It’s important to strike a delicate balance when using industry specific terms and acronyms. The initial review of your resume will likely be performed by someone in human resources who might not be an expert in your field. You should ensure that they are able to determine you have the necessary skills for a position when comparing your resume with the vacancy announcement. For example, if the vacancy announcement specified the need for database knowledge and your resume included experience with Microsoft SQL, the reviewer might be unaware Microsoft SQL is a database and discards your application. At the same time it’s extremely important that you still include the details necessary to convey the extent of your knowledge to technical reviewers.

The way to handle this in our example is to use language that is both understandable and precise such as “experience working with databases, including Microsoft SQL”. This clarifying statement is worth the extra space required on your resume because it accomplishes 3 important points:

1. It is easily understandable by someone who is not an expert in your industry
2. It communicates that you posses the required skills or abilities
3. As a bonus if the human resources professional or a computerized system is searching your resume for a specific keyword this statement matches both possible search terms ‘databases’ and ‘Microsoft SQL’