Best way to list former duties on a job application?

March 21, 2018 6:12 AM

Wondering what HR people prefer: I'm helping someone fill out a job application. We need to summarize the primary duties from previous jobs. Should we just copy that from the official statement of duties provided by those jobs? Or rewrite them to be... more personable or something? What style of citation do we use?

Joking about the citation style mostly! The application is for a skilled labor type job for a US state government, so I don't think they care about citation style.

But we want to really make this application shine and emphasize that the job seeker meets & exceeds the listed requirements, since it'll be extremely competitive! The previous jobs have fairly thorough official job duties since they're union-negotiated, and most of the duties are very relevant. So is it best to...

A. Copy the list verbatim (this list is probably accessible and definitely obtainable by HR),
B. Keep the same language ("Performs blablabla. Services yadayada. Provides you get the idea.") but reorganize & omit some words to somewhat reduce boringness,
C. Write the duties in a more narrative format ("On a typical day, I do all the things."), or
D. Open with a brief narrative hitting the most impressive/relevant things & then do a list as in A or B.

Two things to note:
We're familiar with the hiring process so we know that (although not specified), the initial application is probably a screener to take the exam, and they'll only interview the top however many scorers. But there may well be 100+ people taking the exam, so we want to get job seeker a spot and have a stellar application if/when HR revisits it during their selection process.

I bet you lovely people will tell me I'm overthinking this, but this is a massive and rare opportunity so I'm desperate to help make this the best darn application ever! And maybe HR people tend to hate narrative descriptions of job duties, I dunno.

posted by Baethan to Work & Money (8 answers total)

You should tailor the description of the duties of past jobs to emphasize your qualifications for the job for which you are applying.
posted by Jahaza at 6:23 AM on March 21, 2018 [6 favorites]

Best answer: Closest to B. Rewrite as much as necessary and possible to fit the format/wording _of the job posting you're applying to_. Discard anything that seems entirely irrelevant/uninteresting.

So if the previous job had "Goat herding and goat feeding," and the new job says "Nutrition and organization support for horned herbivores," you write _that_, not "Goat herding." If you previously herded sheep and not goats, you still write "nutrition and organizational support for sheep," to emphasize how close the candidate is to their ideal.
posted by Tomorrowful at 6:26 AM on March 21, 2018 [14 favorites]

There will almost definitely be more than one applicant that had experience in all of the areas that HR is looking for. This person should differentiate themselves by focusing on achievements and their impact at their job responsibilities rather than just what they did. Focus on outcomes rather than responsibilities if you want an exceptional application. Being responsible for work does not actually indicate much.
posted by saeculorum at 6:56 AM on March 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

I agree about including outcomes, but as someone in the midst of hiring right now, I prefer a mix of job duties (specifically what was done, what technology or equipment used, etc) and achievements. I've been seeing a lot of "successfully communicated client brand identity to audience" type stuff and would find those kinds of resumes easier to evaluate if they included the how. "Performs services xyz leading to outcome abc."

(Note: I'm the hiring manager, not in HR, but I suspect HR is even more likely to skim past the accomplishments stuff and look for the keywords, duties, technologies, etc. Just make sure to include both)
posted by misskaz at 7:30 AM on March 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Applying for government jobs has different rules and norms than applying for non-government jobs. Please be wary of advice coming from people without experience with government jobs, even if they have awesome experience with hiring for non-government jobs. Job ads and job descriptions for government jobs are not "nice to have" sorts of requirements; they are absolute requirements. The closest you can come to describing, word for word, how you meet those requirement, the better the application. Hopefully there are also essay-type questions where you can describe accomplishments.
posted by lazuli at 7:44 AM on March 21, 2018 [9 favorites]

Also, if your friend can upload a resume in addition to filling out the application, that could be another place to focus more on accomplishments.
posted by lazuli at 7:47 AM on March 21, 2018

A lot of government agencies use keyword based software to do an initial screen, so you should make sure you have keywords from the job posting of the job your friend wants (not their current job) sprinkled liberally through the application.

I am a former hiring manager and big believer in just writing resume descriptions (or in this case, descriptions for an application) from scratch, tailored for the job you want. You won’t necessarily have to rewrite them for every application, but when you’re in a job search, your resume should reflect your qualifications for the kind of job you want, not just a rote listing of your duties.

And yes, include a mix of responsibilities and accomplishments. ie, acted as a project manager on the Widget Satisfaction project, managing budgets, timelines, and workflows; this project resulted in a 23% increase in widget satisfaction.”
posted by lunasol at 7:52 AM on March 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you all!
posted by Baethan at 6:41 AM on March 22, 2018