From the course: Writing a Resume

Strategies for using your education

From the course: Writing a Resume

Strategies for using your education

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- Did you ever take a certification course or start a degree and then stop halfway? Have you ever included any of that information on your resume? Maybe you're not sure how or even if you should include it. In most cases your education is quite cut and dry. Either you have a degree or you don't, and it's either relevant to the job or it isn't. But what happens if you're like me and you spent way too much money on an educational path you thought you would complete but didn't? Should you include that? Won't it make you look like a flake? And if you didn't complete it, is it even relevant? Well, the answer is it depends. What does it depend upon? By now I hope you know that it depends upon the job you're applying for. Using my own personal example as a law school dropout, let's see how this works. I decide that I'm going to include my law school information on my resume even though I didn't earn a degree. The how works like this. In the space where you might normally include the degree you detail what was actually completed. So for me in this instance, instead of Juris Doctorate, I would write first year courses completed. You include the school name just as you would as if you had actually completed the degree with a few small differences. If this was true for an undergraduate degree, instead of Bachelor of Science and Accounting, you might write 50% of courses completed towards accounting major, or 75% of course requirements for graduation completed. And of course you don't include a date of graduation because there isn't one. The why is a little more complex. How and when should you employ this tactic? Well, since this video is all about positioning yourself to get the job you want, you would include this information when it's relevant to the job you have applied for and it helps your case. In my law school example I used to include the fact that I took law school courses when I was applying for a job as a legal recruiter because it showed the potential employer that I had gone above and beyond undergraduate studies in law. The same is true for an undergraduate degree if you don't have a degree at all. This shows that you began the process and intended to obtain a degree but life got in the way. And your cover letter should have a really good explanation for why that degree is unfinished. An additional tactic that can be employed is actually listing a few of the courses you took. Doing this will only be helpful if you need to show that you have experience with a particular topic that you can't show you have in your work experience. Showing that you took a class that covered that subject matter will help bolster your case that you know what you're talking about. So dig out that half-completed degree and brush off those certifications. You might be able to use them after all.

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