Experience Section Exercise
Read this information and work through these questions to help yourself develop the experience section of your
resume. You may want to print out this handout and write down answers to the questions in order to help yourself
generate ideas.
What is an experience section?
A section that emphasizes your past and present employment and/or your participation in relevant activities
Other common names: Professional Experience, Work History, Field Work, Volunteer Work, etc.
What goes into this section?
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Company or organization and location (city, state)
Position title
Dates of employment or involvement
Descriptions of responsibilities, duties, achievements, etc.
Where should you put this section?
Above or below your education section?
It depends on the answers to the following questions:
 How much work experience do you have?
 Which is stronger, your education or work experience section?
Place your strongest, most relevant section closest to the top.
How do you create an experience section?
Getting started
 Make a list of your past and present work-related experiences.
 In your list, include jobs, volunteer positions, appointments, assistantships, internships, etc.
Describing experiences
Take your list and circle each item that is . . .
 Related to your career goals.
 Asked for in job ads and descriptions.
Choose the experiences you circled, and describe them briefly.
Developing your descriptions
Now, develop your descriptions into short statements or bulleted lists that could be used in this section. Here are some
points to consider as you do so.
 Use varied active words to describe your experiences.
 Answer the journalistic questions:
 Who? With whom did you work?
 What? What duties did you perform?
 Where? Where did your job fit into the organization?
 Why? What goals were you trying to accomplish?
 When? What timelines were you working under?
 How? What procedures did you follow?
As you develop your descriptions, try to see your experiences as a professional would.
Which sounds more professional?
 Answered phones
OR
 Acted as liaison between clients and legal staff
What are some other ways of tailoring this section?
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Select content that supports your qualifications and matches the job description.
Consider organizing by order of importance.
Use professional wording, integrating job-specific terms.
Sample Experience Section
Professional Experience
Research Assistant (August 1998-August 1999)--Purdue U.
Assisted Professor Robert Thompson in:
 updating statistical tables and charts
 answering research questions via the Internet, library, and by establishing resources to provide the needed
information
President, Sociology Club (January-May 2000)
 raised over $2,000 for club expenses and scholarships
 organized 10 activities for over 200 students
 designed and maintained club website, available at http://www.purdue.edu/~anyorganization
Taken from "Developing Your Resume: The Job Experience Section" by Bryan Kopp
This handout revised July 2001 by the business writing staff.
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