Skip to the content
k-state mainhead

Resume guide: inventory your experience

The resume is a prospectus for the future, not your biography. Its main task is to convince prospective employers to contact you. The purpose of the resume is to get you a job interview. Your resume should be eye appealing, highlight strengths and minimize weaknesses, and be logically displayed for a 30-second review.

Inventory Your Experience

Write down headings and begin!

  • Education
  • Projects and course work experience
  • Research
  • Honors
  • Activities
  • Skills or Publications

Education

Education usually means post­secondary and can include special seminars, training, certifications, or licensure. Freshmen may include high school and identify those activities/honors/course work relevant to finding internships/summer work. After the freshman year, only state/national/unique recognitions are usually included. Begin with the most recent degree obtained or in progress, and work backwards.

  • List degree/year obtained or expected; names and locations of schools; major, minor, options, if any; and grade point average. Not every school needs to be listed, but if you make reference to activities or honors, include the institution’s name.
  • GPA is reviewed, particularly for on-campus interviews. Be sure to separate GPA for each institution, or clarify that this is “cumulative GPA for all schools.” Include major GPA if it benefits you to do so. Clarify how you reached your total: all department courses, require­ments for major, option emphasis, etc. Indicate improvement in GPA “after re­entry to K­State; change of major; last three semesters, etc.”
  • Relevant Course Work, Study Abroad, Language Proficiency may be included in this section.
  • Percent of college expenses you provided might be identified to show ability to balance time or demonstrate work ethic. Use over 50% as a guide.

Experience

Experience may include full­time paid jobs, academic research projects, internships or co­op positions, part­time jobs or volunteer work. List Job Title (if relevant), month/year of employment or experience, name and location of employers and responsibilities you held.

  • Describe each experience using a P-A-R (Problem-Action-Result) formula to review the situation, describing the problem (or overall challenge/responsibility), actions taken to reach the goal, result or accomplishment achieved.
  • Use an action verb to start your statement and omit personal pronouns (i.e. “I” or “my”).
  • Be specific in describing equipment used, duties, languages and purposes of actions.
  • Quantify the number of people, products, and profits involved.

For example:

  • Manage the box office for the I Q Zoo, the largest trained-animal show in the world. (Problem)
  • Supervise six cashiers, set­up cash drawer, balance cash-to-sales, prepare bankdrop daily. (Action)
  • Occasionally dress up in gorilla suit and play piano. (Action)
  • Trained the baboon to wait tables, eliminating two paid positions. (Result)
  • Taught the zebra to do algebra, gaining national press coverage. (Result)

Thanks to Donald Asher, The Overnight Résumé

Honors

Honors may include academic awards (scholarships or honor’s list), professional awards or recognition, leadership or athletics.

Activities

Activities might include academic, volunteer, community, professional or living group organizations in which you held office or played a role. You may apply P­A­R statements to illustrate what you accomplished in the offices/functions you held. Interests or hobbies are options if related to professional goals.

Other Categories

Other categories you might want to include:

  • Leadership
  • Internships
  • Computer Skills
  • Volunteer work
  • Language Proficiencies
  • Research
  • Professional Associations
  • Publications
  • Military Experience
  • Accomplishments