Is it six, seven or more? Are you listing every single job in your career history?
If so, unless you’re showing progression throughout one company then STOP! Or… unless of course a recruiter or hiring manager told you they want to see every single job. We see a lot of clients who add every job to make sure they don’t have any gaps in employment. Others have done the same job for years, just at different companies and they list each one, along with repetitive roles and responsibilities. We understand why you may think this is necessary, but some jobs simply don’t need to be added. Read the following scenarios for some ways to handle adding (or not) adding multiple jobs to your resume.
Scenario #1. If your jobs are only months or one year apart, you can eliminate the least important ones. For example, let’s say you’re in the information technology (IT) field and you’ve been on your current job for two years and the dates read as:
- Dec. 2014 to Present (2016)
- Dec. 2013 to Nov. 2014
- Apr. 2013 to Nov. 2013
- Jan. 2005 to Jan. 2013
- Apr. 2000 to Dec. 2004
- Nov. 1995 to Mar. 2000
Remember, we’re not talking about one company where you’ve moved through the ranks. These are all different companies. So your dilemma is that you’ve only been on your current job for one year and six months, you’re already seeking new employment because your current company just went through a merger and you don’t know what’s going to happen. The same thing happened to you back in 2013 and you were laid off. So, after three months of searching for another job after the layoff, you finally decided to do contract work until you could find something permanent. For nearly two years you worked contract assignments, then lo and behold you finally found your dream job!
For the recruiter or hiring manager who is quickly skimming resumes and looking for certain details to jump out at them, this certainly will. One might assume you’re a job hopper without even noticing or caring about the longevity of your previous jobs from 1995 to 2013. There are three ways you could handle this. You could:
- List the two contract jobs (from Apr. 2013 to Nov. 2013 and Dec. 2013 to Nov. 2014) under a heading titled Contract Positions.
- Combine the two contract jobs to read Apr. 2013 to Nov. 2014 and say something to the effect of worked two contract assignments for…
- Delete the two contract jobs altogether. The modern way of writing dates on a resume is to only use the years of employment, so if you follow this method no gaps will show. You can make it read as:
- 2014 to Present
- 2005 – 2013
- 2000 – 2004
Notice I didn’t add the 1995 to 2000 date. It’s so long ago and it’s not needed since we generally don’t go back more than 10-15 years on a resume. The only other time you would go back this far is if you absolutely need to, as in needing to show a particular skill, where you started your career, or simply if someone asked. Remember, you can save some things to discuss during the interview. Such as the contract work if someone wants to know exact months and years.
Scenario #2. You’re a Payroll Accounting Specialist and your dates are fine, but you still have a lot of jobs with maybe five years here, eight years there, etc… on your resume. What’s worse is you performed the same exact duties at each one of them, give or take the number of employees you supported. Maybe it looks something like this:
Newberg Technologies, Atlanta, GA 2008 – Present
Accounting Specialist
- Process employee/new hire information and time sheets into the HR payroll system.
- Troubleshoot and investigate any issues that arise during payroll processing.
- Reconcile general ledger accrual accounts and make corrections as necessary.
- Prepare complex financial reporting for all departments.
Simon Baker, LLC, Alpharetta, GA 2004 – 2008
Accounting Specialist
- Processed employee/new hire information and time sheets into the HR payroll system.
- Troubleshot and investigated any issues that arose during payroll processing.
- Reconciled general ledger accrual accounts and made corrections as necessary.
- Prepared complex financial reporting for all departments.
Now, you may not type the exact same details only changing the tense, but they may be quite similar. You can do one of two things…
- List your role and responsibilities for the most current position and follow up with accomplishments. For the next one (or two) briefly sum up your roles and responsibilities and go right into the accomplishments. You can say something to the effect of:
- Performed a wide range of financial and administrative tasks for 250 employees.
- Investigated accounting issues and corrected general ledger entries as necessary.
Now follow up with any accomplishments that helped save time or money.
- You could do a showcase resume instead of a chronological one. This is where you list all relevant skills and accomplishments first and then follow up with a chronological employment history. Be careful not to make these too duty-driven. When you get to the experience section of your resume it can look something like this:
- Served in three different accounting specialist positions for small to mid-sized
- corporations.
- Successfully handled payroll for more than 250 employees and met all deadlines.
- Employed strong decision making skills when troubleshooting payroll issues.
- Instrumental in preparing complex financial reporting for 10 different departments.
Now add a heading that says: Chronology of Employment History or just Employment History and list your companies, titles you held and years of employment. That’s it! Not only is this a great format to reduce repetitiveness, but for those who only want to see a one page resume this is excellent! You can pack at least three to four years of experience onto one page!
For more tips like these be sure to visit Wendy Knows (wendyknows.net) on a regular basis. Remember to subscribe! You can be the first to know about pre-releases for books, discounts on resume writing services and more.
As always, good luck in your job search!