Resume jobs… should they all be treated equally? No, says this former recruiter. His advice on which resume jobs to highlight, which to downplay, and how.
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So you’ve some jobs there on your resume. OK, so you’ve got a lot of jobs. They’re lined up like hopefuls outside a hip New York nightclub. But not everybody in line is getting through the door. Call it crass or call it capitalism, club owners can be selective.

You should be too – with your resume. Most folks who have been around the block a time or two have a work history littered with entry-level, part-time and sometimes goofy jobs that don’t contribute one iota to their current professional goals. Like that summer you spent in a chicken suit for a fast service restaurant, clucking at traffic on the street. Is that really going to help you take the next step forward in your accounting career? Not likely. So why does it deserve a place on your resume?

Resume Jobs – Not Every One Should Make The Cut

You may have been told that every job you ever held needs to be on the resume, under the auspices of preventing any gaps in your employment history. Forget that. A resume is not intended as a comprehensive biography. Rather, it’s a summary of relevant qualifications for a particular employment opportunity.

Of course, if all the jobs you’ve ever held are 1) few, and 2) relevant to your current objective, and 3) fit conveniently into a pattern of increasing responsibility, then it makes sense to proudly line up those ducks in reverse chronological order. But if there’s an oddball job or two that derails your work history and distracts the reader, your written work history needs attention. There are a couple of things you can do.

Handling Those Oddball Jobs

Take all your resume jobs and divide them into two groups. We’ll call the first group alpha jobs. These are the positions that have relevance to your current profession and professional objective. If nothing is seemingly relevant on the surface, pick a job or two in which you at least gained some skills that could be transitioned into the qualifications needed for the position you’re after. These alpha jobs are the ones you will want to present and highlight under the Experience or Work History section of your resume.

The second group (we’ll call them beta jobs) are past positions that have little or no relevance to your current profession and professional objective. These are the jobs we can downplay by either leaving them off the resume entirely, or if the gaps created would be too glaring, allocating them to a section titled “Other Experience” or “Other Jobs.” If you choose to keep the betas on the resume, leave them bare-boned; present just the facts (e.g., title, company, dates).

Finally, a word to the wise. Don’t repress all memories of those oddball occupations. The way the job market is going, who knows. Someday, we might need to present that summer job in a chicken suit as the lead position on our resume.

Author Bio: David Alan Carter is a former recruiter. Writing for the website http://www.TopResumeServices.com Carter reviews the Web’s most popular Professional Resume Writing Services, comparing quality, spelling out their pricing, and giving each a star ranking. Note: For those with a finished resume, Carter offers Resume Distribution Reviews.

Category: Career
Keywords: resume jobs,resume writing,resume