The ability to train someone, especially new employees, is a highly sought-after skill in the job market. You will find that even jobs that are not necessarily about training a new hire and teaching will require a little training experience as one of the critical skills required. Therefore, if you’re a hiring manager, trainer, customer service representative, or social media manager, correctly knowing how to include your training experience on a resume is essential.
As important as it is, most people wonder where exactly to put these relevant experiences and specific skills on their resume, what action word to use, and how to present it so that it earns them points with recruiters.
Post ContentsWe talked to various HR professionals, career coaches, career counselors, CEOs, and resume writers for their expert advice, and they had a few tips to give on how to say you trained someone on a resume.
Most of these experts emphasized using the right action verbs to explain your experience and your soft and hard skills. Others advised that job candidates leverage the resume skills section and have a bulleted list of the different instances of training they performed that could attract the attention of the hiring officer.
Also, it is essential to focus on the results and outcomes of your training because it shows the employer that your training yields excellent results. Below are a few resume tips to help you clearly communicate to a potential employer that you have training skills that would benefit the company.
Chris Lewandowski, president of Princess Dental Staffing, a leading dental staffing firm, advised that the words you use to describe training experience are significant. He says that:
When describing your experience in training people on the job, use relevant action verbs like ‘coached,’ ‘mentored,’ or ‘trained.’
You want to begin your bullet points with words that emphasize the skill. When you use a strong verb like ‘coached’ or ‘trained,’ the person reading your resume will want to read more because you have already caught their attention. The correct action verbs also show self-confidence in the listed skill. Otherwise, if you use other words to describe training experience, you might appear to be beating around the bush and trying to fill up the resume with fluff.
It is also essential to look at the job description and tailor your description to that. For example, if the job description wants someone to train employees on a particular skill, it would help to use the same verb in your description. The word will automatically attract the recruiter’s attention because that is what they seek.
Paw from Financer, a COO and Recruitment Manager since 2016, responded with this:
Before writing your CV, evaluate the job description for training duties. Analyze the description for training-related abilities like onboarding. Use job description keywords and phrases on your resume. Employers often utilize applicant tracking systems to scan and assess resumes.
The words you use can indeed either make or break you. Focus on what the job wants to know and which words will make you stand out among all the other applicants.
Including concrete details to stand out does not necessarily mean writing stories; you should state relevant information regarding your experience. These details include the type of training, which could be onboarding, soft skills training, retooling, and any other kind of training that you have done.
Once you have included the training type, you can add the people you trained. Was it colleagues, new hires, managers, or customers? Having that in your resume would be best as it validates the skill. If you have no trainees, employers could see that as just a vague way of trying to look fit for the job.
Maria Flores, COO and HR expert at MediaPeanut adds:
We often call this skill facilitation. This is a highly sought-after skill for many companies, given that the employee does not only function as a skilled person doing what is stated in their job description. He has a notable part in training and in facilitating training, onboarding, upskilling, and retooling of newly-hired applicants, their colleagues, including their supervisors and managers.
Another essential piece of information is the subjects you covered. Including the topics gives you credibility and completes the skill experience. All these details are crucial, but you should find the fewest words to describe all that without boring the reader.
Results speak volumes about someone’s capability, and they add credibility to a story and make you look qualified for the job, even on entry-level resumes.
Dan Shortridge, a resume writer and founder of Results Resumes with a master’s degree in instructional design who responded to our question, had this to say about including results:
Your resume should always be focused on results and outcomes to catch an employer’s attention, so try to put those first. For example:
Mentored a coworker to obtain national certification through weekly training sessions and one-on-one advising.
Led team to improve year-over-year sales by 22% after performing needs analysis, creating new training modules, and leading monthly instructional sessions.
If you don’t have any quantifiable results to point to, then focus on how you carried out the training, like this:
Created and led a new staff development training program for 52 employees, coordinating activities of a cross-functional instructional team and conducting follow-up staff surveys to improve outcomes.
Trained three colleagues in new company safety procedures, using hands-on instruction and roleplaying techniques.
Whether you can quantify the results or not, you should be able to show the recruiter the impact your training had on the trainees. Once you use the correct verbs and include the results, your experience in training will carry more weight than if you just stated the skill without backing it up with tangible results.
One thing to note about bulleted lists is that they are easy to spot, especially for someone skimming through a resume. Bullets allow you to summarize your experience or leadership skills in a neat and beautiful layout and can also help showcase your core competencies.
Writing it in prose for someone with a lot of training experience could easily be missed because most hiring officers do not read your resume word for word. The list makes the points look easy and puts them in the spotlight for the employer to see and read.
Positioning is also crucial because you want to place this vital skill where the employer is likely to see it, and that is under skills or work experience. Actually, most employers will skim through the rest of the resume and focus more on the skills section to see what you bring to the table.
They also look at your work experience to determine whether you have relevant experience that will bring value to the company. Carl Jenson, the founder of Money Mow, a leading online trading platform, added the following thoughts to the discussion:
Make a list of bullet items for each job you’ve held that included training duties. Try to add one or two bullet points regarding your training experience for each position. Use a strong word like “coach” or “train” to begin your bullet points. Declare your training duties and the outcomes of your actions using the STAR technique.
Use facts and statistics to demonstrate your effectiveness as a trainer as much as feasible. For example, you might state that you instructed new staff on safety protocols and that they complied with them at a rate of 99 percent each quarter.
As much as the earlier point said that you should have your training experience under skills or work experience, it is also essential to highlight the same under professional summary. That is because it is right at the top of your resume.
Therefore, an employer often sees your professional summary as the first thing. It is also an area of interest because it gives a brief overview of what is in the rest of the resume. You want to make sure that the employer knows you have training experience at your current job even before they read the exact details of the experience.
We had contributions from experts on that too. Paw from Financer.com supported this point with the following words:
Professional summaries should highlight training. Because it’s the first section an employer reads, your professional profile should showcase your training experience and talents.
Describe your training qualifications in your summary. Mention training-related certificates in your summary.
Carl Janson with Money Mow added:
Because your professional summary is usually the first portion of your resume that an employer views, it’s critical to showcase your training experience and talents.
Briefly mention your qualifications to coach others in your summary, emphasize the number of years you’ve spent training personnel, and your main training abilities like coaching and leadership.
Describe how you’ve successfully trained others, such as assisting an employee in moving up the corporate ladder. If you have any certificates linked to training, briefly describe them in your professional description.”
When applying for a job, it is important to leave nothing to chance. Ensure you paint a beautiful picture of your abilities to the employer. One way to do that in a job requiring training skills is to include additional details after the initial skill description. These details include certificates, awards, seminars, or any volunteer work relevant to the skill.
Paw from Financer.com also says:
Add training details; include other training in a different area of your CV. Professional groups, training seminars or programs, awards, volunteer work, or certifications might help you promote your training talents.
That display will show the employer your prowess or dedication as a trainer, further emphasizing your value to the company. If you do not have additional details like awards, ensure you list your training instances comprehensively and convincingly to portray your skill correctly.
You might think that the longer your CV is, the more qualified you are, but that is not it. This point goes without saying. A resume is meant to summarize your professional experiences and not a biography. Writing short but impactful statements will grab the employer’s attention.
Value is in the phrasing of the experiences. Use the right words and data to support your experiences and write in summary. Keep it short and sweet to give the employer an easy time going through your resume. Summarizing your experiences also makes them come out clearly, and employers can, therefore, instantly know whether to add you to their team or not.
As a trainer, you should be able to communicate things clearly to your trainees. If you cannot write a brief resume, sometimes using a concise resume template, then that already disqualifies you for the job. The best way is to maintain a simple resume with only the relevant details.
Examples are essential in a resume because they give the employer an idea of what to expect when hiring you. Writing statements about your skills without supporting them with examples does not mean much to the person reading.
They appear to be just regular statements that anyone can write even when they do not have the actual experience. On the work experience section of your resume, use numbers and concrete examples to gain credibility. Potential employers will be impressed when they can see exactly how the said skill was implemented in the past.
It is imperative when discussing a training skill because it emphasizes your ability to use examples to make people understand you more. Do not just list your training skills without giving relevant examples, as that will not help your case to the employer.
Training is a valuable skill every employer appreciates in a job candidate, regardless of the job title. It is one thing for job seekers to have a skill and another to be able to teach people the skill.
Employers are looking for someone with a skill they can teach because that gives you more value to the company. A leader with employee training skills improves the workforce and positively influences group discussions and other aspects of the company, like training programs.
Training is an important skill set for employers because it helps improve employee interactions. It also means the employer has an in-house trainer and will not spend money hiring someone else to train the employees. Similar to promoting other qualities such as time management, creative thinking, problem-solving, and excellent communication skills, your training skills should be presented in a proper way.
You might have excellent training skills, but if you can not say it in a way that impresses the prospective employer, someone else will get the job you deserve. Implement the above tips on your resume and confidently apply to the next job.
As the founder of MatchBuilt, with over 18 years of recruiting and coaching experience and 8+ years in executive roles at a leading Fortune 100 company, I am deeply committed to guiding professionals in their career paths.
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