There’s a good article, Gaping Gap? How to Plug Holes in Your Work History, on Careerealism today with advice on how to deal with gaps in your employment history.
One of their suggestions is to omit a job or two–if your employment history is long enough, you can just list other positions held, without dates, in a summary labeled previous experience.
Masking a gap, in my opinion, is not the only reason to omit a job from a resume. In some cases, I don’t even know if a previous experience summary is all that helpful. So long as you have sufficient work experience in your field, there is no reason to dig back to your summer jobs during college or high school. Chances are, no one cares that 12 years ago you worked briefly a sales associate at Target, or that you picked up some extra cash one summer at the Baskin-Robbins.
Focus on the jobs that are relevant to the position you are applying for, and focus on the skills you demonstrated there that are most relevant to the position you are applying for.
After all: You might be an excellent knife-thrower, but if the circus is looking for a juggler, who cares?
Tags: employment gaps, Resumes