How to Write a Resume Work Experience Section (+ Examples)

The work experience section is the list of jobs you have held, each with a title, employer, location, dates, and bullets describing what you did and what came of it. Bullets are the standard way to show both duties and achievements for each past job (Indeed Career Guide).

It goes below your contact details and your summary, and above education — unless you are a current student or recent graduate, in which case education sits first until you have a year or two of relevant work behind you. A chronological layout lists jobs most recent first and ends with the earliest (Indeed Canada), which recruiters prefer because it shows accomplishments, where they happened, and how you progressed (LinkedIn).

The alternative to a chronological work experience section is a functional one, where you group achievements under skill headings and list employers separately with dates only.

Use chronological unless you have a specific reason not to. If you do go functional, still give every employer a name, a title and dates somewhere on the page — leaving them out reads as evasion.

A hybrid works well for career changers: a short skills block near the top, then a normal chronological list underneath.

The pattern to learn is XYZ — Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y] by doing [Z] — attributed to former Google SVP of People Operations Laszlo Bock (Teal HQ). The Y is the number that proves it: a percentage, a sum, time saved, or volume handled (Resume.io).

In practice you write it as: action verb + what you did + the scope or number. Keep the number in the units your trade uses. A warehouse bullet counts pallets and picks, not "efficiencies".

Weak

Weak bullet

Responsible for handling customer complaints and improving satisfaction.

Strong

Strong bullet

Resolved 40-60 customer complaints per week by phone and email, clearing a 300-ticket backlog in six weeks and holding first-response time under four hours.

Why it is better: the weak version names a duty anyone in the job would have. The strong one gives volume (40-60 a week), a result (300-ticket backlog cleared), and the method — so the reader can picture the workload and judge whether it matches theirs.

Three rules that keep bullets honest:

• Start with a past-tense verb for past jobs, present tense for your current one. Never start with "Responsible for".
• If you genuinely cannot measure the outcome, measure the input: how many, how often, how big, how many people, how much money passed through your hands.
• Round, don't inflate. "Around 25 covers a shift" is fine. A precise 27.3% you cannot explain in an interview is not.

1. List every job, title, employer, city and dates first. Use month and year (Mar 2022 – Present) and keep the format identical down the page. Cover the last 10-15 years; older roles can be compressed into a one-line "Earlier experience" entry (Resume Genius, February 2026).
2. Read the job ad and pull out the keywords. Print it or paste it into a document and mark every noun that names a tool, a certification, a process or a volume — forklift licence, Epic, Xero, HACCP, Salesforce, IFRS, key stage 2, CDL. Those exact words are what you want appearing in your bullets, in the same wording the employer used, because many employers spend only a few seconds per resume or screen them with AI tools (Indeed Career Guide).
3. Draft bullets from memory of a normal week. For each job, write down what you actually did on a Tuesday. Then add scope: how many, how much, how often, how many people you did it with or for.
4. Rewrite each one into the XYZ pattern. Accomplished X, as measured by Y, by doing Z (Teal HQ) — with Y as a percentage, a sum, time saved or volume handled (Resume.io). Cut any bullet that survives the rewrite with no number and no outcome.
5. Weight the space by relevance, not recency alone. Give the job closest to the one you want 4-6 bullets. Give an unrelated job from 2014 one line. If your most relevant job is not your most recent, let it be longer.
6. Tighten the formatting. One page if you have under 10 years of experience, two pages beyond that. Body text 10-12 points, headings 12-14 points, margins 0.5-1 inch on all sides. Keep bullets to one or two lines; a three-line bullet is usually two ideas wedged together.

Each pair shows one early-career bullet and one experienced bullet, in that field's own units.

Warehouse and logistics

Warehouse operative, 1 year

Picked and packed 180-220 orders per shift using an RF scanner, maintaining 99% pick accuracy across a 12,000-SKU site.

Warehouse supervisor, 7 years

Ran a 22-person night shift across goods-in and despatch, cutting trailer turnaround from 90 to 55 minutes by resequencing dock allocation; held counterbalance and reach truck licences and delivered monthly manual handling refreshers.

Nursing

Registered nurse, 2 years, medical ward

Managed a caseload of 6-8 acute medical patients per shift, completing NEWS2 observations and escalating 3-4 deteriorating patients per month to the outreach team.

Senior staff nurse, 9 years, ICU

Coordinated care for ventilated patients at 1:1 ratios, precepted 11 newly qualified nurses through their preceptorship year, and led the ward's sepsis audit covering 240 admissions.

Retail

Sales assistant, 8 months

Served 120-150 customers per shift on till and shop floor, processed returns and exchanges, and reconciled a float of up to £1,500 at close.

Store manager, 6 years

Led a team of 18 across a store turning over roughly £3.2m a year, lifted conversion by rebuilding the rota around footfall peaks, and cut shrinkage by tightening stockroom access and weekly cycle counts.

Software engineering

Junior developer, 18 months

Shipped 30+ features and bug fixes to a React and TypeScript front end, raising unit test coverage on the checkout module from 40% to 78% with Jest.

Senior backend engineer, 8 years

Designed a Go and PostgreSQL service handling 4,000 requests per second, cut p95 latency from 820ms to 190ms, and mentored 4 engineers through code review and on-call rotation using Terraform, Docker and AWS.

Teaching

Newly qualified teacher, year 4

Taught a mixed-ability class of 30 pupils across the full primary curriculum, raising the proportion meeting age-related expectations in writing over one academic year.

Head of department, secondary maths, 11 years

Led a team of 7 teachers and 2 TAs, rebuilt the KS4 scheme of work around the new specification, and ran fortnightly departmental moderation across 340 students.

Accounting and finance

Accounts assistant, 1 year

Processed 400-500 purchase invoices a month in Sage 50, reconciled 6 bank accounts weekly, and chased aged debt down from 62 to 41 days.

Management accountant, ACCA qualified, 6 years

Produced monthly management accounts for 3 subsidiaries within 5 working days of period end, built a 12-month rolling cash flow forecast in Excel and Power BI, and led the year-end audit file for a £40m turnover group.

Hospitality and food service

Commis chef, 1 year

Prepped and plated 90-120 covers per service on the larder section, logged fridge temperatures and allergen checks under the kitchen's HACCP plan.

Head chef, 10 years

Ran a brigade of 9 across 200 covers a day, held gross profit at 68% by rewriting the menu around seasonal supply, and passed two consecutive environmental health inspections at the top rating; Level 3 Food Safety certified.

Construction and trades

Apprentice electrician, 2nd year

Assisted on first and second fix for 14 new-build units, terminated and tested circuits under supervision, and maintained CSCS card and site induction records.

Site supervisor, 12 years

Supervised 20-30 operatives and subcontractors on fit-out projects up to £2.5m, chaired weekly progress meetings, and closed out 60+ snagging items per handover; SMSTS and First Aid at Work certified.

Customer support

Support agent, 1 year

Handled 55-70 tickets a day in Zendesk across chat and email, keeping CSAT above 4.6 out of 5 and first-response time under two hours.

Support team lead, 5 years

Managed 9 agents across two time zones, wrote 40 macros and a 60-article help centre that cut repeat contacts on billing by a third, and ran weekly QA on 50 sampled tickets.

Marketing

Marketing executive, 18 months

Wrote and scheduled 3 email campaigns a week to a 45,000-subscriber list in HubSpot, lifting average open rate from 18% to 26% through subject-line testing.

Marketing manager, 7 years

Owned a £250k annual budget across paid search, paid social and content, grew organic sessions from 30k to 110k a month with a 90-article content plan, and briefed 4 freelancers and an agency in Google Ads, GA4 and Figma.

Driving and transport

Van driver, 1 year

Completed 70-90 multi-drop deliveries per day across a 60-mile radius, logged POD via handheld scanner, and maintained a clean licence with daily vehicle checks.

HGV Class 1 driver, 9 years

Drove tramping routes averaging 600 miles a week under EU drivers' hours rules, maintained digital tachograph compliance with no infringements over 3 years, and held ADR and Driver CPC.

Administration

Office administrator, 1 year

Managed a shared inbox of 60-80 emails a day, booked travel for 25 staff, and moved a paper filing system of 4,000 records into SharePoint.

Executive assistant, 8 years

Ran diaries and international travel for 3 directors across 4 time zones, coordinated a 40-person quarterly board pack in Outlook and Concur, and managed an office relocation for 120 staff.

Healthcare support

Healthcare assistant, 1 year

Supported personal care for 12-15 residents per shift, recorded fluid and food intake charts, and escalated changes in condition to the nurse in charge.

Senior care assistant, 6 years

Led a 5-person team on a 30-bed dementia unit, administered medication under NVQ Level 3 and a completed medication competency, and wrote and reviewed 18 care plans monthly.

Manufacturing and engineering

Production operative, 2 years

Operated CNC lathes to produce 400-600 components per shift to ±0.05mm tolerance, logged first-off inspections and completed 5S checks.

Manufacturing engineer, 10 years

Cut changeover time on a packing line from 45 to 18 minutes using SMED, ran 6 continuous improvement projects a year under Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, and drew fixtures in SolidWorks for a 3-shift operation.

• No paid experience yet. Use the same structure with different content: internships, placements, volunteering, part-time work, society roles, freelance jobs and substantial coursework projects all belong under "Experience" or "Relevant experience". Give each a title, an organisation, dates and bullets with numbers — a 200-person student event, a 12-week placement, a 6-month volunteer shift pattern. Early-career candidates can lean on skills gained through internships and coursework, while people with a longer record are better served by a chronological layout that shows growth (ResumeTemplates.com). Do not label anything "N/A" and do not pad with hobbies dressed up as jobs.

• Career changer. Keep the chronological list, but rewrite the bullets in the language of the target job rather than the one you are leaving. A functional or hybrid format suits people with transferable skills across industries (Monster) — put a short "Relevant skills" block above the history, then let the jobs run in order underneath. Translate units: a teacher moving into corporate training counts sessions delivered and people trained, not key stages. Name any new certification or course in progress with its expected completion date, and say plainly in your summary what you are moving towards.

• Senior and long careers. Cap the detail at the last 10-15 years (Resume Genius, February 2026) and compress anything older into a single line: "Earlier roles at [type of employer], 2001-2010: [titles]." Cut every task bullet and keep only scale and outcomes — headcount, budget, territory, P&L, systems replaced. Two pages is normal at this level; three is not. If you have had several titles at one employer, list the employer once with the title changes stacked beneath it, which shows progression in one glance.

• Gaps in the record. You can de-emphasise a long gap by leading with skills rather than a timeline (FlexJobs), but still give the dates. A one-line entry — "Career break, 2021-2023: full-time caring responsibilities; completed [certification]" — usually closes the question faster than leaving a hole.

• Contract, agency and seasonal work. Group them under one heading with the agency or your own trading name as the employer, then list clients or assignments beneath. A page of eight three-month jobs reads as instability; one entry with eight assignments reads as a contractor.