How to Make Irrelevant Experience Relevant for Your Professional Profile

As a recent graduate you may be finding it hard to fill out a resume with relevant experience and skills for the job you’re applying for. After all, as you might be thinking, if I haven’t worked in this industry before how am I meant to have experience? The trick is that relevant experience is a lot broader than you might have previously considered and there’s often circumstances where unrelated experience has a place on a professional resume. Team building in netball, time management in retail, or interpersonal skills from volunteering. There’s a practical way to make your resume stand out with experience even when you’ve only just graduated.

How do I know what experience is relevant for a graduate role?

Understanding what irrelevant experience is means reading the job description of the position you’re applying for and understanding what skills they’re looking for.

For example, if you’re applying to be a copywriter your experience working as a landscaper during university may not be what they’re looking for in an applicant. However, if you’re applying to be a copywriter at a gardening website then your experience as a landscaper might be your competitive edge when applying.

Should I include irrelevant experience on my graduate resume?

You should consider including irrelevant experience as a recent graduate because what seems unrelated may be relevant when you look at it from the perspective of transferable skills.

Transferable skills are the expertise you get in jobs that might seem unrelated but those skills can be used in both positions. To use our landscaper example, while the two jobs aren’t closely related your team building and interpersonal skills when working landscaping jobs are as relevant in both settings making them perfect candidates to put on your resume.

If you’re working on your resume trying to figure out what’s relevant or not, always turn back to the job listing. In plain terms the hiring manager will have put what they’re looking for in a candidate there which you can use to tailor your resume. It’s important not to overdo it though, while you might have developed team building skills as a landscaper you weren’t running the company. You want your resume to come off as genuine, not implying anything that isn’t accurate.

Practical steps to create a graduate resume

1. Write out all your experience on your resume.

A great way to work out what’s relevant experience is by putting in all your experience on your resume to begin with. Doing this makes the next step easier. It’ll be easier to compare the job listing to your experience, and easier to cut out what isn’t relevant for this application.

2. Using the job listing identify what might be directly relevant, or transferable skills.

In this step make notes on the job listing of what skills they’re looking for in applicants. Things like working will you be working in team environments, is it a remote position where being self directed is important, or will you be on site where interpersonal skills are key?

Now you understand what skills the hiring manager will be looking for you can go through your resume and start identifying what aspects of your experience are relevant. Flesh out the sections that are directly relevant or have transferable skills and remove parts that won’t be relevant to make the resume easier to read.

3. Finalise your resume.

Now that you’ve cut out any irrelevant experiences it’s time to check you aren’t missing the forest through the trees. Read your resume as a whole and polish up any areas that need it and make sure there aren’t any unexplained gaps since you deleted stretches of your resume. A good rule of thumb is to leave your finished resume for a day or two before coming back with fresh eyes. Now that it’s done you can submit it knowing you’ve prepared as best you can for this part of the application and can use this process for any other job application in the future.

Three transferable skills resume examples ✏️

About The Author Sam is a Media and Communications (journalism) student at La Trobe University. He's been writing for various outlets since he was 16 and recently completed an internship at the Herald Sun. He's passionate about what makes people tick, from their interests to their motivations.