Technical Work Experience

In addition to your grad date, this is the most important part of your resume and the section recruiters and hiring managers will likely spend the most time on. In this section, what matters is what company you worked for, your role while you were there, and your achievements while performing in your role. There is a separate section for Resume Content which will provide details on how to write effective bullet points.

Below are two variations from Jake’s Resume for the same role which contain the basic necessities:

As you can see, the way these vary is by whether or not the job title or the company is on the first line. A good rule of thumb is to put the company first if it is a recognizable company. Otherwise you should use the job title. Either way, this should be consistent with the rest of your resume. In other words, do NOT put the job title first for some experiences and the company first for others. Either put the job title first for all your experiences or the company first for all your experiences.

Note that in this example there is a list of languages and technologies (such as Java, Dropwizard, etc.) that are highlighted as part of the second line. This is a matter of preference and therefore optional.

As well, note that in this example there is not any bolding in the bullet points. Whether or not to bold certain technologies or metrics directly in the bullet points is a matter of preference. However, you should be careful not to go overboard.

There will also be cases in which you will want to put an internship in-progress on your resume. In such cases you can either put the end date of your internship if you know it, or replace the end date with “Present”.

For location, if you worked for a company while fully remote, you can either put where you would otherwise work in-office if you were an in-person employee, or simply Remote, <Country You Worked From>. For example, Remote, Canada.

What about part-time, contract, or unpaid work experience?

Generally I would err on the side of keeping such distinctions off your resume and include the experience as any other. However, you will want to be prepared for if someone digs further into your role during an interview and any issues with background checks if you do not properly represent your role.