A Tale of Two Resumes
You’re probably familiar with the standard resume format, the one that lists the jobs you’ve had, etc. But what if you don’t have job experience in what you’re trying to do? I briefly mentioned the need to communicate skills and qualifications here. But what if you have way more of one than the other? What if I just got my degree in architecture but have no experience?
I got you, fam. Employers want to know if you can do the job. If you don’t both training and experience, your resume better be really good at communicating which one you do have. That being said, there are essentially two types of resumes: experience-based and skills-based. Okay, yes there are hybrid resumes, but those are hybrids of the two basic types.
Skills-based resumes
Which resume type you choose depends on which asset you’re long on: experience or training. If you want to break into marine biology because that’s what you went to school for, focus on your education. If you’ve already been doing a job for a while and you’re focusing on career progression, you want to focus on your experience.
That’s not to say you ignore other aspects entirely. Say you had fast food jobs before going to trade school to become a welder. There’s something you did at that burger joint that relates to your desired career. Maybe quality control is important to your new employer. Maybe your ability to work under pressure (FRIES! NOW!) keeps you steady with that torch. I’ve been in IT a long time. Before that, I was a diesel mechanic. I struggled at that job, but it did make me an excellent troubleshooter. Those are the kind of things that make it onto a skills-based resume.
So, if you’re writing a skills-based resume, go into a lot of detail about the school projects you did. List every skill you obtained while at school. If you went to college, talk about the relevant projects you did. You can list those part-time jobs, but maybe write a blurb under that job title about how it helped you with ____ skill.
Experience-based resumes
These are admittedly a little easier. You can show the employer where you used ____ skill on the job, how long you did it, whether or not you trained others to do it, etc. It’s also a way to show both breadth and depth of experience. For instance, I have done a lot of different IT jobs. I can also show career progression and increased responsibility. A variety of work in a given field is breadth. Moving up the ladder over time is depth.
If you’ve had formal training, absolutely mention that after you talk about your experience. I attended this course, or that training school or obtained such-and-such certification. This adds credibility to your assertion that you got skills.
How to say “I can do that” on your resume
You’re delivering two basic messages when you submit a good resume; I’ve done that, or I know how to do that. Be it experience, skills, or both, every part of your resume must communicate that you can do what they’re asking for. If it’s a skill, talk about where you got that skill, how long you trained, what projects you worked on in school, and so on. If it’s experience, talk about where you’ve done the thing, how many customers did you have, how big was the organization, how you improved productivity while doing the thing, lowered costs, increased customer satisfaction, saved time, taught others, etc. Whether it’s experience or skill, elaborating like this shows the employer you can do the thing they need. Tell them you can do it at the top of the resume, show them you can do it in the body of the resume. The better you communicate this, the more likely you’ll be to get a call for an interview.
