by Claudia Baier

Created on: October 14, 2010

Writing a resume when you have only had bad experiences in the past can be a challenge. But if you let it, it can be a challenge that makes you grow as a person and learn from your past mistakes. However, what do you consider bad experience? Examples of a bad experience in this article are having been fired for making a mistake and not getting along with colleagues or supervisor.

First, you must remember that the job of the resume is to get you the interview. You can consider it your sales brochure. It must show in a concise manner how you can solve the company's problem and make them feel good about themselves and yourself.

The second step in writing a resume is to remember that every bad experience has a positive side to it. That is the side you must demonstrate. 

Third step is to look into what you can learn from the experience. It is recommended to write into the resume all the positive lessons that you learned, the skills you accumulated, the achievements you have created.  Focus on the lessons, skills, experience and achievements that relate to the position you apply for. Employers mainly care about that you are not going to make the same mistakes in their company as well. 

If you have trouble coming up with the lessons and fitting information for the employer's needs, focus on what was good about the experience by asking yourself the following questions:

"What can I learn from this experience?"

"What can I do differently the next time to create the opposite experience?"

"What can I do now to have positive experience?"

"Where can I volunteer to create positive experience?"

How to get good references to send along with the resume if you did not leave on good terms

If you were fired it is unlikely that the employer has good things to say about you. But see to it that you still have some people at the company that like you. In that case you can still ask them to give a personal professional reference. In case a professional reference is not possible to get, you can always look into receiving references from people that know you, even if they do not know you through your job, like friends or people (colleagues, supplier, customers) you network with or helped at a different occasion. Ask them to write a reference about your personality and your strengths. This sort of reference can help you in absence of professional ones.

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