Can I just put various temping assignments on my CV?

jumpycheese1

I am going to update my CV in a few days time. Last year between March and early Nov, I went on temp assignmets from which varied from 3 days to 6 weeks. As the last of these job supposed to lasted until end January as I was doing maternity cover. On a Friday, the person who I was covering phoned work and said 'I will be back Monday' as she was planning to have a year for maternity leave and decided that due to the ecomonic climate, she and her husband couldn't afford to spend 6 months on one income.

I did claim JSA after that and applied for dozens of jobs to no avail afterwards until I got my current job in Nov.

As CVs are better if they are on 2 pages, would it be easier to state March 2008-Nov 2008 'Various temping assignments'? The jobs I did varied from admin to data entry to warehousing!

KG

Hey there JC1. I used to be a careers adviser and saw quite a few people in your position.

Explaining what you were up to during any given period is always going to be better than leaving a gap in your CV, but as with anything else on your CV it's all down to how you word it.

Was the work all just through one employment agency? (This could be seen as a positive - the agency found you reliable and so kept giving you work). If so one option would be to list them where you would normally put the name of the employer and then make it clear that you worked for them in a variety of roles, using a wide range of skills.

If it wasn't through one agency then yes, something a long the line of 'Various temporary assignments' is ok.

Whichever way, you should then highlight key skills or experience you gained during this time (for example working with a particular software system or in a particular sector) remembering that it's best if you target your CV to the vacancy to which you are applying. This might mean that you choose different aspects of your experience to highlight depending on the nature of the role to which you're applying.

Hope that helps.

KG

SandC

Yes, that would be fine jumpycheese. Although if you are applying for a job in which one or more of the temp jobs are relevant to the position you should detail them.

gaz_jones

Since I left collegeI had only relly had temp jobs so when I was applying for my current (full time) job I listed all my temp assignments that were over a certain period of time, say a month.

I also worked for 1 agency for about 6 months, so there I just put the agencies name and in the description wrote about the many roles I had done for them.