Beyond Job Experience. Non-Obvious Things to Put on a Resume to Stand Out
Landing a job is 50% luck, 50% self-marketing skills, and 0% your actual work experience. Jokes aside, anybody who’s ever hunted for a job knows how important it is to craft an outstanding resume to get noticed. Especially when you don’t have a lot of work experience under your belt.
And yet, a CV is your pass to any job application process. There’s no way around it – you need a CV, and you better be good at it. The less work experience you have, the more skill you need in crafting a good resume and “selling yourself”.
In this article, we’re sharing tips on creating a resume that makes you shine by highlighting the unexpected.
Whether you lack work experience and need to compensate for it or looking to spice up your already impressive resume, this is a read for you.
Below are the not-so-obvious skills you can showcase in your CV:
- Time/project management
- Prompt engineering
- Growth mindset
We’ll explore them in depth so you can decide if these are the skills you want featured in your CV.
1. Time/project management
Who wouldn’t like to boast project management skills on their CV? If you think about it, project management is about setting goals and milestones you can meet in a timely manner.
The scope and complexity of projects is vast, but one thing they all have in common is time commitments and strategic allocation of resources.
The truth is that if you’re able to manage your time in a PM-like manner, you can showcase time and project management skills on your CV. Here’s how.
Time management can be measured by your ability to use time tracking and productivity tools.
There’s a plethora of those on the market, but if you want to be strategic about showcasing your skills, it’s best to find a fully automated solution with project management features. Let’s use the example of Memtime.
Memtime is a time tracking app that runs 24/7 on your computer and records everything you do throughout the day.
This data is private to you and includes your activity in all programs, however brief. You can look at your activity timeline and log hours on projects you create in Memtime, no need to pay for extra project management tools.
As a student or junior professional, you can start by logging hours on your job search project. Below are some examples of tasks you could create.
- Company research
- Interview prep
- Test assignments
- Email correspondence
Create your unique set of tasks, set deadlines for yourself, and be the project manager of your life. You can try Memtime for free with no credit card required.
Next time you see a job ad with the application deadline at least a week away, you can use Memtime to effortlessly gain project management skills and demonstrate them on your CV.
If asked what your projects are, you can talk about your time management tools and how you self-organize and allocate your time in a strategic way.
2. Prompt engineering
Everybody and their mother uses AI in their day-to-day life. Some use it recreationally, while others make machine learning their career. You might even use AI to generate a resume that will stand out. If anything, artificial intelligence is good at adding structure to your thoughts.
However, not everybody is good at writing prompts for AI. If you’re skilled with engineering prompts that minimize the number of requests you need to make to AI, you’re a valuable asset to any company that wants to prioritize AI in their business strategy (and that’s 4 out of 5 companies according to Forbes).
Of course, it only makes sense to include this skill on your resume if you’re actually good at using AI. As a student or recent graduate, you’re likely adept at using artificial intelligence for academic purposes. You can take it up a notch and devote time to learning how to craft prompts for other applications as well.
If you’re unsure about your AI skills, you can take a free course and even attach certificates to your resume for added credibility.
For example, Fortune.com published a list of free AI classes you can take to enhance your resume, among other things. Master prompt engineering and stand out from the crowd of job seekers with your valuable, future-proof AI skills.
3. Growth mindset
Growth mindset emerged as an antidote to fixed mindset. It’s a buzzword that comes up in every conversation about entrepreneurship.
For job seekers with not a lot of work experience to boast about, learning how to showcase their growth mindset is essential, seeing how they’re likely to apply for open roles in the startup space.
In its most basic form, growth mindset is a set of beliefs that supports the claim that ability and intelligence can be acquired. One doesn’t need to be born an entrepreneur to become one.
You can think of the growth mindset as a rebranding of the once popular “fast learner” skill widely used in resumes. Give it a new spin and showcase your familiarity with the startup lingo.
Examples of growth mindset:
- Acceptance of feedback
- Learning from criticism
- Learning from failure
- Agility and adaptability
Any job seeker will benefit from mastering these skills and embracing the growth mindset at large. Not to mention, it's cool wording for your CV.
If you’re looking for more examples of what a growth mindset represents in contrast to a fixed mindset, check out this deep dive from Harvard Business School Online.
Final thoughts
Making your resume stand out is as much about careful formatting as your careful selection of skills to feature. If you don’t have big brands to mention or a lot of hands-on experience in a similar role, it can be really challenging to make your CV pop.
Invest time in mastering the less obvious skills to put on your resume if you want to stand out. The good thing about them – and it goes for time/project management, prompt engineering, and the growth mindset – is that they pay off in the long term regardless of your future job roles.
If you’re inspired to make a career shift or looking for your first job, use this guide as your reference point. And get noticed in the vast crowd of job seekers with your unique competences.
