When employers and recruiters read your CV, they’ll generally be most interested in the work experience section. It provides a snapshot of your career to date and demonstrates whether you’re a good fit for their vacancy and the business overall. While your qualifications may play a part, it’s your experience that will usually decide whether your application is taken any further.
So, how can you most effectively list your experience on your CV to grab an employer’s attention?
The 3 Goals of your Work Experience Section
With limited space to list your job history, your work experience section has to work hard. Instead of simply listing each role with tasks and responsibilities, your focus should be on shaping your CV to suit each job you apply for. The best way to do this is to strive for each of the following goals.
Relevance
If you’ve read the vacancy’s job description, you should already know which of the listed tasks and responsibilities you have experience in. You’ll also have a good idea of how your skills match the employer’s requirements for the role. Your work experience section should be written to reflect how well you match the tasks, responsibilities, and skills mentioned in the job description.
Career Progression
Your work experience section should make it clear how far you’ve progressed in your career. This might be increasing seniority, taking on more responsibility, or developing new skills. Each new job should be shown to contribute to your personal growth.
Provide Examples
Each individual job section should include examples that show what you have achieved in that role and how you have contributed to the employer’s success. These examples must be relevant to the job you’ve applied for. For instance, you might write:
introduced a new inventory system that reduced order processing time by 30% and improved overall efficiency
Led a cross-departmental team to deliver a major product launch on time and under budget
developed a customer feedback process that led to a 25% increase in positive reviews and a 10% improvement in customer retention
How to Structure Your Work Experience Section
Your work experience section should begin with your most recent job. This will generally be your current role. Here’s a typical structure for each entry:
Job title, for example, Marketing Manager
Company name and location, for instance, Oak Reach Logistics, Manchester
Dates you were employed in that job
Job description and responsibilities
Achievements in that role
With each new job that you apply for, you should tailor your work experience to demonstrate your suitability. For this reason, it’s a good idea to create a ‘clean CV’. Your clean CV is for your eyes only. It will list every job you’ve held, along with a description of the tasks and responsibilities involved. It will also list what you achieved in that role. It doesn’t matter if your clean CV is longer than the standard two pages because only you will ever see it. Your clean CV is a way to keep track of every job you’ve held and remember exactly what those jobs entailed.
With each job application, you’ll tailor the clean CV to place a focus on the parts of your experience that are a match for the vacancy.
What about Non-Work Experience?
If you have relevant non-work experience, for instance, from volunteer work, internships, freelance projects, or hobbies, you might want to include this on your CV. List it under a separate section called Additional Experience.
The best way to present your experience when you change careers
If you decide to move to a different type of job or industry, your work experience might not be directly relevant. However, your skills may well transfer to a new job. This might be soft skills like teamwork or time management, or hard skills such as data analysis or a foreign language. In your work experience section, focus on the skills you have used that are relevant to the new job.
Wrapping it up
An effective work experience section identifies your suitability, demonstrates your career development, and provides relevant examples from your job history. Remember to:
tailor your CV to each job application, and focus on the most relevant experiences and skills
clearly demonstrate your career progression and the value you've brought to past roles
include both work and non work experience, if relevant to the job you're applying for
showcase your transferable skills, especially if you’re changing careers
Take the extra time to craft a work experience section that proves you’re an excellent fit for the vacancy and you’ll massively improve your chances of landing that job.