Education and Experience on Your Resume
Knowing their relative value to potential employers will help you organize your résumé.
by Shane Christopher

Military transitioners constantly ask me how to best position their education on a résumé. Education and experience are each vital components of your résumé. Knowing what level of importance they are to an employer is important information when creating a résumé. (For the purpose of this article, consider education and training to be synonymous terms.)

Examine how your education benefits a prospective employer. More than anything, an education teaches you critical thinking skills and a thirst for lifelong learning. Unless your desired field is highly specialized, the specific coursework choices are not very important. College conditions you to ask questions, analyze problems and improve processes. Someone without college education may look at things from a more

shortsighted perspective. An educated employee is able to look at the bigger picture and ascertain causes, effects and trends.

Here’s an example:

Problem: Our sales are down.

Uneducated solution: Hire more sales people and make them work harder!

Educated solution: How are your sales people compensated and incentivized? What are the market trends? Have you seen increased competitor activity recently?

If education builds your professional foundation, experience proves your ability to effectively use your education to the benefit of your employer. By itself, an education is little more than a license to work a particular job. Graduation ceremonies are called commencements because they mark the beginning of your career. Now that you have graduated, your experience will differentiate you from others and prove your abilities in the workplace.

So it follows that you should lead your résumé with what is most relevant to your stage in proving those abilities. Moreover, if you have made the most of your education, then your post-education work experience should be more impressive than your education itself.

If education is listed at the top, employers will presume that you have little or no relevant work experience in the field. If that’s true then by all means put it at the top. I’ve seen some job seekers who graduated from prestigious schools who, despite having several years of work experience, wanted to list their education at the top of the résumé. Believe me, employers will find your education and if you attended a great school, you will receive your deserved credit.

When listing your education, here are some good guidelines: