Wednesday, November 19, 2008

How to List Concurrent Jobs on Your Resume

To make ends meet, you may have held down more than one job. This might have been while attending college, transitioning from one situation to another, or during hard economic times, such as what we're going through now.

You may have worked two or even three jobs at the same time. These jobs could have been part- or full-time. Should you list all those jobs on your resume? If so, how should you list them so it's not confusing?

Let's say you held down two jobs concurrently. If both jobs are relevant to your job objective, list them in one of these ways:
2007-present
Sales Coordinator, ABC Company, River Springs, Ohio
and
Sales Representative, DEF Company, River Springs, Ohio

or

2007-present, Part-time Sales Positions at:
ABC Company, River Springs, Ohio
DEF Company, River Springs, Ohio

If one of those jobs is relevant to your job objective, and the other is not, list only the job that's relevant. Here are the benefits of listing only one job:
- The employer is less likely to think that you'll hold down a second job while you're working for him, which means he'd have 100% of your working time, attention, and productivity.

- Having just one job for each span of time on your resume keeps your resume from getting cluttered and difficult to read. When you make your resume easy to read, it's more likely to get read.

Working more than one job is difficult to do and you should not be penalized for doing so. Use these techniques to make the best of it, and practise how you will talk about it in your job interview.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Excellent post with very useful info. I would be curious as to your thoughts on how to handle 'parallel' work if you are 'Consulting' on multiple projects (at the same time) but are looking for a 'line role'.

Regards,

Will @ VirtualJobCoach.com

Susan Ireland said...

What do you mean by "line role"?

Anonymous said...

I agree with Willr. The post was helpfull. I have a similar dilema. I worked for a company as a direct hire employee, but have also done consulting work for that company as "self employed" for which I was paid separately, not as part of my salary. How can I list both jobs on my resume? I had both jobs during the same period of time and thought that it might be beneficial to list them as separate jobs. Any thoughts?

Susan Ireland said...

Anonymous,
You can list both "job titles" under the company name. There's no need to state that one was as a direct hire and the other was as a contractor. Those details can be discussed in your job interview.

I hope this helps!

Anonymous said...

Your response is useful if the concurrent jobs began/ended at the same time. What about holding a single job for ten years while being a reservist for eight of those years?

Susan Ireland said...

Hi Anonymous,
Here's one way to handle it:
You could enter your reservist postion in the Work Chronology, followed by:
(mostly concurrent with civilian positions)