How Do I Talk About Customer Service Roles and Part-Time Jobs on my Resume?

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It’s common for a person’s job while in school to be a customer service role. However, it can be difficult to write about those experiences in a way that doesn’t seem basic and general. This resource is here to help you expand on those roles to showcase the experience and growth you’ve gained. 

1. Think about Career Skills

While a customer service role like server or cashier may seem very disconnected from what you want to do after college, you are gaining many valuable skills that you can utilize throughout your life. Consider these following areas:

These are common skills categories you have likely utilized while working a customer services role. Reflect on how these might connect with your experiences. 

2. Use Power Verbs

Now that you’ve had a chance to think about what skills you’ve used at your job, it’s time to think about how to describe them. Saying “provided excellent customer service” doesn’t exhibit what you actually did – yes, you performed that trait, but how?

Using our Power Verb sheet, look at the categories connected to each skill/task you’re describing. What might you be able to use the actions you took or the role you performed?

3. Bullet Point Formula

It’s easy to feel drawn to use short phrases to describe experience in customer services – “served drinks”, “rang up purchases”, “handled complaints professionally” might all come to mind. However, if you don’t have a lot of work experience on your resume, it can be helpful to lengthen these to:

• Expand on the experience you do have
• Provide detail, nuance, and uniqueness to your resume
• Practice what these bullet points will be like for other roles

The graphic below walks you through how you can structure these bullet points with more information:

For example, instead of “Rang up purchases” you could say: 

Utilized POS system efficiently to keep guest moving on their way during high volume traffic times

When possible, it’s also great to add some data if possible:

Gathered guest feedback orally and corresponded with manager to initiate five store improvement plans the guest services team implemented

It’s important when writing these to write from your experience and, if you don’t have certain information you can include, don’t try to make it up. 
AI can also be used carefully to help craft these bullet points. For more information on this, please visit our AI Tool Guide on our website.