What Belongs on Your Resume?
Clients often ask whether to include work history that came before their law enforcement career. The management position. The customer service job. The years spent building something in the private sector.
In most industries that experience would count. In law enforcement it generally does not.
Agencies tend to focus inward. Fair or not, police work is the standard. Your years managing a retail team may have taught you how to handle difficult people, but that story will never carry the weight of a police related example.
They are not asking what you have done.
They are asking what you are doing for them.
There are exceptions. Prior service with another law enforcement agency, fire department, EMT experience, or significant security work is an exception. Military service counts as well, particularly if you held a leadership role. Even then, keep these as light mentions rather than centerpieces.
The higher the rank you are testing for, the more your in-house experience matters. A patrol officer testing for sergeant has fewer years to draw from and a brief mention of the exceptions listed above is reasonable. A lieutenant testing for captain should have a file full of agency accomplishments that speak for themselves.
Your resume is not a biography. It is an argument for why you are ready for the next rank at that agency.
This comes from my book, "The Strategic Promotional Guide for Law Enforcement." If you find this useful, there’s a lot more inside.
This piece first ran in The Edge, my newsletter for law enforcement professionals. Subscribers get it first.
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