I am sick of getting rejected post app, and so I am overhauling my work experienc/employment section in the hope that it helps (I am almost 30 so have a load of different employment that is very varied). Just wondering if anyone has a structure for these employment descriptions that they know are what graduate recruitment wants to see? I have tried putting in loads of detail, and then less, and never really been happy with it. I understand that my application answers also need improving, but it can't harm to fix up my work section.
@Jessica Booker @Andrei Radu @Ram Sabaratnam @Amma Usman if you have any insights please do let me know. Or anybody else of course too
Thank you!
There is no objectively correct framework to use for all your work experiences - the level of detail you should go into highly depends on the experience itself and you will have to make some judgement calls as to what will add most value to your application. However, I think it will be useful to explain
(a) the criteria for determining level of appropriate detail you should go into; and (b) the right writing style and structure
(A) Criteria to determine what level detail is desirable in a work experience
A paradigmatic example of a very substantive role you should try to explain in detail is a working as a paralegal for a commercial law firm for a few years. This is a role that:
- Was long term and took up large amounts of your time;
- Included many varied sets of tasks and responsibilities;
- Probably enabled you to develop many relevant skills for a trainee's job;
- Probably has a number of links you can make to various 'why commercial law' and 'why the firm' reasons;
- Probably included some specific moments when you performed well-above the expectations;
Since it scores well in all, I would try to use all the available word count to describe the experience as thoroughly as possible. I will however caveat this by adding that these five points do not necessarily include all the relevant considerations - they are simply the ones I used to guide my writing. As such, if you can think of further criteria to add, you should definitely do so.
For illustrative purposes, a work experience at the other end of the spectrum could be a one-day role at your university where you get to help out with organizing some event. This role (i) was not long term, (ii) did not have many varied responsibilities; (iii) while it contributed to the development of some skills, the development will not have been very significant; (iv) probably does not have many element that can be linked to commercial law or the firm; (v) probably does not have many moments where you could really impress. As such, when describing this experience, I would not do more than write a few short sentences explaining my basic tasks.
Now, between these two experiences at opposite ends of the spectrum there are many in that sit in between, scoring well on some metrics but not others. This is where you will have to make some judgement calls. There is no objective way to determine the weigh you should place on each criterion and to what level of detail that should translate to. Moreover, the question of how elaborate your writing should be will also depend on the context of your other work experiences. If you have many other work experiences which are more relevant, this should be a consideration in favor of more brevity - beyond a certain point, including more and more information will just reduce the impact any specific more impressive point of information could have made on a recruiter. In a similar vein, the extent to which you reference an experience in other parts of the application should be considered.
Nonetheless, do not be too worries about these judgement calls you have to make. Recruiters are well aware that there is no objectively correct 'model' answer when describing work experiences. If you think about them carefully and use your common sense, I would be very surprised for this to be dragging your applications down.
(b) Structure and Style
An part of work experience writing that many people do not focus on enough is structure and style. Since many candidates have several work experiences and since these sections have less clear assessment criteria than application form questions, I would argue that style and structure is as important if not more than in the other parts of the application. Many often when applicants write poor work experience description this is not due to substantive aspects regarding the level of detail they went into, but simply that they employed a more verbose and less clear manner of writing than they would in an motivational question/cover letter answer. If you avoid this mistake, I believe any perceived inadequacies regarding levels of detail in the description will be looked on much more favorably by recruiters.
As such, for style, I advise you to go for the same 'to the point' writing you should use when writing a 'Why the firm' or 'Why commercial law' answer. Even if you have a higher word count limit for a work experience section or you have less points to include, do not interpret that as an excuse to be wordy. Critically examine your writing and ask yourself if any given sentence or part of a sentence is: (i) contains information that is necessary to be communicated; (ii) that cannot be communicated in a shorter manner; and (iii) that cannot be communicated in a simpler manner. If the answer is ever 'no', think about how you can rephrase your point.
The question of structure is unfortunately influenced by what your assessment based on the five criteria mentioned in the first section of this post. For more substantive experiences, I would use the STAR structure (Situation, Task, Action, Results). For less relevant experiences, I would simply aim to cover the essence of the experience in a few sentences. As a rule of thumb, I think any experience that requires you to write more than 100 words should be structured using STAR.
