WRITING A RESUME
By Amy Spiegel, CTO
Developing Your Work History-Part 2: Paid Employment
When searching for a job, the first step is to list all of those jobs which you can do and have done. Even if you are a high school student who has just graduated, a homemaker who is looking to work outside the home or a retired executive thinking about being a consultant, you have a work history which may include both volunteer work and paid employment. This week’s blog will focus on paid employment.
What does your paid employment say about you?
First and foremost, your paid employment tells potential employers what your professional expertise might be. Just as in sports where amateurs-like volunteers- are not paid, professional athletes are paid but they can capture their professional skills on camera. You have to show your professional skills –those skills for which you have been paid- on paper and a potential employer has to be able to see them as clearly as watching them on video.
Your paid employment also tells a potential employer about how the skills you have developed have been applied to various jobs. There are two different types of skills called hard skills and soft skills. Hard skills are those technical skills which you have developed on the job or went to training to learn. Soft skills are those skills which cannot be learned as easily: having a work ethic, always being on time to work, having good hygiene and more. We will be discussing those skills more in depth on another blog in this resume series. The paid employment in the work history section of your resume can tell the employer at a very quick glance what your hard skills are and a little bit about your soft skills.
What your paid employment does not say about you…
Your paid employment in your work history does not say how hard you work, how you take direction or work with others and it does not tell always tell your employer how much you like the field you are in. Volunteer history can fill those gaps and give the employer a better understanding of your soft skills as a leader or a hard-working team member or a person who likes to work independently.
What information about my paid employment is the most important?
There are different styles of resumes and many, many books on how to write a resume complete with resume templates. A standard resume usually includes the dates you were employed, the job title, the company and its location and your job duties. Depending on the industry, a resume may also include what your wage was for a job, the name of your supervisor and other specific pieces of information. What information you choose to include in your work history should reflect the best things about you.
Knowing about the industry or the job ahead of time will also help you decide which pieces to emphasize. If you have worked for a long time at one job- and that is important to your industry- then including the dates in a format that clearly and quickly shows that is very important. If-in your industry- the job title is far more important than how long you have been at the job than that is the part that you want the employer to see first. If –in your industry- the most important piece is what your duties were or the skills you used then the “duties” or “responsibilities” should stand out the most.
Let me know which piece of the paid employment work history is the most important for you industry!
