How to Properly List Your Minor on Your Resume [+Examples and Pro Tips]

Knowing how to list minors on a resume is quite important for entry-level candidates when applying for jobs. When you have a limited amount of experience for the job, your education section would be given high importance in securing a job – which sometimes would be listed even before your experience section on the resume.

This article would clarify all your doubts about including your minor on the resume and all related questions.

We would also address:

• Why you should include your minor?
• Who should include their minors on their resume?
• How to list your minor in each section of your resume?

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Including Your Minor on Resume: Is it Important?

If you are a student writing a resume for your internship – a recent graduate writing an entry-level resume – your education section on the resume plays a major role. There you should go into detail about your education and write a comprehensive section covering your minors and learning outcomes.

Now, if you’re an experienced candidate, should you completely forget your minor?

In modern resume writing, the golden rule is that you should only include information that is relevant to the job you’re applying for. If your minor adds value to your profile for a particular job, you should include it – a relevant minor could add more value than a double major.

Ask yourself this question before proceeding: should I include my minor on the resume?

Why not just include it without a second thought?

Unrelated information on a resume could do more harm than good for a candidate’s profile.

In this unrelated minor example, you might have thought why a minor in marketing doesn’t look good on a candidate?

The problem appears when you’re applying for an extreme financial accountant role – the hiring managers would think that your attention and interests are diverted. However, if you’re applying for a management accountant or entry-level management trainee position, your minor in marketing would be a gem.

If your minor is a generic one like entrepreneurship, it would fit into most contexts as employers would love to have someone who has specialized in the subject.

How to List Minor on Resume: Where to List Them?

Listing minor on your resume is simple – always add it with the title “minor” to make it clear to the reader. Make sure your major and minor could be distinguished and do not confuse the hiring manager.

You could also list your degree stating the “major”, but it's not essential.

Listing your minor in the education section is pretty straightforward, but there’re other sections on your resume where you could list your minor.

Education Section

In your education section, first, state your degree and then include your minor in a separate line underneath.

Or else, you could write the major and the minor on the same line.

Whichever format you use would be fine – but you should be consistent with the format throughout your resume. For example, you should use the same format to write your Master’s degree and your Bachelor’s degree.

In the second format, you can save a line – you’ll understand the importance of a line when you start writing your resume.

Professional Summary/ Objective Summary

If you didn’t include your minor in the education section or you need the hiring manager’s extra attention to it, you could list the minor in your professional summary as well (objective summary for entry-level candidates).

Your resume summary is the sales pitch to the hiring manager – you shouldn’t include anything that is not directly relevant to the job you’re applying for. If your minor is of potential importance to secure the job or make the hiring managers interested to read the rest of your resume, you may include it.

Now that you can see, though the electrician is an experienced worker, he does not have the essential solar system experience to join the new job as he has been working with electricity. He remembers his minor that he did in college – solar systems – he might have done it for fun, but today, it’s going to save him.

By including his minor in the professional summary, he can make the hiring manager interested in his profile though he doesn’t have solar experience.

If his application goes through an applicant tracking system (ATS) which shortlists the candidates based on the set keywords, he would stand a chance with the minor.

Cover Letter

Another place where you could include your minor is the cover letter.

Your cover letter is a tailored document to each job and it should consist of 3 to 4 targeted paragraphs. The idea is to make a personalized statement to the hiring manager about how well you fit the position.

In the first paragraph, you should talk about the employer's biggest problems and answer how you could be a solution to them. Also, demonstrate how your contribution helped the current or the previous employer to face those challenges.

In the second paragraph, you should summarize your education, experience, and expertise. In this, you could add your minor if it’s relevant to the job you’re applying for.

If you want to create your cover letters tailored to the jobs you’re applying for and you’re looking for a faster cover letter builder than your typical MS Office documents, check out our cover letter builder here.

Also, check out these cover letter examples:

• Production assistant cover letter
• Software engineer cover letter
• Administrative assistant cover letter

A Few General Tips to Improve Your Resume Education Section with Minors

The only way to create a great resume is by following the major resume standards and not forgetting the minor details on it.

• Put your college minor with the title “minor” to distinguish it from your major/ main degree.
• Relevance and clarity are the most important elements in resume writing, ask yourself these two questions:

1. Is it relevant information to include the minor on my resume for this job?
2. Does including the minor in my education affect its clarity?

• Read the job description carefully to identify the relevance of the minors
• Use the 2-line or 3-line education format to list your resume. If you’re an entry-level candidate or a student looking for a job, you could go into more detail in your education section and include your key learnings, relevant coursework, and grade point average (GPA)

Summary: List Your Minor on Your Resume Correctly

• There will be many instances where your college minor would play a pivotal role in securing a high-paid job for you – do not underestimate your minor.
• Identify whether your minor is key information to the job you’re applying for.
• Decide in which sections of the resume you're going to include your minor – the main section you could include your minor is the education section – you could also include a minor in the professional summary.
• If the minor is much relevant, consider including it in your cover letter as well.

FAQs

Should I include my college minor in every job application?

No. You should include only the relevant minors for the job you’re applying for. Including something irrelevant on a resume could do more harm than good. In fact, your resume space is precious as you should limit it to a single page on most occasions. The one line you save would provide you the space to include something more relevant.

Can I include two or more minors on my resume?

In most schools, colleges, and universities, you could have two minors. Some institutions limit the number of minors to two.

If you have multiple minors, good for you, but you should only include the minors that are relevant to the job you’re applying for. Having multiple minors would be advantageous here as you could choose which minor to include for different jobs based on their relevance. Qualified candidates can use multiple minors in different sections of their resumes to gain attention.