How to Add Work Experience to Your Resume (With Examples)

The work experience section of your resume is an overview of your previous roles and achievements, and shows you’re qualified for the role you want.

According to Resume Genius’s Hiring Trends Survey, 68% of hiring managers rank “Work Experience” in their top 3 resume sections.

How to format your work experience section

Equally important to choosing the right resume template and overall resume format is knowing how to structure your work experience section. Hiring managers need to be able to quickly verify that you have the experience they’re looking for.

Follow these guidelines to make sure your resume formatting is correct:

1. Create a dedicated section for your professional experience

First, choose an appropriate title like “professional experience” or “work experience” for the section of your resume where you’ll list your past jobs.

For each job, include the following information:

• Job title
• Company name
• Location of company (city and state)
• Dates you were employed there
• Three to five bullet points highlighting your achievements and job duties

Here’s a template showing how your work experience should be formatted:

2. List your most recent work experience first

List your most recent work experience at the top of your work experience section, then go back in reverse-chronological order.

Listing your work experience chronologically on your resume shows hiring managers how you’ve progressed in your career and how your skills have developed over time.

Follow this format when you write your resume’s work experience section:

3. Add bullet points to each entry

Under each job, add roughly 3-5 bullet points that highlight how you used your skills to contribute to the organization’s success.

Your resume should use present tense for bullet points in your most recent work experience entry and the past tense when writing bullet points for previous roles.

Here’s an example of effective bullet points on a resume:

How to describe work experience on your resume

Here’s how to write a resume that accurately reflects your experience:

1. Discuss achievements instead of responsibilities

Emphasize accomplishments on your resume instead of just listing job responsibilities. Accomplishments show you made positive contributions to your company’s performance rather than simply doing the bare minimum.

Compare these examples of work experience bullet points to see how effectively listing achievements can strengthen your resume:

The first example is effective because it shows the hiring manager exactly how you’ll perform at the job if they hire you.

2. Tailor your bullet points to the job you want

While it might sound time-consuming, the work experience bullet points on your resume shouldn’t be generic.

The content of your work experience section should be targeted to the job you want, with each bullet showcasing specific skills and experience related to the job opening.

You should target the job description in your experience section. Including resume keywords, such as skills and qualifications that appear throughout the job ad ensures you address the hiring manager’s requirements.

3. Begin each bullet point with an action verb

Hiring managers see tons of resumes that start each bullet point with phrases like “responsible for” and “tasked with.”

The problem with language like this is that it’s passive and doesn’t describe what you actually achieved at work.

Instead, you should begin your bullet points with descriptive resume action verbs that clearly show hiring managers what you got done in your previous roles.

Here are some examples of action verbs being used to effectively describe a job seeker’s work experience:

• Organized a work safety initiative that saved the company money on worker’s comp
• Developed new communications protocols that improved connectivity between the company and clients
• Optimized product delivery logistics that accelerated order fulfillment for customers

4. Add numbers to provide additional context

Use numbers to describe your work experience whenever it helps clarify the scope of your work or highlight an impressive accomplishment (this is known as quantifying your resume).

Here are some examples of work experience resume bullet points that include numbers:

To quantify your own resume, consider mentioning:

• Clients acquired
• Dollars saved
• Customer satisfaction increased
• Revenue generated
• Employees trained/managed
• Customers served
• Expenses reduced
• Attrition rate decreased
• Sales numbers improved

8 Resume work experience examples

Frequently asked questions about work experience

Here are some frequently asked questions about how to put work experience on a resume:

Can I just put years on my resume?

Yes, you can just put years on your resume. Leaving the exact months you were employed off of your resume’s work experience section is an acceptable way to downplay a gap in your work history and make your experience appear more consistent.

However, don’t imply you worked somewhere for a year when you only worked there a month. If employers think you’re lying on your resume, they won’t hire you.

What jobs should you put on a resume?

You should put relevant jobs on a resume. For example, you should put customer-facing jobs on a resume for a customer service job.

You can also include non-relevant jobs if they demonstrate transferable skills for the position you want.

What order should work experience be listed on a resume?

Work experience should generally be listed on a resume in reverse chronological order, meaning that the most recent job should be listed first and the oldest job should be listed last. This format allows the reader to quickly see an applicant’s most recent and relevant work experience.

For each work experience entry, include the job title, company name, the dates of employment, and three to five bullet points explaining your responsibilities and achievements.

Can you leave jobs off your resume?

Yes, you can leave jobs off your resume. Your resume is an overview of your most relevant experience and skills for a specific position, not a list of every job you’ve held.

You can (and should) highlight any position that’s relevant to the job you want, while leaving off any jobs that don’t improve your chances of getting hired. For example, any older jobs that aren’t important to your current career path (like a babysitting job you had as a teenager) should be left off your resume.

However, be prepared to discuss the jobs you leave off your resume during an interview. Have an answer for why you didn’t mention a previously held position in the event a hiring manager finds out about it and asks.