What to Do When You Have "Too Much"​ Job History on Your Resumé

If you’re over 30, chances are that you have worked in several different positions at several companies in your career... and some of them may not even be related to the job you are seeking now. This may cause confusion to potential employers about what your true goals are.

How do you handle all of these various career changes in a resumé?

One of the best paths forward is to focus your resumé on those roles that are related to your current career aspirations.

Instead of having a traditional “Career Experience” section in your resumé, create a section called “Relevant Career Experience” and describe the related positions there.

What if those positions are not concurrent? What if there are gaps of time between those career moves where you were in positions that are not related?

In those cases, consider adding a second section to the resumé called “Other Experience” and simply list the unrelated roles and employment dates there without going into detail about each role.

That way, your relevant job experience is highlighted, but gaps are addressed as well.

In the end, you want hiring managers to be focused on the parts of your career experience that will help them understand if you will be a good fit for the role.

So think about how to modify your resumé to make things easier for them... and for you.