Documenting Experience on Your Resume

Most of us, at least a few times, have waited until our resume needed an update before realizing we should have kept better notes about our work earlier. After reading this post, you’ll know why it’s advantageous to make notes about your work on a regular basis and update your resume at least quarterly to ensure you don’t forget to document anything that could be helpful to tell a future hiring manager about. You’ll also know a good technique for thinking about translating work into a resume bullet from the start instead of as an afterthought, helping you do a better job of gathering the data you’ll want for making an effective resume bullet.

-            Documenting your work as you go and identifying possible references

-            Relating your work to the bigger picture

-            Opportunities to add experience and accomplishments

Documenting your work as you go and identifying possible references

Writing about the work (either paid or volunteer) you’re doing at the time you’re doing it is the best way to capture all the right details for effective resume bullets. By also thinking about who you are doing the work for or with, you might identify people who could serve as good references to provide to future hiring managers as you advance in your career. Some key questions to ask yourself as you document your work include what you are doing and who or how is it helping others. A well-structured resume bullet will have a “action, impact, result” format, so think about what you’re doing, how it’s helping, and the ultimate result that your work contributes to. Considering all of this as you begin your work should allow you to identify what data (quantifying how much work you’re doing and quantifying its impact) and information (qualitatively describing your work) to collect as you’re doing the work. One important note here is that doing the right amount of work well is paramount; don’t “gold plate” your work by producing unnecessary outputs just to be able to report a larger quantity of work accomplished on your resume.

Relating your work to the bigger picture

The bedrock of your success building strong resume bullets is excellence in the steps and tasks you perform in your work. Getting the details right and doing a good quality job are the building blocks of your overall work results. While that is necessary to achieve a successful outcome for your work, it’s also important that your work contribution effectively feeds into a larger work outcome produced by your entire team. Thinking about how your work connects to the big picture that your whole team is producing is just as important as thinking about your work itself; when you expound on a particular resume bullet with a hiring manager in the future, that person will want to know how the work you did helped your team achieve a successful result, as that’s really what makes your work valuable. This contribution of your work toward a greater outcome than you could achieve through your own effort gives your work more meaning and shows a prospective future employer that you can provide valuable inputs to help their strategy succeed.

Opportunities to add experience and accomplishments

If you’re just starting to work or feel like you don’t have a great work track record, you might be thinking you don’t have much to show on a resume. The fact is, you have more experience and skills than you think, and you can proactively seek out volunteer opportunities that will enable you to add real, meaningful bullets to your resume over time. Being firmly decided on what role* you want to pursue is a critical starting point, as you’ll want to identify skill usage and experience doing the things that your target role calls for; otherwise, you’re going to add resume bullets that won’t effectively help you get the type of job you’re seeking.

* As a brief aside, role in this post means a general job title or type of work, as opposed to a job being a specific opening at a company that a hiring manager wants to hire a candidate to fill.

Review job postings for your target job if you need more information about the duties one performs in that type of job, so you can more clearly tell what volunteer work would match those duties. Then, seek out organizations and events where you can perform those duties as a volunteer. If the volunteering organizer overseeing that work needs your help performing those duties, you have a great opportunity to get experience relevant to your target role on your resume! Just like mentioned earlier, approach your work with the “action, impact, result” mindset to proactively identify and document the data, information, and potential job references during your work. The volunteering organizer would probably be a great person to consider asking to be a reference when you apply for a paid job doing the same or similar duties to what you perform volunteering.

Conclusion

By documenting your work as you perform it and not waiting until the next time you apply for a job to update your resume, you’ll be able to write stronger, more compelling resume bullets that better capture the full value of your work. Waiting until a long time after completing your work leaves you with a fuzzy recollection of the context of your work and possibly being unable to accurately quantify or describe your work output and its value. As you work, keep in mind how the work you’re performing ties into the bigger picture and how you are helping your team to achieve a successful collective work result. If you’re looking for ways to collect experience to list on your resume, actively seek out opportunities to perform work relevant to your target role instead of waiting to be handed an opportunity to do that work.

Start today – document the work you’re currently doing so you don’t miss anything that should be on your resume; it will help you get better jobs and advance further in your career!

The next step on the roadmap: Setting Up Your LinkedIn Profile