How to Present Your Career and Work History

This is the part where your work experiences, your curricular and co-curricular activities’ history and recent professional activities are listed. Not everyone’s career is all bling and perfectly clean without a spot, the trick lies in hiding that spot efficiently, camouflaging it under the better history. Every fact in your history should be so written that it reflects your sincerity towards your career.

Experience

It is advisable to list your work experiences in reverse chronological order. If you have hopped through a lot of companies you should list only the most recent or the most significant employment in your career.

There can be gaps in between two jobs in your resume. Most of us take breaks from our jobs for one reason or the other.

If there are gaps of only some months you can cover these gaps by choosing to mention only years. For example, if you worked in a company from March 2004 to February 2006 then took a two months break before joining another company. You can hide this two months gap by stating only “2004-2006” and “then 2006 onwards”.

If you have taken longer breaks say long maternity leaves or leaves to take care of aged parents you should explain it in your cover letter. The employer will consider your honesty besides your skills.

Education

Education qualifications should also be arranged in reverse chronological order: starting with your licenses or degrees, followed by certificates, diplomas or any other short term courses.

In case you have recently acquired a diploma a certificate in some course related to the job, you should list at the top of the list of Diplomas but not at the top of the Education Qualification list.

Awards and Achievements

If you had won some awards on school level, you should mention them in the Education section. If you have won awards on a larger and more significant platform, on national or international level or in fields of your profession you should list them under a separate subheading thus highlighting them to your employer.

Publications

If you have written and published journals in your field of work, listing them might pull some extra attention. However list only the significant ones in brief to keep the element of interest alive.

Personal Interests and Qualities

Personal interests include hobbies. You should include only those hobbies that are related to the job and that can in some way or the other be of use in your field of work. For example if you have applied for a job in a library, you should list ‘Reading’ as your hobby as that would be of help in your work.

However, you should not lie about your hobbies just to seem impressive. The interviewer might ask you some questions on the hobbies you have listed and if you don’t know much about it that would bring down your score. Atleast do some background study, to be on the safer side.

If your personal interests are irrelevant to the job you should not add it to your resume.