For USAJobs resume how many years of work history to include?

[Anonymous]

How far back in my work history should I go?

Is 10 years sufficient?

And does it look bad if I want to include relevant work from 12 years ago but not include a more recent and less relevant job? Will it look like I am trying to hide something?

[Anonymous]

All of it.

[Anonymous]

I'd say the average fed resume is 10 pages long. I had one over 40 page the other day.

[Anonymous]

I think this depends on the field. I'm an attorney with nearly 30 years of work history and my federal resume is 2-3 pages.

[Anonymous]

Include all of it. I have 15 years of experience and mine is 10 pages long.

[Anonymous]

Thank you!

It's so nice to apply and not have to worry about being "too old." I hope that is the case anyway.

OP

[Anonymous]

I would include all the years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How far back in my work history should I go?

Is 10 years sufficient?

And does it look bad if I want to include relevant work from 12 years ago but not include a more recent and less relevant job? Will it look like I am trying to hide something?

Yes, it will probably appear as if you are trying to hide work history information.

Only 10 years ? This is not a credit check. Best to include your entire work history.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd say the average fed resume is 10 pages long. I had one over 40 page the other day.

How is this possible ?

[Anonymous]

Go far enough back that you seem to be no older than 45.

[Anonymous]

By all of it, people don't really mean to include that summer cashier job at Target while in college, right?

[Anonymous]

You don’t need to include everything. No one will ding you for not listing a job you had 25 years ago. The background check is separate and probably won’t even ask that far back. Include the jobs you think are relevant. That’s it.

[Anonymous]

I've done federal hiring. I look for the things that are the resume rating criteria we've come up with, which are closely related to what we put on the job announcement. I do not want to have to search through ten pages to find things, although I will. But I'd prefer if you just made it easy for me to find the things we're looking for. It has not been my experience that longer resumes are better, beyond a couple of pages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Go far enough back that you seem to be no older than 45.

Bullocks, I got hired into fed gvt (excepted) at age 49 after many years out of the workforce, though I did have prior fed experience before the gap (excepted). I got hired by other agencies a couple times after that in my early 50s.

Because of my gap and earlier fed service, my resume went way back. I included everything after my graduate degree but I didn’t have that much paid work experience.

I don’t think I’d list everything if it took 10 pages; I think I’d be selective and keep it to 2 or 3 because no one wants to read that much. Hit the highlights for the job posting (and you may need a few different versions of resumes).

I also followed the tip to have a usajobs resume and then have a pdf of a normal looking formatted resume with the required information and include that either with the usajobs resume or instead of it. The usajobs resumes are not pleasant to read and from my time on hiring committees, the applicants who made it to interviews had normal, formatted resumes, not the usajobs ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've done federal hiring. I look for the things that are the resume rating criteria we've come up with, which are closely related to what we put on the job announcement. I do not want to have to search through ten pages to find things, although I will. But I'd prefer if you just made it easy for me to find the things we're looking for. It has not been my experience that longer resumes are better, beyond a couple of pages.

I’ve seen job postings that said resumes could be any length, but only the first three pages would be reviewed.