Your professional experience - what and how much to include -

Your professional experience - what and how much to include -This article was written by Natalie Joan and you can check out her blog here http//www.nataliejoan.ca/resume-blog.php. Your professional experience is the core data on your resum. Its what everyone wants to know. What have you done, for whom, when and for how long? Oh and tell us this in 2 pages or less, please. Its a somewhat daunting task.To get started, list all of your previous experience, in chronological order, starting with your latest job on a piece of paper. List the dates of employment, your job title, the full company name and the location of your employment.These days it is quite common for people to change jobs frequently and notlage build a career with one company or organization. Thus, it is common for someone with ten years of professional experience to have had three or mora jobs. Which is fine, and easy enough to fit on a resum. I usually work with recent grads or new professionals and were wishing we had more jobs to list, not fewer. Recently though, a friend recommended me to her Dad. And I worked with and aunt, and other more experienced candidates. When you are trying to consolidate over 30 years of experience, it becomes more complicated. It is important to set limits on what you include and what you can freely exclude from your resum under your professional experience.Ideally, your resum should not exceed two pages. Depending on the type of jobs you have held and your responsibilities, having only two pages doesnt account for a lot of space. So how does one fit 30 years and seven or more jobs in two pages? Some chose to list only the last three or five jobs they held, which may be sufficient to display their experience. But also, consider the time you spent at each organization you have worked for list up to the last ten to fifteen years of experience.Remember it is not necessary to list every job youve ever had to showcase your qualifications and years of experience. If you h ave a long professional career, focus on the last three to five jobs, but use the profile or summary at the beginning of the resum to highlight the number of years you have spent working, or the number of years you have spent in a certain industry, acquiring specific skills.Always, when listing your experiences, be sure to do so in chronological order without skipping any of the jobs you have held. While you may feel that certain jobs are not particularly complimenting to your current career objective you should not avoid listing them on your resum. You may chose to minimize the amount of detail provided, and highlight the responsibilities and accomplishments that are transferable to your new objective.Leaving any unexplained gaps in your work history will raise questions by your eignung employer dont create those gaps on your resum by listing your experience out of order or by skipping jobs you have had. If you do have gaps, or must leave something out, consider a functional or sk ills based resum to camouflage this issue.Finally, make sure that your cover letter accounts for any additional qualifications you would like to bring to the attention of your potential employer that you didnt include on the resum.Your resum should be concise, well written, and sell you as the best candidate for the job. Just remember that it is quality over quantity that counts.Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.