Relevant experience is one of the biggest determinants of whether or not you get your dream job. It is this factor that forces hiring personnel to dig through your credentials in search of characteristics that fit. After all, every job has specific requirements. How well you fit these requirements on the basis of skill and experience tips the scale in your favor or against you.
This article aims to help you understand how to take advantage of job specifications. We hope that when you are asked to explain why your background and experience would be a good fit for this job, you would make interviewers nod with approval.
So, in this article, we define and show you how to include relevant experience in your resume. Also, we provide examples of how to answer the interview questions about your previous experience.
Table of Contents
What is a Relevant Experience?
Relevant experience is simply any knowledge you have from previous employment, engagement, or endeavor that is applicable now. The term is important in hiring circles because it touches on two equally important concepts: prior knowledge and fitness. Prior knowledge in this context refers to everything you learned or applied at a previous date and place. Fitness, on the other hand, refers to how suitable this knowledge is for the present task or employment.
The main reason why hiring managers emphasize relevant experience is that it reduces the burden of the new company educating you. If you have prior experience working with computers, for example, the new company wouldn’t need to teach you about hard drives. Instead, you can be better integrated into a company and be of use to said company when you have this prior knowledge.
What relevant experience is not is an idea of what is needed in the new company. It is not what you studied in school or have always wanted to be. In other words, when asked about it, you cannot say that you have always wanted to work in such and such a place. Or that you have a degree in the same or a related field.
Relevant experience is simply experience that can be very useful in the present situation. The emphases are on ‘past’ and ‘very useful.’
Examples of Relevant Experience
There is a common belief among job seekers that when hiring managers ask about useful past experiences, they want to know if you have worked for a similar company. This is not often the case.
There is more than one way to define these experiences. Examples include:
- Volunteering: Volunteering is a perfect way out during an interview for a graduate who has never worked before. When asked for previous and useful experience, you can always refer to a time when you volunteered for work in a related field or industry. The important thing here is the skill you acquired in the process, as well as your familiarity with the field.
- Self-employment: Self-employment takes it a bit further than volunteering. Presenting your previous experience under this category tells the hiring personnel that you are driven, in addition to being fit for the position. Of course, this role comes with responsibility, so you should expect more questions on this front.
- Academic projects: Academic projects are also valuable examples of previous useful experiences. Once again, this is because familiarity with the job process is the fundamental requirement. Moreover, although academic projects may not provide in-depth details as required, it includes reporting as a side benefit. In other words, the advantage of having an employee with prior academic knowledge of the field is that they are able to present facts and findings methodologically.
- Placements: Internship is one of the most common dimensions of useful previous experience as required by hiring managers. Once more, this may not suggest an exhaustive understanding of the field. However, it indicates that you have previous real-life experience doing similar work.
Tips on How to List Relevant Experience in a Resume + Examples
Including relevant experiences in your resume is not difficult. Doing it effectively so that you get the job is the hard part. Here are 5 suggestions on how to list your previous experiences in your resume.
1. Focus on the Requirements of the Job
Let us assume that you have done a lot of jobs in the past year alone. Should you include these in your resume to prove that you are hardworking? No! Hiring managers are not interested in how hardworking you have been—only how useful you are. This is why you must focus on the requirements of the job you’re after.
Keywords are defining characteristics of the modern style of hiring employees. Keep an eye out for these keywords and use them in your resume. This is one way to easily grab the attention of hiring personnel and make them pay a bit more attention to you than they are to others.
2. Overlay the Job Requirements with Your Credentials
Having taken the requirements of your stock, select career credentials that fit them. Once you have identified these credentials, make them the focus of your resume. By so doing, HR will know that you are aware of what the company wants. More than that, you are equipped to supply this demand.
If, for example, the company is interested in applicants with programming skills, you should mention the years you spent as a web developer. Make sure you include these experiences in your opening statement.
3. Include Relevant and Realistic Skills and Abilities
At present, every skill in high demand is related to many others. Once you have a grasp of the skills required by the job, make sure to include related ones. This will show that you have the particular field/area of endeavor in mind. Moreover, passion and skill are variables that hiring managers cannot ignore.
So, make sure to outline your skills and abilities in a way that is clear, specific, and interlinked. Write ‘Front end web development’ instead of ‘computer software.’ Remember, you want to use this outline to convince your interviewers that you are qualified for this position. So be selective and don’t pour out your soul in the Skills and Achievements section.
4. Keep the Limelight on What You Did Rather Than on What You Were
Talk about the Skills and Achievements section, the main area of focus for hiring managers is often this section. Interviewers want to know if you are qualified for a role on the basis of what you achieved in previous positions. So, ensure that keep the light on what you did instead of the position you held.
For example, if you were a public relations officer previously, don’t just state it and leave it there. Instead, say exactly what you did in that office and how you contributed. So, say that you designed new methods for effective communication and marketing.
5. Bring Something New and Relevant to the Table
Lastly, it is easy to focus on what you have that the company wants to the point of ignoring other skills, abilities, and evidence. This is one of the ways hiring managers filter out unqualified candidates. In other words, it is how they identify forward-thinking applicants.
When you want to include something new that is not directly relevant, do so with the company in mind.
What is its objective and modes of operation? Mention new skills and achievements related to these objectives and modes of operation. An IT company that directly serves customers will want you to have customer support skills, although they may not include it in the job description.
How to Answer the Interview Questions About Your Previous Experience + Examples
Successfully and satisfyingly answering interview questions about previous and relevant experiences is not complicated. Here are a few suggestions on how to do so.
- Be calm and composed: Don’t be flustered when you respond to interview questions. Take a deep breath and organize your thoughts before answering. This tells the interviewers that you are orderly and mentally disciplined.
- Focus on keywords: Keep your responses around the requirements of the job. Don’t go telling funny stories that have little or no relevance.
- Focus on your achievements: Let what you did be the main course of your interaction. Only mention the titles of the positions you held, don’t dwell on them.
- Keep interviewers engaged: Make sure your interviews are engaged. Research extensively before coming to these interviews. Get them to ask further questions about how you got tasks done.
- Keep your responses brief: Time is precious, so keep your responses to 1 minute, unless the hiring team asks you to clarify something.
Conclusion
As you are now probably aware, you can use your previous experiences to get a job without much effort.
These experiences are not only good for learning to be better at what you do, but also for creating an outline for your career. Both of these benefits are highly valued by hiring managers. Therefore, your resume does not have to be a compilation of inaccurate or exaggerated information. All you need to focus on is fitting your past experiences into the conditions set by the job you’re applying to.