Options Trading Tutorial

Resume: How should I format these bullets with dates?

How to structure the dates are what I'm unsure about. For example, I was thinking of dating them at the beginning, but I think listing it by date takes away from my skills as the focus, and I also thought about putting the dates in parentheses, but I want to emphasize the (ongoing). The section is on a sub-list on my skills, which works well with my current formatting. Financial Markets Eleven months individual market education, February 2008 – present One month experience trading stock options, July 2008 Five months experience trading the foreign exchange markets, August 2008 – present (ongoing) More information is available on request Please tell me why I should do it a certain way. Thanks! :)

Public Comments

1. Looks ok to me, I might leave out the (ongoing) as 'present' says it all really.
2. First off, the "More information is available upon request" annoys me. If I were an employer, I'd wonder why you didn't include everything. Was there a reason why you left it out? Even if you didn't put that statement in, the employer would still ask questions if they want more information. Second, it seems like you want this under your "Skills" category, not your employment category. You don't need to specify how long you've had a skill. For example, suppose you started driving in February of 1982, but then stopped driving in 1998 when you became an environmentalist and started riding a bike. Did you lose the skill in 1998? And how much more skilled would someone who's been driving since 1982 be than someone who's been driving since 1992? It doesn't matter when or for how long you've known a skill. Once you know a skill, all that matters is how well you know it (i.e.: "was lead partner in trading stock options" as opposed to "assisted supervisor in trading stock options"). Bringing focus to the length of time that you actually used those skills can help you (if you've been doing it for a very long time) or hurt you (if you're new to the field). Most of the time, you'll only want to date your jobs/employment. That shows the employer how likely you'd be to stick with the company, etc. If you still want to date your skills, I'd drop the "eleven months", "one month", and "five months". Just list the skills, and the date you obtained the skills. Financial Markets - Individual market education (obtained February 2008) - Trading stock options (obtained July 2008) - Trading the foreign exchange market (obtained August 2008) .....or something along those lines. It implies that you have those skills, and how long you've had those skills. As an employer, I wouldn't care if you only had one month of experience trading stock options. Instead, I want to know if you've had experience doing it, how recent it was, etc. I doubt you forgot how to do that skill, otherwise you wouldn't have listed it.