Simply Hired Blog

Including Short-Term Jobs on Your Resume

In the current economic climate, it's not unusual for people to take multiple part-time, contract, freelance or temporary jobs to earn an income while looking for their next big gig. But it's not always recommended to include those short-term jobs on your resume.

It's important to keep in mind that your resume is not a place to list every job you've ever held. Rather, it’s a way to showcase your most relevant work experience to prove you have the experience required for roles that you are interested. In fact, if you list a number of jobs held in a short period of time, this can send a red-flag to employers that you're a serial job-hopper, and that you may not stick around at their company for long either.

Below are some of the best practices for including (or not including) short-term jobs:

Tell the truth – When you send in an application to a hiring company, it should be the complete truth. A simple background check would show inconsistencies, and you could easily lose your consideration for a great job.

Include years only – A simple change from a month and year (March 2010) date format to year-only (2010) can be an easy way to make short-term jobs less noticeable. This is generally acceptable if you've held the position for six or more months.

Leave it off – If you held a position for less than six months, it's not relevant to the positions that you're applying for, or you didn't stay at the job long enough to make any notable contributions, you can leave it off your resume.

Note contract and temp work – If short-term jobs were meant to only last a few months, such as contract work, temporary jobs, freelance work, or even seasonal jobs, you should definitely include them on your resume. Just make a note that it was a contract position (or whatever the case) right after the dates held.

Example: Retail Manager, April 2009 – September 2009 (6 month contract)

If you have multiple contract or freelance positions, it's perfectly acceptable to list them all under a Contract Experience or Freelance Experience section.

Overall, it's important to determine on a case-by-case basis whether including each short-term job will do more help or harm on your resume, depending on the job you'd like to land. Short-term jobs don't have to be a red-flag to employers. Rather, they can enrich your background with the many skills you've picked up along the way.

Gautam Godhwani on Fox News

Gautam Godhwani, CEO of SimplyHired.com, appeared as a panelist on Fox News last Friday, in a segment about job growth in the U.S. and the increase in unemployment rate. Gautam shared that although it will take some time before the unemployment rate is down to 5%, as it had been before the recession, we should be optimistic because the number of job openings have returned to pre-recession levels and companies are hiring.

Check out the video:

Interview Road Kill – "I Haven’t Done It, But I Can Learn"

By Phil Rosenberg

Ever respond to an interview question, by saying "I haven't done it, but I can learn"?

OUCH … I can feel your pain. Your interview ended with those words. The fat lady sang.

Employers realize you can learn if you've been in the workforce for a while, or if you've graduated college. Of course you can learn. It's even a bad answer for an entry-level job candidate.

But today, unless you're entry-level, employers don't want someone who can learn, they want fast solutions to problems. If you can learn, you might have a future with the company to solve new problems, but to be hired you've got to demonstrate that you've already solved that problem (see http://recareered.blogspot.com/2008/04/do-you-create-employer-value.html).

Employee turnover averages 18 months, and technology changes every 3-4 years – is it any wonder employers look for people who already have the skills to solve today's problems?

Instead, could you reply, "Sure, I've solved similar problems!" and go on to give a close example? Instead, most candidates turn into a "deer in the headlights" and say "I can learn".

Anticipate problems the company has through your research (see: http://recareered.blogspot.com/2008/05/4-killer-ways-to-use-research.html), before you even craft your customized resume. Read press releases, SEC reports, articles, blogs … and gain an understanding of the company's challenges and problems. Show how you can solve them before you are even asked and you're a leading candidate.

Say "I can learn" and you’re road kill.

TIP: Remove the phrase "I can learn" from your vocabulary. Don't say it to recruiters, nor to family or friends. Just don't say it … ever.

Many job seekers describe themselves in a resume as a generalist, attempting to attract a broad number of opportunities. That's nice – but it doesn't work (see http://recareered.blogspot.com/2010/01/who-needs-generalists-anymore-best-of.html).

Yes, this used to work, and it's how everyone over 30 learned how to job hunt. But it's 2011. And in 2011, employers want subject matter experts who have direct experience in solving specific problems.

 

Phil Rosenberg is President of reCareered, the web's central hub for job search advice. An active blogger about social media and career change, Phil's articles have been republished by several of the leading job, career and recruiting sites. Connect with Phil on Twitter @philreCareered.

SimplyHired.com Celebrates 6th Anniversary with 51% Annual User Growth

Now embarking on the sixth year since its launch, SimplyHired.com, the world’s largest job search engine, today announced that its traffic has grown more than 50% over the last year and that the company has experienced unprecedented growth in all dimensions of its business over the last year:

• Unique monthly visitors reached 16 million, making it one of the most popular job sites in the world.
• Its comprehensive jobs database has grown 43% to eight million active jobs, making it the largest database of its kind.
• Its global coverage has expanded to 23 countries in 12 languages. SimplyHired.com recently launched sites in Sweden, Russia, South Africa, Argentina, South Korea and Austria.

To support this growth, SimplyHired.com has doubled its executive team and expects to double its workforce over the next year. New executives include Suresh Duddi, Vice President, Engineering; Daniel Greenberg, Chief Marketing Officer; Sheri Kahn, Vice President and General Manager, Small Business; Carolyn Hughes, Vice President, People. Dr. Neil Hunt, Chief Product Officer at Netflix also joined SimplyHired.com’s board of directors.

For more information, read the full press release. 

Gautam Godhwani Guest Hosts CNBC’s Worldwide Exchange

SimplyHired.com's very own CEO, Gautam Godhwani, appeared on CNBC's Worldwide Exchange early this morning. On this fourth visit as guest host to the show, Gautam discussed the slow start to hiring this year and how it's picked up ever since.

Gautam then went on to discuss the more cautious hiring by employers during the recovery and how companies are now in a good place to hire more employees. And in fact, companies have started to hire again - the number of job openings have hit pre-recession levels.