Resume Help: Overcoming Short Term Jobs and Career Gaps
Today’s candidate, Ben, has sent his resume to dozens of firms over the last six weeks and has not had a single response. He asked me to assess his resume. My first reaction was that these were just rough notes and not an actual resume. The multiple short-term jobs and career gaps are one of the first things that caught my attention. Here are the strategies for Ben to downplay the short-term job and career gaps.
1.) Dates
It is not necessary to show the months and years on your resume when indicating your starting and ending dates. Showing years only is perfectly acceptable. On your application, you will need to provide the information asked and generally that includes the month and years of employment. For many gaps in employment, showing years only on a resume focuses the reader’s attention on your accomplishments rather than on the gaps. Never lie about dates of employment.
2.) Add a Career Highlights Section
Add a career highlights section to your resume. Please it after your core competencies section and before your work history (or professional experience) section. The purpose of this section is to showcase your strongest accomplishments. You have the power to direct your reader to certain positions. Create a bulleted list of five to seven of your top career achievements. Choose achievements that are most relevant to your current career goal.
3.) Downplay the Short Term Jobs
If the short-term jobs - contract or otherwise, only lasted a couple of months, it is fine to exclude them. In the case of Ben, his jobs averaged two years. Therefore, I advise Ben to keep those positions on the resume. However, by placing it lower on the resume, it is secondary to the profile, core competencies, and career highlights sections. Ideally, the reader will be “sold” on Ben before they get to the section that shows his long list of shorter-than-ideal jobs. Also, by the time they read the history, they know he has been successful in the bio-med and medical device industry. To further minimize the impact of this section, we keep each job description brief, showing scope of responsibility and accomplishments not already in the highlights section.
If you have many short-term jobs and career gaps, don’t despair. It is more common than you may think. Take the reader’s eye to your strong selling points. Identify other areas of consistency in your career to show that you are stable. This may be the industry in which you worked, the occupation that you have held, or job functions. If you need help with your resume contact me. I love to tackle any resume challenge.
For more advice on resume writing, check out these blog entries: