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The Experience section of your resume is very important -  it shows what you have done in the past and allows the employer to know what skills you will bring with you if you’re hired. So you want this section to be in top shape before you send out your resume.

 

Each entry in the Experience section is typically made up of four pieces of information:  the company name, your position at that company, dates of employment, and a description of what you did in that position.

 
 The first three are the easy parts, but writing an effective description of what your position entailed is a bit trickier.  The first thing to do is to figure out what part of your previous job is most relevant to the job you are currently applying to.  

For example, if you used to work in retail and are applying for a job in a marketing department, you don’t want to highlight how good you were at stocking shelves.  You want to highlight how good you were interacting with customers and determining their needs.  

So, go through each entry in the Experience section and write down a few notes about the most relevant parts of the job.  If there were no relevant parts, highlight important responsibilities.  

Let’s say that when you come home from college in the summer, you have always worked at a local restaurant and have gained responsibilities there over the years.  If you were in charge of opening the restaurant in the morning, then write that down.

Using those notes, we’re now going to write an effective experience section.  First of all, let’s use that opening the restaurant example again.  Don’t say, “I opened the restaurant everyday”. Instead write: “Responsible for the starting of business operations at the beginning of every shift”. Sounds a lot better, right?  

Try it for your own experience section, making sure to highlight the relevant responsibilities rather than duties, and you’ll be amazed at what you come up with.

More resources:

More about the Experience Section: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/ResumeW/experience.html

An article about Experience using a bullet section for each entry: http://essayinfo.com/resume/experience_section.php