The
Importance of the Work Experience
Section
Work Experience is the real heart of a resume. This section will influence more decisions than any other part. Since improvements in the experience section can have a strong impact on an individual's marketability, study this section carefully.
The key point regarding work experience is that it should be applicable to the prospective employer's needs. When writing your resume, put yourself in the place of the hiring manager.
Draw most heavily on the elements of your experience that would be of value in the position for which you are applying. Make certain there are no questions regarding your experience level and whether it's appropriate to their requirements. Employers construe information from your resume to see if you are reliable, stable, and promotable.
The work experience section will be relied upon most when ascertaining this information.
The best resumes are prepared to attract and be understood by both technical and
non-technical readers alike. Unusual acronyms and technical terms should be spelled out and explained for the non-technical reader, while enough technical details are included in order to give the hiring manager an understanding of what you've actually accomplished.
Format
The standard practice of listing jobs in reverse chronological order is usually best. Since an employer wants to know what experience is the most recent and significant, place the greatest weight on the last five years.
Do not detail fifteen or twenty individual assignments with one employer, instead accentuate the areas that you worked on most. If previous positions are not relevant to your current job search they should just be generalized.
The experience section of a resume should be "this is what I did on this project" or "this is what I did at this job". It should include a summary of the project or job and how you contributed to it. Incorporate the languages in which you programmed, the environments, and any other tools and programs that you used. If you have done systems-level work in an operating system describe exactly what you did, such as "wrote Windows NT device driver" or "modified Unix Kernel".
Terminology
Sometimes we find that a candidate's prior work experience really is related to the position - but no one could tell it from the resume. Unfamiliar buzz words, terminology, acronyms, and specialized industry lingo are disastrous. Explain and define terms, such as, "DPQ representative to BDCL task force."
In the computer industry, acronyms are becoming better known than the term itself. Uncommon acronyms, however, should be expanded on and spelled out the first time they are used. Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and 4th Generation Language (4GL) may be used as ATM and 4GL after being previously defined.
As a general rule, it is acceptable to use common technical terms without explanation within a particular industry. An example would be Macintosh Programmer's Workshop (MPW), which needn't be spelled out for a company that specializes in Macintosh-related products.
Similarly, Microsoft Windows developers can expect a prospective employer to recognize terms like MFC and OLE if that company has an MS Windows emphasis. Remember, the first person to see your resume may be a non-technical personnel representative. If your experience is on a variation of Unix, such as, A/UX, AIX, or Linux, you must make it clear that this is Unix based.
Whenever possible, use terms that are familiar and applicable to many situations. Examples of this would be: MPW, CodeWarrior, TCL, OpenDoc, OLE, SQL, DLL, SDK, TCP/IP, and device driver. In order to to determine whether you are including enough of this information, we suggest following the Red Pencil / Green Pencil Model.
Include Important Details. Be sure to include important details in the experience section of your resume. If you are in management, provide the number of people you have supervised, management decisions you were delegated, problems solved, systems designed, and programs under your direct responsibility.
If you are a software developer, did you architect, design, implement, or maintain? Indicate if the software was a major commercial release or a small utility program. Specify if you were the sole programmer or if you worked on a project with a team.
From these details, the potential employer will draw his or her own conclusions as to your qualifications. Do not dwell on accomplishments or assignments that are irrelevant to the type of position you are seeking.
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