How Many Qualifications Should I Put In My Resume?

How Many Qualifications Should I Put In My Resume?

By Nick Hurley, 2nd December 2024. Last updated 19 August 2026.

Four to six. That is the working number for almost every Australian executive CV we write, and if your list runs past eight you are padding.

The instinct to list everything is understandable — you earned all of it. But an education section is not a record of your learning. It is an argument that you are qualified for one specific job, made to a reader who will spend a few seconds on it. Every line that does not advance that argument dilutes the ones that do.

What earns a line

A qualification earns a line when it says something the others don’t.

A BEng plus an MBA is two lines, because they say different things: one is technical training, the other is general management. A BCom plus a graduate diploma in commerce is one line — the higher one. The diploma is subsumed by the degree, and listing both reads as making up the numbers.

The same test disposes of most of what people want to include. Two-day workshops. Vendor certificates. Psychometric tool accreditations. Anything superseded by the qualification directly above it. None of these earns space on an executive CV, and a list padded with them makes the real qualifications harder to see.

Post-nominals are a separate question. The ones your sector actually recognises — GAICD, FAICD, CA, CPA, FIEAust — go after your name at the top. Others do not.

And once you hold a tertiary qualification and a real career, your secondary schooling comes off. It is telling the reader nothing they need.

Where the section goes

After the career history, not before it. A reader assessing an executive CV wants the roles first; the qualifications confirm the story the roles have already told. The exception is a recent graduate, where education is the strongest thing on the page and belongs near the top.

Write the section last, once the roles are finished, and cap it at six lines. Writing it first tempts you to fill it.

Whether to show the year

Show the year on anything completed in the last fifteen years. Drop it on anything older.

This is not about hiding your age — your career history dates you anyway, and trying to conceal it reads worse than the thing you were concealing. It is that a 1991 graduation year is not information. Nobody is assessing you on it, and it sits there inviting an assumption instead of a judgement.

Current designations are different. If a qualification requires ongoing professional development to hold — a practising certificate, a current accreditation — keep the year, because there the date is the point.

Qualifications you have not finished

Do not list qualifications you are thinking about. An MBA you intend to start is not a credential, and putting it on the page invites a question you cannot answer well.

If something is genuinely underway, write it with the expected completion date. That is a real fact about your situation and it belongs there. If you started it three years ago and stalled, take it off — an in-progress qualification with no end date reads as an unfinished one, which is worse than not mentioning it.

Partial study is a different case. If you did not finish a degree but completed units that are directly relevant — a unit in accounting, say, on a CV where financial literacy is part of the argument — those units can be worth listing on their own terms. List the units, not the degree you did not finish. The distinction matters: “Completed units in financial accounting and corporate finance, University of X” is a true statement that adds something. “Bachelor of Commerce (incomplete)” is a true statement that mostly draws attention to what is missing.

The short version

Four to six lines. Highest qualification first. Nothing superseded by the line above it. Year on anything from the last fifteen years, no year on anything older. Expected completion dates on live study, nothing on abandoned study, relevant completed units on their own terms. The section sits after the roles, and you write it last.