Does Education Really Count?

Does Education Really Count?

Of course it does! But is it really very important to write it down on your resume? And exactly how much of you academic experiences should you mention? Nowadays, with so many applicants and application forms arriving to every employer, recruiters have narrowed the time they dedicate to read and study a resume. Statistics show that recruiters look a resume for only less than ten seconds before deciding to skip it or filtering it to the next stage. In this case, exactly how much of you academic experience should you fit into your resume? This article will focus on answering what it might seem a simple question. An experienced recruiter would tell you, however, that there is no such thing as simplicity when dealing with effective resumes.

The first thing to keep in mind is that there are two types of academic experience: attended schools and extracurricular material. The first one includes everything from kindergarten to doctorate, while the latter includes every field congress, course, certification, conferences and seminars that you have attended in the past. If you type all this information, you can get anything from a three-page resume to a short-novel width of pages. Most experts cite a two-page resume as the ideal form of presenting your professional self.

The second thing to consider is exactly how important is this information to a recruiter. Not everyone has graduated from a high-profile school like Harvard or Cambridge. And even then, do employers really care where you studied your major? Is it more important than the skills, objectives or experience you cite? The cold, short answer is: no. Recruiters will consider your academic profile, but only on second degree.

Statistics shows that work experience and professional objectives are the most read points on a resume. This doesn’t mean that citing your academic experience is not important. On the contrary, it is crucial, even when recruiters will not read it at a first glance. This is â€"partlyâ€" because many jobs require academic expertise on a specific field, but mostly because academic experience â€"especially extracurricular experienceâ€" often translate to specified knowledge and abilities, which is what many employers are looking in a candidate.

The third and final aspect to consider is the contrast between the two types of academic experience. They both offer different information about the candidate that will prove to be important deeper into the hiring process. On the one hand, the school you attended can give further information about your professional profile. Unless it is a big-profile name, most schools are considered more or less the same, thus it is always recommended to add any academic profile you might have from that period. Club positions, scholarships or academic exchanges might cause a good impression. On the other hand, extracurricular information might prove to be more useful. It shows the area on which a candidate has specialized, and how well updated he is on a specific field. Most employers appreciate interest from a candidate to update his academic formation by studying new trends in their fields.

One question remains? How much academic experience should a candidate cite in their resumes? The information will change in relation to how experienced a candidate might be. Recently graduate candidates might cite more academic profiling than someone who has thirty years in the business, but most experts recommend everything from high-school to you latest degree in academic experience, and the last five important extracurricular courses and certifications.

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