Many Employers Want to See Months with Employment Dates on Resumes

Hiring decision-makers surveyed for the book, Top Notch Executive Resumes identified this as one of their Top 30 Executive Resume Pet Peeves: Span of work experience in a given job is listed with years only instead of with months and years or is listed inconsistently from job to job. Decision-makers want to see specific dates of employment — months and years (not days). “A job that ran December, 2004 to January, 2005, if months are not listed, looks precisely the same as a job that ran January, 2004, to December, 2005 — a significant difference,” noted senior IT recruiter John Kennedy. Similarly, De Benedittis noted, “if your resume says 2004-2005 that could be a 30-day job or a 12-month job. I don’t want to guess and neither does my client. Put a month and a year on your resume, even if it is short term; we won’t be fooled because we will ask you the exact dates and we will verify the information.”
See all 30 peeves: executive resume peeves 1-10 in Part 1, executive resume peeves 11-20 in Part 2 and executive resume peeves 21-30 in Part 3.