Difficulty: Moderately Challenging
Step1
Begin by making a timeline of your life experiences for the past several years. Does it sound overwhelming? Take it in small bites and don’t worry about specifics yet. Start with your most recent experience and label each one. (Volunteered for presidential candidate, cared for my sick relative) and identify the time frame (say, September 1995 to November 1996). Give each experience its own line and don’t leave any unidentified time periods. If you were involved in more than one project at a time, list them separately and state the time frames. Nothing is too trivial to list. If you were home sick for two weeks, list it. Some time frames will overlap; that’s fine.
Step2
Go back to your most recent experience and start a sub list of every task you performed for that project. This will take some time and may require you to come back to that experience several times. (Passed out flyers for candidate, entered data into church donations database). Be specific; nothing is too trivial to list. Did you interact with others? Did you supervise anyone? Did you take notes or collate envelopes. Every one of these activities is work experience. Repeat Step 2 for each of the projects or experiences you listed.
Step3
Go back through your sub lists and begin marking similar activities with a colored marker. Use a different color for each type of task. If you have used a computer to make your lists, use the highlight tool.
Step4
Start looking for patterns. Have you worked with people in many different projects? Have you performed data entry on a number of projects? Have you made flyers or delivered pamphlets by car or filled in at the day care center? All these activities, paid or unpaid, are valuable work experience. Find the most important patterns of tasks you’ve performed and list them.
Step5
Build an outline of your resume, creating a separate category of work experience for each of the important task patterns you listed in Step 4. Your categories might be: Data Entry, Delivery Service, Child Care or Customer Service.
Step6
Under each category, write one or two sentences describing in a general way what you did in that that task. Then include some concrete examples of projects or experiences in which you learned, used or perfected those tasks, using the list you built in Step 1. You might state: One of the projects that required my customer service skills was working for the John Doe presidential campaign, from September 1995 to November 1996.
Step7
Insert your contact information and heading at the top of the page. Add your educational history at the bottom. Be sure to check for spelling and grammar errors. Review and polish your resume until it looks complete and professional. Good luck!
Novice 
