How important is education to your resume? A better question may be how important is education to your career? If you are a member of Linked-In, social media’s professional network, you know that a primary theme of theirs is to “hire character, train skills.” But we all know that if a company needs a registered nurse or a certified public accountant, you will need the proper education to even get your foot in the door.
Let’s go after the first question since it is the easiest to answer. How important IS the EDUCATION section on your resume, including where should it appear on your resume? The answer is “it depends.” If the job requires a four year degree or higher, your education should appear at the top of your resume, under your contact information and under your objective, if you use an objective. The reasoning is simple. Your goal is to try and get your resume read. The best way to achieve this goal is to make the recruiter’s job as easy as possible with an appealing, eye-catching resume.
If the position which you desire requires a four year degree, list your degree at the top of your resume. If a degree is required, a good recruiter will search for your education first. The reasoning: no sense in reading the rest of the resume IF their education immediately disqualifies them. Making the recruiter’s job easy also means to place your education on your resume where it will be easy to find.
If you do not have a four year degree, place your education at the bottom of your resume. For those jobs that only require a specific type of experience or that will accept experience in lieu of a degree, your experience will be the priority in the way that your resume is written. Additionally, if you have some college but no degree, you only need to place your college time on your resume and not your high school. The reasoning: if you went to college, it stands to reason that you went to high school.
How important is education to your career? Again, the answer is “it depends.” If you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, you can’t achieve those positions without an education, and lots of it. However, if you aspire to own your own business, formal education is certainly a good option, but sometimes experience can also be a great, if sometimes unforgiving teacher. Self education is invaluable and should occur throughout career. Another way of putting it is this: read great books. People who do not read are little better off than those people who cannot read.
Proverbs 1:7
