How To List Old Jobs on Your Resume

Introduction

Any type of work that you performed in the past potentially has relevance to your current and future job searches, especially if someone or a company was willing it pay you for those tasks. Old jobs are commonly forgotten and discarded by people for various reasons, and they avoid putting that information on a resume document. Some people may have had a bad experience at the job and want to leave the past in the past. Others might have been embarrassed at the fact of having to take any old job just to make ends meet, such as working at a fast food restaurant or being a janitor.

Today, those old and sometimes embarrassing jobs that are discarded from resumes like the trash, can actually serve to be a treasure. You see, in every type of job, there is a valuable skill that can be picked out, portrayed in a professional tone and then used on a resume document, as well as in the verbal interview. However, job seekers should follow a few steps when trying to list old jobs.

Step 1

Create a rough draft of your old jobs either using a new document in the word processor on your PC or on a sheet of paper. If you really want to become organized, used a spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Excel, Open Office.org Calc or Google Docs Spreadsheet to create a gridded table of your past jobs on a PC; this is probably suitable for people who have ten or more old jobs that they feel should all appear on a resume.

 

Step 2

Start drafting out the list based on the jobs that you are applying for at present. The old jobs that you list on the resume should closely match the types of jobs you are currently applying for.

Step 3

Review the rough draft and then omit or delete the old jobs that have no relation to the current job to which you are applying.

Step 4

Organize the old jobs in reverse chronological order, from latest to earliest.

Step 5

Separate old jobs from each other on the resume using a line a blank space so that employers can clearly distinguish your experience.

Tips

• Create several different resumes based on your old jobs. For example, if you served in the United States Armed Forces specifically to take advantage of the G.I. Bill and tuition benefits, be sure to include your military duties on your resume -- even if your college education and career field are  completely unrelated to your experience while serving in the military.

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