How to Include Staffing Jobs on Your Resume

By: Bill Reagan

A lot of people are unsure how to list temporary or contingent jobs on their resume. No wonder – you did all of your work at one business, maybe even at a cool company that would look good on your resume, but your paycheck came from a staffing company. So who do you list on your resume?

The answer is simple: either one, or even both. The key is to make sure it’s easy for a recruiter to understand what you did, where and when you did it, and why it matters. As long as you make that clear, and you’re consistent through the whole resume, you have the flexibility to highlight whatever you think will look better to employers. Here are three examples of how you could list your contingent experience:

One Contingent Assignment
If you want to feature a high-profile company where you worked on a contingent assignment, just make it clear that a staffing firm was involved:

If you’d rather emphasize the staffing firm (maybe you worked at a hot startup that went out of business), you can swap the business names:

Multiple Assignments with One Staffing Firm
If you’ve worked multiple assignments for the same staffing firm, you can group these together under a single header. This reduces clutter and emphasizes your success on multiple assignments:

Multiple Assignments with Multiple Staffing Firms
Pick the format you prefer and use it consistently for each example:

Your resume is a marketing piece, and you’re the product you’re marketing. Emphasize whatever facts you think will make you more attractive to an employer. Just make sure what you say is true, that each entry is in a consistent format, and that you emphasize your accomplishments, not just your responsibilities.