Resume – Edit out the irrelevant

One of the most common problems young and experienced people make when crafting their first few resumes is to include irrelevant experiences into their resumes.
What are irrelevant experiences?
If you are trying to get an office job or creative job, don’t put that you were a Barista at your college coffee shop.  Now if there are translatable and relatable experiences/takeaways like being a shift manager and needing to create processes for your team, than by all means please keep those experiences, but if not, you need to figure the quickest and most effective way to gather and present other relevant experiences as soon as possible, in order to remove the irrelevant experiences off your resume.
So what should you put in it’s place? I think one thing people often overlook are projects. Many times having the right projects that are related to the position you’re seeking will have a strong impact than a lot of experience in something unrelated.
There really isn’t another way of hammering the point that if you’re seeking a particular position, you need to show that you have pertinent and relevant experience. Which may be a bit of a downer for some people who are starting out or making a switch but it calls to the fact of where you might be presently and give you a guide for what you need to do next.  Often it doesn’t require you having jobs in that particular field, if you can show projects, skills and/or a portfolio that will show the employer that you have something to offer.
So quick recap, if you’re not able to point to why this or that experience makes you a strong candidate for the position you’re applying for, take it out.

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