Your resume is your first chance to impress a potential employer and show them that you have the skills and experience that they are looking for.

When you are writing your resume and including your work experience it is extremely important that you list all of the job responsibilities that you had in each position that you have worked. Whilst you may think this is obvious, you would be surprised at how many people only list the company they worked for and the job title that they had.

A lot of people copy and paste the job description from each position they have worked – whilst this may give an idea of what you did, it does not provide enough information (it can also make you come across as lazy). You will often have extra responsibilities given to you throughout your time in a certain company that are not listed in your general job description, and it could be these tasks that catch the eye of your next employer! If you want to copy and paste the job description, at least try to edit it a little bit so that it isn’t so obvious! If the wording of your job description says ‘To ensure….’, ‘To develop…’ etc, change it to be something like: ‘I ensured that…’, or ‘Ensured that…’; ‘I developed…’ or ‘Developed…’.

Make sure to list every task that you did in each position, and provide details if you think it would be necessary. Instead of saying ‘Accounts Receivable/Payable’, maybe try expanding it to say something like ‘Accounts Receivable / Payable – issuing invoices, processing payments, chasing overdue accounts, paying invoices received by the company, dealing with customer queries’. This gives a lot more information about your role in the team. You may think that this is all obvious, and assume that anyone reading your resume will know what duties would be included in this type of role, but it is so important to give this extra information. If you don’t, and another candidate does – your chances of moving forward to the interview stage is quite low.

The same goes if you list something else like ‘Administrative duties’. List what those duties were. Each role is different, and some companies may require you to perform an administrative duty that another company wouldn’t ask you to do, so it is VERY important to list everything.

Take a look at your resume… Does it need some work??