Skills are not a universal language. A college degree doesn't mean we have equal education or experience. I learned this the hard way when I started my first job. But let me back up a little to explain.

I was an Army brat. Implied: we moved a lot - 13 times between starting kindergarten and graduating high school. Unfortunately, orders never happened on my schedule. When we were told to go, that's what we did. That didn't leave a ton of time for goodbyes or real transitions between schools.

At first, it didn't matter much. I learned to read in the back of a car. I fell in love with reading, so no matter how behind I was, I loved to catch up. I understand sentence structure before I knew what to call it.

Math? Not so much. There's not one curriculum across the country for what you learn each month in math. Fractions and decimals? I 100% missed those lessons in the classroom.

When I got older, it started causing problems. I thought I just sucked at math. I narrowly made it through high school math. I completely changed my major in college because of a business calculus class. I changed my entire career path because I was avoiding numbers.

But I couldn't avoid the numbers in my first job: Sales and Marketing Manager for a tutoring center. As part of our group interview, we took basic Math and English tests. There I was sitting with 15 kids who had the same degree as me, definitely not feeling like an equal.

By some miracle, I passed that math test. About half didn't.

Skills are not a universal language

That's the thing about years of experience and degree requirements. They imply that skills are a universal language. That somehow by merely sharing a title or a piece of paper, you are equally skilled.

We all know that's not even a little true.

Still, we write bulleted skill lists in job postings that start with "5+ years of experience..." or "degree required," even if we know without a doubt that doesn't mean anything.

Live Job Post Rewrite How-To: Bulleted Skill List Overhaul

In this screen share, I'll show you a few examples on how to flip those bulleted lists from boring to exceptional - and most importantly, effective.

Here are those bullets if you want to use them as templates:

For a more in depth job post overhaul sign up for our on-demand job post writing course.