Public Roles

Structuring the experience section

How to separate role context from selected examples so the experience section shows more than a position description.

The experience section can become difficult to follow when responsibilities, context and results are mixed together in one long list of bullets.

One habit worth watching for, common in public service resumes, is writing down only the duties of the role: the process, the day-to-day, what the position is responsible for. That reads like the position description rather than evidence of how you performed in it. The resume should include enough detail to show your contribution, with a measure of impact where one honestly exists, alongside the duties that provide useful context. If your bullets could be lifted from a generic position description for your role, they are not yet doing enough.

A simple way to organise each role is to separate the basic context from selected examples. For recent or substantial roles, that can look like this.

Employer, dates, and a line of context

Employer name on one side, dates on the other, as covered in the resume format article. Where it helps, add a line about the employer or your part of it. A small employer may be unknown to the reader, and a very large one is so broad that the name alone says little about your corner of it; a line naming your division and its responsibilities gives the role a setting. This is optional where your area of work is obvious.

Title, then a short overview of the role

Under the title, a few lines describing the shape of the job: your main responsibilities, and the numbers that show its scale where you have them. Team size, caseload, budget, volume, coverage. For example:

Managed the team's data and reporting function, including two data analysts, maintaining around 30 regular datasets and producing 40 scheduled reports each month for program areas across five divisions.

None of that is an achievement, and it does not need to be. It describes the size and complexity of what you handled, shows responsibilities relevant to the vacancy, and frees the bullets from carrying routine material. It also handles repetition well: ten similar projects over ten years can be one line, "delivered 10 system implementations with budgets from $500,000 to $2 million", with the bullets then featuring the most relevant one or two.

Keep every line accurate and consistent with what a referee would say.

Then selected examples

With context handled, bullets can focus on selected examples: things you delivered, improved, resolved or contributed to. Where a result can be measured accurately, a figure may help:

Raised customer satisfaction from 3.4 to 4.6 out of 5 within six months by redesigning the enquiry-handling process.

Where it cannot, describe what was delivered, improved, supported or informed. "Prepared analysis used to support a change in funding policy" or "developed the checking process now used across the branch" are useful bullets as they stand. Where an outcome depended on many people, describe your part accurately: "contributed to", "provided analysis for", "led the section of the work involving".

A handful of well-chosen bullets per role usually serves better than a long list, which makes the strongest examples harder to find. There is no fixed correct number.

Writing style

Leave out first-person pronouns; resume convention is fragment-style sentences, "Delivered X" rather than "I delivered X". Start bullets with an ordinary, accurate verb, and prefer the precise one where it applies: if you redesigned a process, "redesigned" says more than "assisted with".

If your official title would mean little outside your workplace, keep the official title and add a plain-English explanation in brackets, so the resume stays consistent with what a referee or records check would show.

Broad roles and older roles

If one long role genuinely spanned different kinds of work, it can be broken into short labelled groups under the same title and dates, say, client service, process improvement and data work, each with a couple of bullets. That shows breadth a single block hides.

As roles get older, the structure compresses: the overview shrinks to a line, the bullets drop away, and the oldest roles become a single sentence, as covered in the format article.

This is one article from The Career Guide, Public Roles’ first-person series on APS recruitment: shared advice, not official policy.