive results for previous employers. Use achievement-oriented language that sells, which means instead of monotonously describing your previous duties, put emphasis on your achievements and provide proof of your potential value. For example, instead of stating “Grew client base and increased revenues between 2000 and 2005” you can write “Significantly increased revenues from $100,000 in 2000 to $700,000 in 2005 and doubled client base from 2,000 to 4,000.” If you’re not allowed to release the company performance figures, you can use percentages rather than dollar figures. All in all, quantitative achievements such as the number of customers obtained, amount of profit made or revenue growth obtained are the best.