Two-Approach Job Assistant and Career Information Guide

5. Professional Experience (with Accomplishments)

In this section, list position, organization, location, and dates of employment in reverse chronological order. State the positive aspects of your work when writing your job descriptions, including accomplishments and skills learned, and quantify with numbers when possible. Use resume power verbs to get a concise key-word fashion and focus on achievements and successes rather than on duties and responsibilities. No employer is really interested in a resume that is simply a comprehensive listing of every work task a candidate has performed throughout their career. They want to see what you can do for them quickly and effectively.

You don’t need to include all the jobs you have done in the last 30 years. As a rule of thumb, you are not expected to go back more than 10 years. However, if your earliest positions are relevant to your objective and if you take the risk that you might appear too old for the open position, you may include these jobs as well. You should know that age discrimination is illegal in the US but employers tend to calculate your age using the dates you give. Most positions have an ideal age range, based on skill level, salary expectations, ability to supervise or be supervised, amount of life experience needed, among other factors. A professional resume uses dates to lead the employer to deduce that you are the ideal age for the job you are seeking - regardless of your actual age. If you want to “look” younger, only include your last work experience for instance and if you want to get a job that requires a lot of experience include everything you did during your career. Important is that you always be honest, you just don’t tell the whole story. If you get the interview you will have the opportunity to present yourself with enthusiasm, professional manner and an appropriate salary request, thereby fulfilling the employer's expectations of his ideal candidate regardless of your actual age.

You should try to avoid gaps in your work history as for some reason employers don't like to see them. If the gap was less than two years you can camouflage it just using years, not months, when referring to spans of time in your work history (for instance: 2004-2005 and 2006-2007). If this is not possible and the gap has no apparent relevance to the job objective, you should explain the gap honestly and with dignity. Avoid at all cost references to illness, unemployment (even if it is clearly due to a recession), and rehabilitation as this raise red flags in most cases. Mention instead about other activities you were doing during that time, like “home business”, “language study”, “independent study”, “full-time parent”, “family or home management”, “computer course”, personal travel, etc.