How To Write a Resume When Your Education is Your Experience
By — — Posted in Resume Writing Tips
“We ought to be able to learn some thing second hand.
There is not enough time for us to make all of the mistakes ourselves.” – Harriet Hall
Okay, class! Let’s take a few notes about how to highlight the skills and experience from school if you haven’t had any work experience, or related work experience yet. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it doesn’t matter – it does!
(there’s also a YouTube Video at this link and shown below)
Job Search with Education, but No Experience & Behavioral Interviews
Some of you know that I’ve worked in a couple of college career centers. For almost every student, their education is where they gained most of their skills and experience.
For mid-career job changers that have gone back to school for a new field, or to qualify for an advanced job in your current profession, your education may be a key factor in your qualifications for the new work you seek beyond your previous positions, too.
Here’s how to get an A+ on how to write a resume when your education is your experience:
- List it at the top of your resume. Generally, once you have at least a year of experience in your field, your education goes to the bottom of the resume. If your training/degree is MOST of the experience you have, though, then it goes up top.
- You probably will want to use a functional or mixed/combo style resume style, which focuses on skills sets (what you know how to do), vs. the traditional chronological style (which focuses on your work history) Reference the post Functional Resumes Explained and Chronological vs. Functional and Other Great Resume Debates for more info.
- Internships & even in depth class projects DO count! “Experience is experience whether it’s paid or unpaid.” Read more on this in this post, Unpaid Does NOT Mean Unimportant! for more input on this, as well as including volunteer work and even work for friends that was applicable to the job you seek, too.
- For any work history you do have in areas unrelated to the job you seek (and thus unrelated to your education, too), focus on transferable skills. Your last assignment is to go read one of my most popular posts, 7 Transferable Skills and How to Talk About Them to see what *I’m* talking about here!
Want some help figuring out how to do all this? Check out my Branded Resume Rewrite service (and packages that include it with other services at a discount). Don’t spend all that money on your degree and then not know how to leverage that training to get you the job you seek in the field you are targeting!
Make one more investment in yourself & get a ‘teacher’/coach/writer like me to teach you how it’s done.
Be sure to Subscribe to my YouTube channel & “Like” the videos, too!
Job Search with Education, but No Experience & Behavioral Interviews
