Dear Cindy – Can a Job Be Too Short for a Résumé?

When writing my résumé, do I have to include those jobs where I was only there for a short period of time?

Sincerely,

The Wind

As a suspicious sort – and as someone who worked in recruitment for years – my first thought is: Why don't you want to include these shorter jobs? Are you saying that the jobs were short because they didn't work out? If this is the case, you still need to include them because omitting them is the same as lying (see Dear Cindy – Omitting Jobs From a Résumé), and you don't want to lie on your résumé. (Such lying, of course, will likely lead to lying at the interview and nothing good will come of that.)

But maybe you've simply had a lot of short-term jobs. If you've had a pile of jobs under one employer (e.g., as a travel nurse), you can list the entire period as one job. For example, "Month/Year to Month/Year, Travel Nurse, Travel Company X, USA."

To write up your experience, consider what period the travelling covers. If the travel jobs cover only a couple of years, give some information about the hospitals (e.g. "worked throughout the USA, in teaching hospitals ranging in size from 150-1,000 beds"), the types of positions you held (e.g., RN-ICU, RN-CSICU, RN-TICU, etc.), as well as some of the skills you used. If an employer wants more details, like the exact dates and exact roles you played and at which hospitals, they can ask you. However, if the travel jobs cover a good number of years, and so constitute your significant, recent experience, expand somewhat on the details provided.