Is it okay to Include my school achievements in Resume?

Question

Generally in India, typical style is followed in Education Section of most Resumes:

1. Mention of HSC schooling

School Name,

High Secondary Certificate (HSC), Year of passing

...key points or achievements...

2. Mention of SSC schooling

School Name,

Secondary School Certificate (SSC), Year of passing

...key points or achievements...

3. Mention of Graduation college..

---

My school life was great, and I had participated in numerous regional, national, international competitions and have won many awards in the my schooling years other than HSC and SSC as well. I want to echo this in my resume because each of my achievement or accomplishment can potentially highlight and endorse my skill and my abilities more effectively.

On searching up the Google, I bumped into links that states it foolish to add your schooling achievements on professional resume. Some claims, Resumes should advisably be shorter and precise - this limits the scope of adding more details including the early schooling achievements.

This has ended me up to ask here whether is it appropriate to add schooling achievements in resume?

Note I have 1.5 years of experience in I.T industry

Answer 1

Generally, as you gain professional experience, you should be dropping your educational achievements off your resume. You could include them in your cover letter, if, for example, you know the hiring manager went to the same school, and the academic achievements would be highly relevant to the job.

Answer 2

You should keep you résumé as short as possible. Not everything you are proud of should end up to be put in the list of your achievements in your CV.

Put yourself into shoes of somebody who decides whether your résumé is good enough to move forward with your candidature. Give yourself an honest answer - would your interest increase if you'll see someone mentioning his school achievements (especially if achievements are irrelevant to the job applied).

If you still think it worth it, think twice - and if you are still inclined to - well, and competent HR won't be bothered that much. But I'd rather include school achievements only in extreme cases - like if you were some International Programming Olympiad winner.

Answer 3

For 1.5 years in the IT industry you could add in only the most important of your high school achievements (only if they're good enough to be noted). Don't make your high school achievements take up an entire section. Let it be a point or two summarizing (not more than 2 lines a point) the most relevant achievements from your high school. Your national level and international level participation are value additions and can be included.

But as @Herb has stated, as your professional experience increases, you will have more professional achievements that you can quite happily drop out the your high school achievements.

Also always keep in mind that your resume content should highlight achievements relevant to the job/post you're applying for and in which country you're applying for