How to List Your Promotions on a Resume

Regardless of your age, level of qualification, professional history, skills, and specialty, there is only one thing that can keep you away from landing the desired job. It is your resume.

To land a job, you need a killer resume that emphasizes your key skills, work experience, and your accomplishments as well. But, how do you create one?

Typically, it all seems to be rather simple. To craft a winning resume, you need to list your contact info, add a solid experiences section, then list your education, skills, and you are all set for success. But, the truth is that it only seems easy until you get to the task. Once you do, you will most certainly face a huge number of questions and challenges.

While many issues facing job seekers are rather easy to solve, some questions can really make you feel frustrated. One of such questions is how to put promotions in your job application.

Although everything looks pretty straightforward when you list different positions at different companies, listing promotions within a single company can really be confusing. However, if that’s the issue you are currently facing, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered! Read our comprehensive guide and follow along the steps described further to list promotions the right way and get more interviews!

Listing Promotions on a Resume: Steps, Tips, and Examples

Each job you’ve had in the past is worth mentioning on your CV. And each requires a separate entry. Or, so you’d think.

But, what if you stayed within the same company for a while and occupied different positions? That’s when it can get tricky.

Pro Tip: Before we get straight to the point, we have to say that you always have an option to get professional help. Impressing recruiters and potential employers is never as simple as it seems. So, if you want to minimize the stress and waste of time, but, at the same time, have a guarantee that you will get employed, consider turning to a professional resume writing service like Skillhub.com. This way, you will get a brilliant CV written by an expert with tons of experience in the resume writing business.

Now, if this tip is not exactly what you are looking for, check out our comprehensive guide to learn how to put promotions in your job applications.

Similar Roles

When you occupy a specific position long enough and do your work well, you may be offered to get a promotion to a higher position. In this case, your responsibilities will likely remain almost the same. You will just have a higher salary and a different title.

So, how to show this in your CV?

First of all, you will need to follow the basic formatting rules to begin your entry. You should list the company’s info first. All you need to specify is the name and location.

Next, you will have to specify the titles you occupied. You should put your latest role first and list the others in reverse-chronological order, putting each title on a new line. Also, for each role, you will need to specify the dates in parentheses.

Altogether your entry should look like this:

Google, Menlo Park, CA

Senior Software Engineer (September 2016–Present)

Junior Software Engineer (September 2014–September 2016)

Assistant Software Engineer (September 2013–September 2014)

Note how in this example the roles are listed from the highest to the lowest one. Also, pay attention to how we put the word “present” to indicate if you are still working on the same job.

Is that it? No, not really. Simply listing the company and titles is not enough to make the right impression on the hiring manager. To make your application stand out and land an interview you also need to add some bullet points.

In the bullet point list, you should mention your experiences and biggest achievements. Also, it is a good idea to mention your promotions among other bullet points. To do things right, be sure to use relevant keywords and add some rough numbers to drive the recruiter’s attention.

Here are a few examples of effective bullet points that can engage a recruiter:

Promoted from the entry-level position to the senior role in three years for excellent performance and outstanding skills.

Developed profitable apps with minimal updates and 100% on-time record.

Generated a 20% boost in sales over a year through pitching creative update initiatives.

Pro Tip: The steps we’ve discussed work only when you apply for a job and know there is a human reader on the other side. But, if you are preparing a CV to submit via an Applicant Tracking System (or simply ATS), you’ll need a different strategy. Chances are the ATS will not even notice if you stack all similar roles as a single entry. This resume-scanning software only recognizes a single job title per entry. So, in this case, you should create a separate entry for each position you had.

Roles With Different Responsibilities

If you had the promotion within the same company after which your duties weren’t the same, you will need to take a different approach to list this on your CV.

Just like described earlier, you should use the company name and location as an overall title for the entire entry. However, if the duties of the roles you occupied were different, you will want to make separate entries for each of them.

Just like in the case with similar positions, you should put the latest role first, specify dates, and then add from three to five bullet points to show what makes you a perfect applicant.

Here is an example of how it all should look like:

Company Name, City, State (abbreviation)

Store Manager (September 2018–Present)

• Bullet point
• Bullet point
• Bullet point
• …

Sales Clerc (September 2017–September 2018)

• Bullet point
• Bullet point
• Bullet point
• …

Use this as an example for mentioning your promotions with the change of duties within the same company. Also, keep in mind that the same strategy works for listing lateral moves.

Wrapping Up

Hopefully, these tips and examples will help you learn how to list your promotions the right way. Follow them to impress the hiring managers and ensure a successful career!