How to List Temp Jobs on Resume [5 Steps]

It can be a real struggle to return to a regular full-time permanent role after spending some time in the consulting or temporary workspace. Anyone who’s done it or tried to do it can attest to this fact. One factor that can impact our success is how we write about our temp jobs and consulting jobs on our resumes.

Today I want to talk about:

• How temp work can increase your value on a resume;

• How to group similar experiences concisely;

• How to label these jobs;

• When it makes sense to name relevant clients and companies;

• How to discuss key projects and goals;

• How to find achievement metrics in short-term work; and

• Some examples from successful resumes.

Regardless of the job market, this advice applies in candidate-driven and employer-driven markets.

What Is a Temp Job

As always, let’s start with defining the topic. Temp work is any short-term employment you’ve had at a company. I also lump consulting work into the same category for our purposes today. It doesn’t matter if you’re paid hourly as a W-2 employee or as a 1099 contractor. It doesn’t matter if you’re working through a temporary agency or working with the company directly on your own or through a company you own.

Short term jobs, project-based work, can be labeled as temp work. Some examples of temp work include project-based work, and interim work while the company searches for a full-time replacement of a previous employee. It could be a situation where you are debriefing with an employee who is leaving the company and your job is to be the keeper of that knowledge until a new hire is made. There are many reasons you could become a temporary worker for a company.

How Can Temp Jobs Help Your Story

Before you can write about your temp experience or speak about it in a job interview, you need to understand the value it adds to your future employer. Many people tend to think poorly about temp and consulting experience. But in reality, it should be viewed as an asset. Here’s why.

Quick Results

As a temp or consultant, you don’t get to start a new job, wrap your arms around everything, and then start executing plans. No, you’re a hitman (or hitwoman). You’re hired to come in, figure out what needs to be done, and get it done. That’s a unique skill that many cannot perform.

Dissectologist

This is a term used for professional puzzle solvers and that’s exactly what you are. Often there is no training and you have to learn fast, learn on the go, and learn by working backwards to figure out what you don’t know.

Dog Years

While there is no evidence to support it, many people believe that one dog year equates to about 15 human years. This concept is also true of temp and consulting work. One year of temp work at several different companies is like having 5 years of experience.

You will have so much more exposure to ideas, ways of thinking, and processes that work or don’t work. Your peers may have 5 years of doing something one way. You’ll have more experience than them because you’ve spent 1 year doing something 10 different ways. Your diversity of thought and problem solving will be unmatched after a few years of temp work.

Aplomb

Temp work has a way of building high-stress tolerance. Aplomb (pronounced /əˈplɑm/) is the ultimate test for cool, grace under pressure, and restraint in the most trying of circumstances. No one will have more aplomb than you after a few years of working temp assignments.

Group Similar Temp Jobs

One way to improve the likelihood that someone will call you for an interview is to group similar temp jobs and consulting jobs together on your resume.

Why It Matters

You never know who is going to read your resume or the level of experience and skill they have at reading resumes. You also don’t know the recruiting burden on that person. If there are hundreds of applicants, they may be in a hurry to review as many resumes as they can.

Why does all that matter? Because it’s your job to make it as easy as possible for the other person to read your resume and not pass you over.

One thing many recruiters do is scan the sides of your resumes for company names, job titles, and dates of employment. For many, it is one of the first things they do to quickly review resumes for potential. That means if they scan your dates and see you have a new job every three months, they may pass you over. They may never read the part about each of these being an individual temp job.

Now I know that sounds a bit silly and you’re probably thinking they’re not doing their job, but that’s a different conversation. Just know that this does happen. This is why grouping can be helpful.

When to Group Multiple Temp Jobs and Consulting Jobs Together

There’s no hard and fast rule on this, but I’ll tell you how I approach it.

If all of your jobs were short-term in nature, temp jobs through an agency, or consulting jobs where you were not a W2 employee for your clients, I would consider grouping them under one job heading. I’ll talk more about what that looks like in a minute.

If all of the jobs were in the same time period, meaning you’ve been doing consulting or temp work off and on for the past X number of years, then I would consider grouping them.

If all of the jobs used similar skill sets and experiences, then I would consider grouping them. That doesn’t mean each job was the same project, but rather each one was working in accounting, or project management, or IT for example. One job could have been an app development project, another a UX design, and another a back-end website build. You could group all of those together.

It doesn’t matter if some jobs had the agency as your employer and some were found on your own working as a 1099 contractor, you can group them all together if they fit the above criteria.

How to Group Temp Jobs on a Resume

There are many ways you can do this. This is probably the simplest way to teach someone who is reading an article.

Instead of listing a company name and job title, write Consulting or some variation of that. Some examples could be:

• Accounting Consultant

• CFO Consultant

• Interim Project Manager

• Designer Consulting

• Sales Consulting

• Fractional CMO

Notice you can put a noun that reads like a job title “CFO Consultant” or you can use one that is more functional than a title such as, “Sales Consulting.” Both are acceptable.

List the start year and end year of all your temp or consulting work. You can include months when it makes sense to do so. Below is an example that only uses a job summary, no bullet points.

Again, if you worked through a temp agency, you do not need to list the temp agencies on your resume if you do not wish to. No one cares if you were an Interim Accountant with Robert Half, LHH, or Kelly Services. What they do care about is the type of work you did and the type of companies you did that work for. Who placed you makes no difference to most hiring managers and potential employers.

The only people advising you to list out every staffing agency you’ve worked for and the companies they placed you at are other competing staffing agencies because that’s how they gather information and leads. Don’t give it to them unless you want to.

Another option is to group them the way that I like to group promotions within the same company. Write one consulting heading with total dates and then break out key projects and assignments in subheadings like you would each job you held at one company.

For example, it might look something like this:

Clearly Label Your Temp Jobs

Whether you decide that you can group your temporary work experience or not in your work history, you want to list temporary jobs clearly by labeling them as temp or consulting work. Almost everyone understands the nature of temp work is short-term, but if you don’t label it clearly, they’ll think you’re just hopping jobs (which isn’t always a bad thing contrary to popular belief, but that’s another article).

While you can indicate that these jobs are temporary in your job summary or bullet points, I would also recommend you put it in the job heading like I did when I gave you examples of how to group jobs. This way someone scanning the sides of your resume sees the type of job clearly in case they haven’t read the details of your work yet.

Name Relevant Clients

Whenever possible, list the relevant clients you worked at, especially if they are competitors or in an adjacent industry to the one you are applying to.

There are times when you may not be able to do this. If you signed an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) or you simply don’t feel comfortable listing them, then don’t list them by name. Instead, you can list them in an unidentifiable way as I did in the earlier example. You’ll notice that I refer to a Fortune 500 manufacturer, a Fortune 100 energy company, and a privately held recruiting company. That is better than nothing.

Discuss Key Projects and Goals

Temp jobs can be hard to write about in a resume because most people focus on responsibilities and tasks. You should still talk about those things but seize the opportunity to tell your story and show your value.

Tell the reader why you were brought in or hired for the consulting gig. Write about what each project wanted you to accomplish and how they wanted you to help them.

If you were rehired for multiple projects, write about that. If you were brought in to help the company with something because they didn’t have anyone with your knowledge or experience on their team, write about that. If you brought in to unscramble someone else’s mess and clean it up for the next person, write about that.

This is all valuable information that will tell your story and show your unique qualifications. Qualifications that others may not have unless they too have done consulting or temp work.

How to Find Achievements in Short-Term Work

This is one of the hardest things to do. Because you’re not at the company long enough to see the fruit of your labor, it can be challenging to include resume metrics. What do you do if you don’t have numbers and data because you weren’t there to see the result? Well, today’s your lucky day because I’ll give you two ideas.

Anticipated Outcomes

If you made a proposal or recommendation, you most likely pitched it to someone at the company. During that pitch, you probably told them an anticipated or projected outcome if they followed your proposal. It’s ok to write about that. For example, you might say something like this:

Recommended a new month-end review process utilizing sharepoint that would have reduced closing timelines from 10 days to 8 days.

Team Outcomes

Some results may have been realized why you were on the assignment, but you weren’t there long enough to take full credit for them. That’s ok! If you were part of the team and made some contribution, claim the team win. Just don’t oversell your role. You might say something like this:

Worked on a GTV strategy that sourced and filled 30 openings within 60 days for a $10M account, leveraging emerging advertising channels to reach qualified candidates.

You could even get more specific if you owned a particular piece of that project. Even if you came in at the end of the project, as long as you contributed, you can write about it.

How to List Temp Jobs on Resume Example

Let’s put all that together and take a look at some examples of what this could look like in a resume work experience section. Below I will give you four different examples of temp jobs on a resume from different situations so you can work on your resume.

Consulting on a Resume Example 1

This example is based on someone working on and off as a consultant, doing similar work, but for multiple companies. The work is grouped within accounting, finance, and revenue operations.

Notice that instead of listing clients by name, this resume simply lists the industries and revenue sizes of those clients in an effort to keep them confidential.

Consulting on a Resume Example 2

This example is based on someone who has been working part-time as a freelance CMO while also holding other jobs. It’s purposefully written with a short description instead of expanding it with bullet points and accomplishments because this isn’t what we want the reader to focus on. It’s part of the story, but not the most important. You’ll see multiple marketing engagements grouped under one heading with a very short description.

Temp Job on a Resume Example 3

This resume is based on someone who has been working temporary contract jobs through multiple agencies. It mentions clients with name recognition and relevance to the target industry they are applying for. It then breaks out each of the engagements and the purpose of each. And finally, it lists two achievements from those temp jobs.

Notice that the resume doesn’t list every client, but only the relevant and notable ones.

Temp Job on Resume Example 4

In this example, the resume breaks out relevant temp jobs in more detail because each project was longer term and more significant. This doesn’t list every temp job the person might have had, but the important ones.

Notice it has a heading that groups customer success and implementation together and then goes into detail about three temporary contract roles.

How to List Temp Jobs on Resume Recommended Reading

How to use transferable skills on a resume.

How to add metrics to your resume.

Resume cliches and buzzwords to avoid.

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Cole Sperry has been a recruiter and resume writer since 2015, working with tens of thousands of job seekers, and hundreds of employers. Today Cole runs a botique advisory firm consulting with dozens of recruiting firms and is the Managing Editor at OptimCareers.com.