Want to boost your chances of getting hired? Don't forget to include this on your profile.

When creating your online career profiles or even when writing your resume, chances are, you're spending more time writing your skills and enumerating your work history more than anything else.

Yes, your skill set as well as your employment background have a lot of bearing on the hirer's decision to shortlist you for an interview and ultimately hire you. However, there is one important thing that most candidates tend to ignore when creating their online career profiles the work experience description.

Work experience descriptions are more valuable than what most candidates think. When creating your profile on JobStreet.com, there's big chance that you missed or completely ignored that box that says 'Experience Description.' We don't blame you.

Sometimes, it feels like such a drag to write something about your work history when simply including your position title seems to do the job. After all, no one reads work experience descriptions, right? Wrong!

The importance of work experience descriptions

When writing your resume, one of the most difficult parts is composing the descriptions of your jobs, volunteer work, projects, and other relevant experiences. That is why candidates tend to skip this step when creating their online profiles.

What most candidates do not realize is that describing your work experience may hold the key in getting you found and hired. Enumerating your employment history and merely including all the positions you held in the past won't convince the employer to invite you for an interview and ultimately hire you. But having even just a short yet well-written work experience description will.

How come? Detailing your prior work experience shows the potential employer how you made a difference for your past employer and will also serve as the perfect opportunity to emphasize your qualifications for the job you want.

In a world where hundreds, if not thousands, of candidates competing for the same position, a well-written work experience description will help you differentiate yourself from the rest of the crowd.

Writing work experience descriptions

Your work experience descriptions should be clear and concise and of course, descriptive. After reading it, hirers should know exactly what your job responsibilities were, what skills you have developed, where your strengths lie, and what you have contributed or achieved.

Here are some tips to help you create an informative and concise work experience description:

1. Start by stating your job title, name of the company, location and duration of your job.  List experiences in reverse chronological order with the most current experience first.

Note:

Online job portals like JobStreet.com readily provides these fields for candidates to fill out so there's no need to worry about writing these details down.

2. Describe your responsibilities in concise statements led by strong verbs like 'developed', 'organized', 'managed' and 'overcame.' Focus on the skills and strengths that you possess and that you have identified as being important to your field.

3. Make it a point to vary your action words. You do not want all your work experience descriptions to sound identical.

4. Research the keywords that you should include for each job. If in doubt, take a look at your actual job description and the essential and desirable skills required for the job you are doing and review the profiles of your colleagues and peers.

5. Quantify your accomplishments and responsibilities whenever possible. Use numbers, amounts, values, and percentages (examples: "Increased monthly sales by 40%. . .", "Supervised a team of 7 copywriters . . .", "Designed 11 websites...").

6. Limit your work experience description to the three or four most important points. You can have your description in a sentence/paragraph form or summarize it using bullet points.

Note: JobStreet.com gives you up to 3,500 characters for your "˜Work Description "˜. Make the most out of it!

Sample work experience descriptions

Here are a handful of sample work experience descriptions for your reference.

For sales manager

Responsible for the sales process from initial point of contact (lead generation), presentations, proposals, to contract negotiations and execution. Exceeded minimum quarterly and annual sales objectives by 40%.

For programmer

Completed web design and application development projects for two of the company's major client - both delivered 1 month ahead of schedule.

For sales associate

• Provided direct marketing and sales support to field/distribution sales organization.
• Helped generate, qualify and process sales leads.
• Responsible for maintaining customer, prospects and competitor databases and assessing, devising, and implementing marketing promotions.
  

For marketing executive

Initiated new marketing strategies and designed innovative advertisements which helped increase the company's customer base by 56%.

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Now that you know the secret to boosting your chances of getting hired, what's stopping you from getting the job that you want? Go ahead and create your own work experience descriptions and start applying to JobStreet.com's top employers today!


About JobStreet.com

JobStreet.com is a leading online job board presently covering the employment markets in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam. JobStreet.com currently services over 230,000 corporate hirers and over 15 million jobseekers in its database.

About SEEK Asia

JobStreet.com and jobsDB are part of SEEK Asia, which is the leading online employment market place in Asia. SEEK Asia covers 7 countries namely Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

SEEK Asia is the extension of the Australian Securities Exchange listed company called SEEK. The company's purpose is to help improve people's lives through a better career. SEEK Asia's database consist of over 500,000 corporate hirers and over 24 million candidates.

For more information about this article, or to schedule an interview with JobStreet.com Philippines, please call Monica Palomares, Marketing Specialist, at 286-6222.
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