I took a brief look at this subject when I wrote Everything You Thought You Knew About Reading Resumes Is Wrong! Let's dig a little deeper this time.

Is a stable job history good? Is an unstable job history bad? Both are true and false in certain situations. Read on to see why.

The first thing to consider is the requirements for the position you're trying to fill. Is it a regular, full-time position or perhaps a requirement for a temporary worker or consultant? Does the client tend to hire people with stable job histories or do they focus mainly on experience. Startups tend not to care much about job history while Fortune 100 companies tend to care more. So consider the job and the client before accepting or rejecting a resume based on job history.

If you match resumes with requirements primarily by matching skills then clearly job history doesn't much matter. In fact the more jobs someone has had the more likely that they have been at least exposed to a wider variety of experience. This kind of matching is prevalent in temporary placement. It makes sense that this is true because, by definition, temporary workers aren't expected to stay in any job very long. But what if you're looking at a resume of someone who has had 3 regular, full-time positions in the past 10 years and now they say they are interested in a temporary position? They probably are getting desperate and need the work. Nothing wrong with that but they are not likely to be as strong a candidate for temporary placement as someone whose resume is full of temp jobs. Of course, if the job is temp to direct then they are ideal because they will likely make a good direct employee should they convert.

Now let's say we have a resume with 8 temp jobs and one 2 year regular, full-time job over the past 5 years. Would you represent such a candidate for a regular, full-time position? The best answer is maybe but it depends. It depends, of course, on the whole story but I'd probably present them as a temp to see how it works out.

Consider the case of someone who has had 5 jobs in the past 10 years. Twice their employer went out of business and they were laid off 3 times. Unlucky perhaps, but they are probably not a very strong candidate. Their judgment about what companies to work for is questionable. They may have a history of settling for what they can get. And a history of being laid off is never good. I'd probably keep looking in a case like this.

What if the resume you're looking at is for someone who has 20+ years with the same company right out of school and they tell you that they're looking to see what's out there? Folks like this are really hard to place. They are certainly stable, too stable! They only know how business is done in one place. They have no variety of experience. Unless your company or client's business is very similar to where they currently work, placing them is high risk because they will likely have a difficult time adapting to a new environment. I'd probably keep looking.

The reason for giving you these scenarios is to make it clear that job history does matter. It may not matter in the way you first thought it may when you started reading this blog.

Thoughts? Please leave a comment...