This is a question that a lot of applicants have. You have held anywhere between 0 and 100 jobs in the last ten years. You want the hiring manager to see how qualified you are for the position, so you are tempted to list every single job you have held to show the employer that you are a work experience machine.
Quality over Quantity
This is not the best strategy. In fact, it is the worst strategy. Employers have all of 30 seconds or less to look at your resume before deciding if you are someone they want to seriously consider. When they see that large a resume, one of three things is bound to occur:
- The employer won’t bother looking at anything other than the first page.
- The employer will spend less time looking at your more recent jobs in the interest of time.
- The employer will skim around, missing important points.
No matter what happens, your chance of getting the job suffers. You have a limited amount of time to draw the interests of the interviewer. The best way to do that is to have your best information be the only information available to the interviewer.
The Employer Doesn’t Care
The truth is that the employer really doesn’t give a damn about the crappy job you had 10 years ago. Maybe you believe the tasks were relevant, but if you haven’t done them recently, the employer is going to doubt that you still have any of the skills.
Similarly, if you held a lot of jobs in a short amount of time, the employer is not going to care about any job you held for a very short period of time, nor are they going to think highly of you for bouncing around from job to job.
Whenever you write your resume, it is important to ask yourself: Does the employer care?
In the next post we will take a look at some examples to help you figure out whether the employer cares about the job you are going to list on your resume.
Take Away Tips
- Always choose quality over quantity.
- Remove any jobs that don’t help you get the job.
- Review the next post.
