The "Experience" Catch 22

We've all been there, you get the experience in the job but you can't get the job without the experience. This is a quick read about how to highlight your different forms of "experience."

For the full article, check it out on yahoo!news

Highlight From Emily Salkey at Google

Use the 'X-Y-Z formula' to highlight skills

Use the X-Y-Z formula pioneered by Google's former vice president of people operations, Laslo Bock, to highlight your skills on your resume, Salkey said. It stands for:

Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y] by doing [Z].

"This is a really impactful way of demonstrating what you did in each experience, why you did that, and how it was impactful," Salkey said.

Using numbers can also help to demonstrate impact, Salkey said.

As an example, you might write on your resume:

Participated in a city hackathon, working on a facial recognition project.

But this doesn't showcase technical skills, Salkey said. A better example would be:

Won second place out of 40 teams in the city hackathon, building facial recognition software that helps detect human emotions, using Python and Java.

It shows the recruiter exactly why it was important, and highlights specific coding skills.