Experience section

• What if I don’t have any Canadian work experience?

• Formatting experiences

• Experience headings

• Experience bullet points

The experience sections typically form the bulk of the résumé content. Each experience is comprised typically of three to five experience bullet points. These bullet points should provide specific evidence from your various experiences that back up the claims you make in your summary of qualifications.

When choosing to include your experiences, sections you might immediately think of are titled “Work Experience” and “Volunteer Experience.” These sections are commonly included in résumés, but there are other types of sections that can be used. You may, for example, present your experiences as clusters of a similar type under one heading, such as “Academic Projects” or “Communications Experience”.

Within the experience sections, you have flexibility in terms of which headings you decide to include and how you choose to order them. Knowing your options for your experience sections gives you flexibility and control over how you’d like to organize and prioritize your experiences in a persuasive way. You can curate your headings to show employers what you want them to see. You may want to consult with trusted contacts for advice on common heading names and arrangements used in the industry you are targeting.

Crafting a résumé often involves balancing your desire to stand out from other candidates by articulating your unique strengths, while considering the expectations and conventions of your target sector. It’s a delicate balancing act!

According to the Ontario Human Rights Code, employers are not legally permitted to ask if you have Canadian work experience because it may result in discrimination. Canadian work experience is not a good indicator of future job performance. Where you got your experience should not matter.

Your international work experience is important, relevant and demonstrates your competencies. You can always include your academic or volunteer experience in Canada alongside your international work experience. This demonstrates how you have applied your competencies across different cultural settings.

Within the majority of experience sections, you will include your role title, employer name, month/year of start date, month/year of the end date and location (“City, Province” or if outside Canada, “City, Country”). If relevant, create 3-5 bullet points describing your experience and accomplishments.

When listing your international experience (work, internship or volunteer), where necessary, conduct research and/or consult with trusted advisors to describe your role in a way that is both authentic and well understood in a Canadian context.

You may want to identify the prestige or defining quality of employers outside of Canada to educate and orient Canadian hiring managers. An entry could appear as follows: job title, company name, (defining quality or stature). For example, “Sales Manager, XYZ retailer (one of the top 5 retailers in Chennai state).”

Learn more about some experience sections below that you can choose to use in your résumé.

Relevant experience

The relevant experience section allows you to feature your most relevant experience — even if it’s not the most recent. This is a great option if your recent roles are less relevant than past experiences. You may group relevant experiences from paid work, co-op, volunteer or academic experiences. This approach can maximize impact and entice the reader.

Other somewhat related experience could be included in an “Additional Experience” section. It can be helpful to include in brackets after a role title whether the work was full-time, part-time, contract or an internship (e.g., Project Assistant (contract, part-time)).

Work experience

The work experience section contains relevant paid or unpaid work and should be selective, ensuring you only include relevant experiences. You may wish to call it Relevant Experience” if you’ll have additional work experience sections. If you’ve had many work experiences, you may want to use the heading “Selected Work Experiences”. “Employment History” is typically used when referring to all your paid work experience to date.

The work experience section is one place you can highlight any internship, co-op and/or work-integrated learning (WIL) experiences as well as research and teaching assistantships. Alternatively, these types of experiences could fit under a “Project Experience”, “Relevant Experience”, or “Additional Experiences” section. Where they fit best depends on the nature of the experience and how it relates to your other experience (e.g., project-based experiences such as WE Accelerate could fit well under a project experience section).

Project experience

A project experience section highlights projects from your academic, work or volunteer experience. This could include experiences such as research and teaching assistantship positions, project-based work-integrated learning experiences, student club projects, a thesis or major course projects. You may prefer to place these experiences under a work experience or volunteer experience section.

Volunteer experience

The volunteer experience section includes any relevant volunteer roles you’ve held throughout your career. Similar to work experience, volunteer experience demonstrates your competencies and achievements specific to your field and/or transferrable skills. Many employers value volunteer work as it demonstrates that you are motivated and interested in giving back to your community. Including this experience on your résumé could make you more attractive to potential employers.

Volunteer experience can include a range of activities where you give your time or services with no financial gain. If you are engaged in co-curricular activities such as volunteering with a student club, you may want to include them in an extracurricular activities section or combine them in a volunteer and extracurricular activities section.

You may include your volunteer experience in one of the following ways depending on its relevance to the job for which you’re applying:

• If your volunteer activities are as relevant as your paid work experience, consider adding the volunteer role to your work experience section and indicate (volunteer or unpaid) after the role title.

  • e.g., Event Planner (volunteer)

• If you wish to highlight your volunteer activities separately from your work experience, use a separate heading

  • e.g., Volunteer Activities, Volunteer Experience, Community Service

• If your volunteer activities and associated skills are not relevant to the work you are seeking, consider including them in an activities and interests section

• Regardless of the heading you list your volunteer experience under, list the organizations for which you volunteered, the location and, if relevant, add detail about your contributions, beginning each point with an action verb. Remember, you can develop key skills through volunteer work that employers may see as relevant to the work they want you to do.

• If you’re concerned about including information that might disclose your ethnicity, religion or political or sexual orientation, you have the choice to use generic terms (e.g., Team Leader, Local Youth Group) if you prefer not to disclose. For support in making this decision, consider booking an appointment with a career advisor.

What if my volunteer experience doesn’t have a role title?

Quite often, volunteer positions may not have a formal role title. In some cases, you can use the title “Volunteer.” In other cases, you can choose to create a title. For example, if you mentored in a volunteer role, you could call the role “Mentor” or “Volunteer Mentor.”

For graduate work where you may take on volunteer work that has no title, you can include it as “graduate researcher”, “volunteer” or “departmental volunteer.” There is creative freedom to create a title for a role that does not have one, if the title you create accurately reflects your responsibilities in that role.

How to write effective bullet points

It can be daunting for many people to describe what they have undertaken in various roles. For some, it feels more comfortable to downplay or disregard their individual contributions. It’s perfectly understandable if you find it challenging to articulate what you did, how you did it and what result or impact your actions had. For this and other reasons, writing bullet points isn't easy for many people

To make writing experience bullet points easier, update your résumé with key accomplishments or skills you developed immediately after you finish a job, experience or project. Keeping a copy of the job description or course syllabus can be helpful when trying to find the language to describe the experience.

Take the time to identify the tasks you carried out and the skills you developed. This enhances your awareness of your contributions and their value. It also empowers you to convincingly describe them in your cover letter and interviews. Let's get started!

Ready, set, action verbs!

Each experience bullet point should begin with an action verb. Select one that is precise, accurate and will create a vivid image of your accomplishment. Avoid repeating the same action verb. Using a variety of verbs can help you showcase your different skillsets and abilities.

Analyzing the job ad can also help guide you in selecting appropriate action verbs. For ideas, refer to this list of action verbs. Remember that all action verbs are not created equal. Avoid vague verbs like “helped,” “assisted,” and “participated,” as they may not provide a clear picture of what you've done and your unique contribution.

If you learned something on the job (e.g., how to use new software) but did not have a chance to use it, you may wish to include a “learned” statement (e.g., learned how to use Excel).

How do I articulate contributions as part of a group project or team?

Contributions you’ve made to a group project or team are valuable additions to your résumé. If you were a member of a two-person team, consider using “co-” as the prefix to the action verb describing your role (e.g., co-edited user’s manual).

For teams of more than 2 people, consider describing the specific scope and/or results of your role and end by indicating that others were involved (e.g., Edited user’s manual for XYZ software, as a member of the communications team).

Experience bullet points vs. accomplishment statements

There are two different kinds of bullet points you may want to include in your experience sections:

Qualitative vs. quantitative accomplishment statements

There are two types of accomplishment statements: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative statements measure your accomplishments with hard data, whereas qualitative statements measure your accomplishments by describing the impact.

In some industries it may be easier to quantify an accomplishment, such as in marketing (e.g., increased sales by 20%). If you don’t have concrete numbers to back up your claims, you can always consider the qualitative results of your actions (e.g., receiving a job promotion) or a learning (e.g., refined active listening skills).

Examples of experience bullet points and accomplishment statements

Below are some examples of experience bullet points (columns A + B) and accomplishment statements (columns A + B+ C).