How to Create a Resume When You Switch Jobs Constantly

How to Create a Resume When You Switch Jobs ConstantlyYou job hopped. Theres no shame in that. You ayaly had your reasons. And even if you didnt, that period of leapfrogging from one position to aelendher in the span of a few months or years doesnt have to haunt the rest of your career. googletag.cmd.push(function() googletag.display(div-gpt-ad-1467144145037-0) ) Job hopping these days isnt considered as much of a no-no. Some companies even look out specifically for candidates who seem willing to try new things, gain out-of-the-box experiences, really expand their skill sets to be versatile and multi-faceted. After all, youve got a breadth of expertise and a range that few of your fellow job seekers can boast. Use this to your advantage as often as you canmake it a bonus on a resume, not something to hide. Heres now.Prove Your Know What Youre DoingYour biggest concern is probably appearing reliable enough for the rest of the companies out there to take you seriously. The last thing you want to do is have your otherwise sternbezogen application disregarded (even after a stellar interview) for being a flight risk. There will be hiring managers and employers who be scrutinizing you for thisand plenty of risk-averse HR folks that will go with the steady and sure bet every time. Remember, theyre looking for people who have risen through the ranksor been promoted at every company theyve worked for. And thats hard to do when youre not around long enough for promotion or review at most of the companies youve worked for. Theyre biggest worry is of course that you will bail after a few months or a year or two and they will have to scramble to fill your spot.What can you do to keep yourself in the game when multiple-year stints of experience appear to be a prerequisite for hiring? Lots. If youre applying to a company that isnt into job hoppers on principle, there are plenty of ways you can tone down the job hopping on your resume and play up the skills youve gained in yo ur checkered work history (instead of simply itemizing the checkered parts).Make skills the focus.Abandon the traditional chronological format. If youre far from traditional, doing the norm canhurt you. Opt instead for a hybrid resume, which crams your chronological work history at the bottom of your resume, and highlights your skillset up front.Pimp out your heading or summary statement by choosing a handful of your best assets and skills to highlight, drawing on your full experience base. List your accomplishments. Show how youve excelled. Paint a picture that will convince any hiring manager that you would be an asset to thempurely based on what you can do. You can list the company where you acquired that skill or nailed that achievement in brackets at the end of every bullet. That way, the recruiter sees the companies youve worked for and the skills youve gained first, before seeing how little time you spent at each.Its also totally kosher to say you have X years experience as Y , provided you do. They dont need to know yet that that experience was gathered across five jobs in as many years. Whats important is to emphasize the experience itself. You can spend the interview convincing them that the hopping makes your experience even more valuable as youve deployed your expertise in a wider variety of situations and come across a wider range of applications and other ways to prove your mettle.Talkabout what you wantnow.Remember that what you want the person reading your resume to take away from it is that you are not a flight risk. Try including a line in your summary statement about how youre looking for a long-term position with opportunities for growth, or for a position at a company that will allow you to be challenged and grow and help the company to grow as well. Make it clear wherever you left a position involuntarily (unless, of course, you were fired)i.e. if there were layoffs or restructuring, or a company went under. This can show that you didnt le ave every job for a better title or a bigger paycheck and can go a long way towards showing that you arent incapable of loyalty.Bonus points if you can show how you made a lasting contribution to the companyeven if you werent there all that long. If you have a lot of this to boast about, consider including an entire section of your resume dedicated to accomplishments, and making sure to focus this section on ways in which your accomplishments contributed to the company, not just accolades you earned for yourself. The trick is to show you can be a team player and a company man here.Dont include everything.You dont have to. If you worked one gig for only a month or two between longer stintsunless that company taught you something or gave you a skill or experience you need to sell yourself for this job, you can always leave that one out. Its also totally fair to omit jobs that arent immediately relevant to the job title youre applying for with this particular resume. Unfortunately, as a job hopper, youll have to do even more work than everybody else when tailoring your documents to each position you apply for, but the time and effort you spend tinkering will certainly pay off.Also, feel free to combine jobs into composite jobs. Did you spend a solid 3-5 years doing more or less the same thing, just at different companies? Contracting, perhaps? Freelancing or working in fields where work tends to ebb and flow? No worries Group them all together under one general job header or composite position title. You did have that solid chunk of experience it just wasnt all at one company. No need to be penalized for this.Deal with your gemeinsame agrarpolitiks.If you have any big gaps in your work history, there are ways around this too. One trick is to eliminate the months from your dates of employment at each company. That way, you wont have to explain those 2-8 months where you werent workingunless it comes up in the interview. But if you have a gap you feel you need to a ddress, just be honest about how you spent that time. Even if you werent working or getting paid, you still might have been accumulating valuable skills or experience related to the jobs you are applying for. Any special projects, continuing education, volunteer or community work, consulting, or apprenticeships are relevant and can even score you bonus points.And if youre just coming back to the workforce after a prolonged absencefor personal, professional, or family reasonsjust be honest there too. Dont feel the need to apologize. You did what was best for you and your family. There is zero shame in that. Keep your attitude positive and focus instead on showing how youve kept up-to-date with your industry while you were out of the game. Hint a good social media and LinkedIn presence with lots of industry engagement can go a long way here. Having a strong personal brand shows that you havent just been slacking in your time off, but always striving to be as polished, current, and pro fessional as possibleeven when technically unemployed. This can also help you to make a good first impression as a person, not just a chronological list of job titles held.Dont neglect your titelseite letter.Perhaps your biggest trick in compensating for job-hopping or work history gaps in your resume is to make sure to accompany your document with a truly kick-ass cover letter. Make sure you stand out from the crowd. Be honest about your situation, but use the space you have to craft a narrative. Show them that they have no reason to fear. Youre no flight risk. Youre just a talented, experienced candidate ready and eager for the right opportunity at the right company to get stuck in and make your biggest contribution yet. Show youre in it for the long haul by mentioning a few reasons why that company appeals to you so much. Show how you complete each otherThe overarching takeaway here is that you need to do a bit of storytelling. Spin your resume and cover letter to take a negative into an overwhelming positive. Make it part of your cachet and your personal brand. Tell a story about yourself that ties all of your disparate and wide-ranging experience together into one neat bundle that screams hire me. Then head into the interview with the confidence that you are actually a catch, despite whatever fears HR might have given your non-traditional career path. Remember use the cover letter to finesse the resume.Tweak the resume to sell your strengths so hard that your weaknesses are more difficult to spot. Then spin the whole thing into a convincing tale of you being the perfect fit. Use the interview to answer any remaining questions with the true conviction of knowing that what you offerwhile perhaps not what they were expecting, at least on paperis just exactly and absolutely what they need. And go land that jobAnd remember, you still need toedit and finetune your resume as you normally would. Here are some additional tips for creating your resume that are abso lutely crucial in getting your foot in the door.