Previous Work Experience Examples for a Resume

You’ve come to the correct site if you’re seeking previous work experience samples for a resume or job application and detailed instructions on how to write your own experience section.

I’ll demonstrate for you:

1. What employers want to see most from your work history and why they care about it
2. How to write your career history on a resume, covering all the information to include and the format to use
3. 3 examples of prior employment from legitimate resumes created by expert resume writers
4. The top errors to stay away from when listing professional experience on a resume

Why Employers Care About Work Experience on Your Resume

After years of working as a recruiter, this is what I’ve learned:

A hiring manager or recruiter will look first at the most recent work experience on your resume to determine whether you’re a good fit for their position if you have work experience (i.e., if you are not entry-level or a recent graduate).

So make sure your bullet points and other employment history details are excellent and put them front and center.

There should only be a few things on your resume that come before your work history if you want to stand out from the other 95% of job applicants: Only a brief resume summary section and your name and contact information are required.

The employment history section of your resume should come next because it is what employers want to see first on a resume.

What Should You Include in Your Resume Work Experience Section?

On a resume, you should list your previous employers’ names, places of business, dates of work, positions held, and the professional experience you acquired during those times.

On a resume, you should include specific experience that includes the responsibilities and skills you were tasked with and your accomplishments while working there.

You can accomplish this by using verbs and strong adjectives like “Led,” “Increased,” etc. to start sentences and bullet points beneath your work experience.

Consider include any promotions and honors you may have gotten at any past employers, in addition to the firm names, locations, work titles, dates, and accomplishments.

Awards and accolades are significant accomplishments that demonstrate how well you have handled your obligations and excelled in your work. This will thrill employers.

Write about your professional background in reverse chronological order, starting with your most recent employers and job titles and moving down to the earliest position you have held.

Formatting Your Previous Work Experience to Impress Employers

The reverse chronological structure is the greatest for job seekers since it allows you to start with your most recent role at the top of your experience list and work backward through your professional history.

Include the job title, dates, and name of the company for each position, then briefly discuss your professional background and accomplishments in that position. You can either use merely bullets or a brief text to describe the role, followed by bullets. When composing your work experience part, you should not, however, just employ the paragraph structure.

Many job applicants make this error, which causes recruiters and hiring managers to quickly scan over their resumes. Employers are more likely to read carefully through your experience section when you use bullets to draw their attention.

List each position with its own dates and any relevant experience if you have worked at the same company in more than one capacity. It’s a grave error to omit listing every specific position held by a corporation, as this demonstrates your advancement and promotion.

In order to make sure you’re addressing the critical talents that employers appear to seek for the position you’re pursuing, when you compose your past work summaries and bullet points, take a quick look at the job description.

3 Previous Work Experience Examples

Now that you are familiar with the fundamentals of how to create a resume’s job history section, let’s look at some excellent employment history samples taken from actual resumes.

I asked a few professionals to contribute examples of their job histories on resumes for this section.

I’ll give you two of their resume work experience examples before giving you a really straightforward one that I’ve used successfully in the past.

Resume Work Experience Example #1

To draw attention to important accomplishments on your resume, use bold wording similar to the example above. To ensure that your best work is recognized, you can also utilize bullets, checkmarks, and other straightforward graphics.

The part labeled “Select Accomplishments” on this resume work history is separate. This is a creative method to organize all of your best achievements from each employee in a way that hiring managers are more likely to see and read.

Contributed by: Kyle Elliott, MPA, CHES, Career Coach at CaffeinatedKyle.com

Resume Work Experience Example #2:

Another career history sample that strikes a fantastic mix between appealing design and avoiding overdoing it or making it distractingly “busy”

There is only one color being utilized, which is blue (blue is relaxing and is connected to reliability and credibility, therefore it’s an excellent color to employ). Furthermore, the layout is straightforward enough to keep the reader focused on your successes.

Contributed by: Virginia Franco, Founder of Virginia Franco Resumes and Forbes contributor

Resume Work Experience Example #3:

Although it’s a pretty simple format, it might be appropriate if you work in the areas of accounting, finance, sales, data entry, customer service, etc.

They won’t hire you or conduct an interview with you based on how nicely designed your resume is, but rather on your abilities and past performance for companies. So a straightforward layout emphasizes just what customers desire!

I’d advise adding some blue like the two other samples we looked at if you find this to be a little too simple. If I were to redo this now, the first thing I’d change is the format (I’ve used this resume format before with great success).

Grammar and Wording

Next, I’ll provide you with two crucial pointers for structuring and wording your work experience section in a professional manner.

Avoid using pronouns like “I am a Customer Success Manager” while speaking in the first person.

To begin describing your previous or present position, just start with “Customer Success Manager.”

For instance, “Customer Success Manager supervising seven support staff members and…”

The next piece of advice is to use past tense verbs when describing your recent roles in bullet points and paragraphs.

The aforementioned resume examples demonstrate this. For instance, the second bullet in the aforementioned resume example #3:

built important “C” level connections.

Built is a verb in the past tense.

I advise approaching resume writing generally in this manner.

Instead of writing “Building” or “Build,” mention your work experience instead.

In order to write your career history in a way that resembles the resume examples above, keep in mind some minor suggestions.

This tone will impress your next potential job and come off as clear-cut and professional.

Colors and Design of Your Work History on a Resume

Keep it simple in terms of language and layout as your first rule while writing your employment history.

Your resume format shouldn’t feature flashy graphics and colors if you’re not a skilled designer.

Every section of your CV reflects that.

Pick one or two typefaces overall, one or two heading sizes, and no more than one accent color (for instance, some headers in dark blue if the rest of the text is black).

You’ll see that the three resume employment history examples above minimize the use of color and put the emphasis squarely on the content. You should also take that action.

Avoid drawing too much attention to the formatting and colors of your resume because you want the employer to concentrate on your prior work experience.

Customizing These Work Experience Examples

Now that I’ve given you three samples of previous work experience, you could just copy and utilize one of the formats above.

I do advise, however, that you change it to suit your circumstances. I’ll clarify.

You may choose to enter months and years for your dates of employment, or just years, depending on how frequently you’ve changed jobs and how long you’ve worked.

Decide what is best for you by using strategy. It could be preferable to just list everything in terms of years and exclude the months if you only held a position for a short period of time.

You can also completely exclude a job from your CV. This is not the “work history” area of an application where you must list every job you’ve ever held. What appears on your CV is entirely up to you.

Maintain consistency by using the same formatting for each job, no matter what. That is very significant. Keep in mind that you want the recruiting manager to find this EASY to read.

Utilize the aforementioned work experience examples to inspire your own, but make sure it aligns with your experience and professional goals.

How far back in time should you go in your employment history?

The same advice I give for how to respond to the question “tell me about yourself” at an interview applies here.

If you’ve only been working for 8–10 years or less, start at the beginning of your career and try to make everything pertinent to the jobs you’re vying for right now.

Although you might feel that the employment you want now and your previous professional experience have nothing in common, you can generally find a connection.

Even if you’re an entry-level job seeker or seeking a position of a completely different nature, you could have relevant experience in your background, as demonstrated by the following example:

I worked in customer service at Whole Foods Market when I was in college. Not exactly glamour, am I right?

But after I was promoted to supervisor, you wouldn’t believe how frequently I was asked about this position in interviews, even 4-5 years later (and for office jobs that seemed unrelated to working in a supermarket).

Don’t, therefore, assume something is irrelevant. Employers will adore it if you show leadership, advancement/growth, or other remarkable qualities. Your responsibility is to make the bullet points impressive and demonstrate their relevance.

On the other hand, if you have worked for more than ten years and/or are a manager/director, etc., you might want to start the work history section of your resume at the time you were promoted to that position.

Most companies won’t want to look back and see how you started as an individual contributor 20+ years ago if you’re 45 and have been a manager for 15 years. They’ll want to know how you got your start as a manager and how far you’ve come. Start by explaining how you entered your current field of work.

Where To Put Your Work History Section on Your Resume?

The short answer is that if you have any work experience at all, this section is the most crucial component of your resume and where hiring managers and recruiters will start their search. The top part of the first page is where it belongs.

Place it after the Skills section. Before they look at your work experience, no hiring manager or recruiter wants to see a basic list of your skills (without knowing how recently or in what capacity you’ve utilized each skill). More information on how to write your resume’s skills section and where to place it may be found here.

Unless you are a doctor or have a Ph.D. and are in a career where having this degree is a strict requirement for getting any job in the area, don’t place your Education section before it either.

For everyone else, which is more than 95% of applicants, simply center your name and contact information at the top of your resume, followed by a one-paragraph career summary and your work experience.

You can give the section any name you like, such as “Work Experience,” “Work History,” or “Employment History.”

The key is that the recruiting manager shouldn’t have to hunt for or scroll down to uncover your employment history.

Make Sure to List Specific Accomplishments in Your Work History

With the aforementioned instances, it’s crucial to include achievements on your resume job history rather than just duties and responsibilities.

Saying “I was responsible for managing 50 client requests per day” and “I successfully answered 50 customer requests per day, maintaining a 98 percent customer satisfaction rating” are two quite different things.

Instead of just stating what you were in charge of or “ought to do,” you phrase it as an accomplishment in the second example. Additionally, you’re including a noteworthy statistic: 98 percent client satisfaction.

When listing accomplishments on your CV, try to do this whenever you can. When you copy the aforementioned samples, bear that in mind.

Tailor Everything!

Don’t forget to modify your accomplishments and bullet points to fit the job description for the role you seek after utilizing these resume work history examples to write and structure your resume. One of the quickest ways to be recognized and invited to an interview is by doing this.

(And, truly, if you don’t do this or skip it, someone else will probably get the job instead of you. This is a key factor in why you haven’t found a job yet if you aren’t doing it.

Here’s how to modify your resume before applying for a position. ( Quickest, simplest technique)

The general rule is that you should do all in your power to restructure your accomplishments on your resume to highlight those same areas if the top 2-3 bullet points on the job description mention a certain skill or piece of experience they seek.

Therefore, conduct your homework (the job description is the greatest place to start), and whenever you can, rearrange your bullet points to highlight the precise experience they are looking for. You run the danger of their moving on to someone else’s résumé if you make them look around for it.

Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Your Resume Work Experience

We’ve now covered how to write your career history, real-world CV examples, and more. I want to leave you with the faults you should be careful not to make when creating your own employment history section for a resume.

Mistake #1: Having Your Employment History Start Below the First Half of Page 1

As you can see from the prior examples of employment histories, this area of the resume begins right away. It’s a bad idea to make a hiring manager or recruiter go through your CV to find this part.

Put it in the foreground (on the top half of page 1). Any firm you give your resume to should have little trouble finding your most recent accomplishments and experience.

One of the finest general advice I can give is to not have employers go through your resume to find your most recent responsibilities and accomplishments. It should appear high up on the page, have a lot of content compared to other parts, and should pop out at the reader.

Mistake #2: Rushing Through Your Work History to Write Other Resume Sections

Your employment history is the most crucial component of your CV. Just this piece should take up between 40 and 50 percent of your time. So take your time with this. If you want to obtain interviews, you only need to do it once, but it must be excellent.

Mistake #3: Not Putting Facts, Numbers, and Accomplishments

You’re wasting a great chance to impress employers if your career history on your resume is filled with sentences like “Responsible for…”

For example, “Led a team of 4 individuals to reorganize client on-boarding program, resulting in a 23% improvement in customer retention year over year,” might be an example of a specific accomplishment in previous employment.

Here’s an example of how to create strong resume bullets.

Mistake #4: Thinking it’s all about you and not about the employer

The typical job applicant believes that their work history is all about them. They choose what they want to write about, what matters to them, etc.

Believe it or not, that is a backward strategy. (Presuming you desire additional interviews.

The easiest way to write your career history on a resume is to keep the employer in mind. View the job description for them. What needs do they have? What abilities are important to them?

That’s why in the last section I mentioned “tailoring” your resume. It’s quite significant. Don’t write about your prior employment without having a few job descriptions for the positions you seek in front of you!

That is how to ensure that the writing you do will result in interviews.

If you read the complete essay above, the majority of the errors should be corrected. If not, make sure you’ve read everything and go back.

You only have one chance to make a good impression on employers with your resume, and within 10 seconds of them viewing it, they’ll be checking through your prior employment history.

Use These Resume Work History Samples to Get More Interviews

You’ll get noticed by more employers and land more interviews if you heed the above advice and write your own resume’s employment history section using the templates and examples provided.

It’s important to spend extra time on your resume’s experience section and make sure you include all of your accomplishments in detail. Concentrate particularly on your two or three most recent roles because an employer will give them priority while analyzing your career.

It’s crucial to a successful job search since occasionally a recruiter may only look at this one section of your resume before choosing whether or not they want to interview you.