Does part-time, contract, or temporary work look bad on a resume?

Question:

Does part-time, contract, or temporary work look bad on a resume?

Answer:

Most of the time? No. Employers would much rather see you working anything in your field, rather than being unemployed.

Explanation:

Jobseekers with part-time, freelance, contract, or temp work in their background often worry this kind of experience looks bad, but most of the time, it’s not going to pose a problem. You may need to be prepared to answer questions about it in an interview, but it’s not likely to throw up any major red flags in most cases.

Much of this is dependent on your industry. In certain industries (tech and graphic design, for example), contract and freelance work is extremely common. Definitely don’t worry about it if you’re in one of these industries. In others, part-time work is common (retail, hospitality, and healthcare, just to name a few), so again, don’t stress if you’re in one of these and you’ve got part-time work on your resume.

You also shouldn’t worry if the work, no matter what kind and no matter industry you’re in, was several jobs ago. If you have more recent full-time work on your resume, most employers won’t even think twice about an older job that wasn’t traditional full-time employment. They would much rather see non-traditional work than a gap. Likewise, if you’re a recent grad, employers expect that most (if not all) of your work experience will either be part-time or short-term.

Now let’s talk about when you should worry about this kind of work on your resume. First, if this is basically the only experience you have, you should expect employers to prefer candidates who’ve had full-time traditional W2 employment. Why? Well, because they can’t know from your resume why you’ve only worked temp or part-time jobs. Are you just lazy and don’t like working a full 40 hours a week? Do you have personal commitments that make it hard for you to maintain a full-time schedule? If all your work has been freelance, then how will you feel taking orders from a manager and following a structured schedule? There are just too many questions for them to take a chance and bring you in for an interview (which is extremely time-consuming for hiring managers), especially when they likely have plenty of candidates with full-time experience.

Second, if the work is totally unrelated to your field, it’s also likely to count against you. If you worked as a paralegal for a decade, but your resume shows you’ve been in unrelated temp work for the last three years? Not good. Why? Employers prefer candidates who have recent experience in their industry because it typically reduces training time, when compared against candidates who may be out of practice.

Third, looking like a job hopper is never a good look. If all the positions on your resume are less than 12 months long, regardless of whether they were part-time, full-time, or contract, employers are likely to view that negatively. They worry that you’re flaky or get bored easily, or that you’ve been laid off for repeated poor performance. You may have excellent explanations for all the short tenures, but you’re unlikely to get to explain them in an interview because an employer is likely to pass you over for candidates with longer tenures.

To sum up: part-time, contract, freelance, or temporary work are not inherent red flags on a resume. It depends on their recency, frequency, and commonality in your industry. If you do fall under one of the situations described above that employers do typically view negatively, then you should definitely proactively address it in a cover letter!