So you just reached the end of a challenging summer seasonal job, and throughout the summer you gained valuable skills and strong references that could be a huge help for your future job search. But it can be difficult for many people to decide how to list this seasonal work on their resume in a way that presents it in the best light.
Maybe you are a student or recent college graduate who is just beginning to build up your work experience, or maybe you have been out of work and took a summer seasonal job to fill in the gaps in your resume. These are just a few of the circumstances surrounding people that take summer jobs. If you don’t list this work correctly on your resume, however, you risk looking like a job hopper if you are applying for a permanent role. To make the most of the hard work you put in this summer, here is how to list seasonal work on a resume:
1) Be sure to label the work as “contract”, “seasonal” or “temporary”
To avoid any misunderstandings around why the role only lasted a short period of time, be sure to clearly label any seasonal, temporary or contract roles as such. This will indicate to hiring managers that the role was meant to be short term. It is best to include the label right after the job title on your resume. These days, temporary work is becoming more and more common, and you can expect many employers to understand this.
2) Highlight Important Skills that Seasonal Jobs Require
There are numerous skills that seasonal work requires and improves, which will be an asset in any permanent role. These skills include being flexible, adaptable and hardworking, since you chose to work a seasonal job instead of doing nothing at all.
3) How to List Multiple Seasonal Jobs
It can be a challenge to know how to list multiple seasonal jobs on a resume. If you have held multiple seasonal, contract or temporary jobs, it may make sense to group them together under one section. If these jobs had certain skills or responsibilities in common, you can create a paragraph for this section explaining what you brought to and took from these roles.
4) Use years only when giving dates of employment
To put more of a spotlight on what you learned from the seasonal job, as opposed to the short amount of time you were there, don’t include the months you were employed when listing seasonal work on your resume. Just include the year or years in which you had the job. This only applies to jobs that lasted at least 4 or 5 months though, since doing this with a 2 month position would be too deceiving to hiring managers.
5) Decide when to leave seasonal jobs out of your resume
When you have years of relevant experience, not only is it often unnecessary to list your entire seasonal, temporary and contract work history, you probably won’t have room on your resume. If you held these positions a long time ago, it is likely that the gap left in your resume by not including them won’t be of much concern to hiring managers, since they are mostly interested in your most recent and relevant experience. So instead, list only seasonal work where you feel you made meaningful contributions and gained skills relevant to the position you are applying for.
Author: Jessica Cody
Jessica Cody, a native of Fairfield County, Connecticut, has a background in online marketing and public relations. Currently, she works at VHMNetwork LLC in the role of Marketing Analyst. She is a graduate of the University of Connecticut, where she studied Journalism and Political Science. She is also an avid runner with a passion for the outdoors.
