How to Describe Items in Resumes
Describing your work experience or volunteer experience in just a few sentences is pretty hard to do.
Resume Sentences
Sentence strucure in resumes are different from just about anything else you’ll ever write. You’re trying to be highly descriptive about your skills and experiences in the fewest possible words and still try to make a connection with the reader.
Imagine writing your experience as a summer camp counselor:
Every sentence starts with “I” making it very repetitive. Since this resume is about one person, we could safely remove all the “I”s.
It’s now less repetitive, but verbs like “was” and “did” don’t convey action as well as other verbs could. We’d like to use action words like “Guided,” “Taught” and “Aided.” The first sentence is actually just a job title, meaning it doesn’t need to to be a sentence at all.
Lists are Good
You can create a job description as a list, just remember to create complete sentences for the list items to thoroughly describe your responsibilities and actions. A person who doesn’t know you or what you did is trying to get an idea of what you did during this activity and a simple phrase may not convey a complete pictures of your contributions to this job.
Lists do improve the ability to quickly scan through the resume, but at the cost of using more space on your page. If your resume page is overly full, then consider switching to a simple paragraph of sentences instead of lists. If your resume page isn’t full, lists of sentence items could be the right thing to do.
Avoid Long Blocks of Text
Compare the following equivalent long blocks of text.
As a Software Engineer, you are dedicated to design, development and testing of next-generation software which will empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. Applies engineering principles to solve complex problems through sound and creative engineeging. Quickly learns new engineering methods and incorporates them into his or her work processes. Seeks feedback and applies internal or industry best practices to improve his or her technical solutions. Demonstrates skill in time management and completing software projects in a cooperative team environment. Familiarity with object-oriented programming or other programming paradigms. Strong analytical and problem-solving skills. Effective communication and collaborative skills.
As a Software Engineer, you are dedicated to design, development and testing of next-generation software which will empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more.
- Applies engineering principles to solve complex problems through sound and creative engineeging.
- Quickly learns new engineering methods and incorporates them into his or her work processes.
- Seeks feedback and applies internal or industry best practices to improve his or her technical solutions.
- Demonstrates skill in time management and completing software projects in a cooperative team environment.
- Familiarity with object-oriented programming or other programming paradigms.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Effective communication and collaborative skills.
- Which block seems easier to read and skim quickly?
- Which is more likely to be read and understood by our very busy recruiter?
If you can shorten the blocks of text without losing important points, do so. Small details can usually be omitted in your resume, leaving the interviewer to ask about these details during an interview.
If you are still left with a lot of text in a block, lists are an effective way to break up any long blocks of text into more readable bite-sized ideas.