A job description is one of the most important parts of your resume. What do you need to know to write job descriptions in your resume? Find out with our tips!
● Your job title
● The name and location of the employer
● Your dates of employment
● Your job responsibilities
● Soft skills and hard skills you used and developed
● Measurable achievements and awards
● Specific numbers that indicate how you helped the company
Here’s an example of how a job description might look for your resume:
Customer Service Representative
Company Name, Phoenix, AZ
Jan 2014 – Oct 2018
Talked to over 100 customers per day. Increased customer satisfaction by over 24% overall through complaint management. Reduced amount of customer returns by 11% over the first six months.
Note that the sentences are short and snappy, utilizing action verbs as often as possible. Optimize your job descriptions so that they provide as much information in as little time as possible. You can also use this tactic for writing about internships.
Next, it’s a good idea to use your job descriptions to prove your skill set. If you say that you have great communication skills in your skill section, you want to also show that you’ve used those communication skills in previous jobs. Otherwise, the recruiter has nothing to go on as evidence you’re actually using those skills.
Lastly, tie your cover letter and your resume together. If you mention specific percentages in your resume, you can point to those percentages in your cover letter as well. It always pays to be consistent in your job application.
In simplest terms, a resume job description showcases what you did for a company, while a corporate job description showcases what a company wants. Additionally, a resume job description will often be shorter. If you’re trying to stick to a one-page resume, you need to keep things as concise as possible.
You should typically list up to the last 10 years of experience in your resume. Experience that dates back longer than that ago is less likely to matter to employers, unless they’re seeking someone with extensive experience. Remember to list your job experience in reverse chronological order so that a potential employer sees the most recent, most relevant job experience first.
Even if you were in a completely different field, your skill set may still be applicable in a new job. First of all, use action words. “Delegated assignments to team members” looks much better than “Had many team members underneath me.” Next, look at resume examples from your field. Note how they talk about their past experiences, and take inspiration from their job description examples. This way, you can write a professional resume that takes information from all of your work experience, even jobs that don’t seem relevant.