When you’re in the early days of your career, what to put on your resumé can be a tricky thing to get right. Too little feels brief, and too much can feel irrelevant, depending on what job you are applying for.
When I was an intern still finishing my university degree, I was discussing some new incoming resumés with my manager at the time, and she kindly pointed out something that was apparently quite funny about mine. I had put my high school ATAR as a prominent selling point.
At this point I would have been 22, and apparently it becomes a bit ‘silly’ to be leading with your high school results at that point.
It was hard to get my head around the fact that the numeric result that I had been made to believe was the be all and end all of my career prospects for the first 18 years of my life, actually was not the way to my employer’s heart.
Obviously when to take it off your resumé is a nuanced decision. If you use that ATAR or however your high school result works to get into university, then it quickly loses significance on your resume. It’s served it’s purpose.
If university isn’t on the cards and it’s the first job you’re applying to since high school and it seems rationally relevant, then sure, keep it in there. Or maybe you never put it on there in the first place. Every case is different.
But by the age of 21, latest, really consider whether an ATAR should be on your resumé any more. Hopefully you can find new ways to fill that space!
Writing resumés is weird and hard and will never feel great, so don’t expect to ever be super sure of what to do. Asking for advice is the best way to go about it. Without a healthy dose of real talk I would probably be going into my late 20’s with my ATAR in the top billing, so take it where you can.