In most cases, if your career focuses on permanent, full-time positions, figuring out how to list your experience on your resume is fairly simple. However, thanks to the rise of the gig economy, many professionals have non-traditional forms of employment in their backgrounds today, and many aren’t sure how to cover those on their applications.

Whether you’ve tackled temporary, gig, or contract consulting jobs, using the right approach to showcase that experience is a must. If you aren’t sure how to list contract work on your resume, here are some tips that can help.

Group All Related Freelance Work

If you are a freelancer or otherwise self-employed and do one particular kind of work, you can group all of your projects under a single heading in your work history. Simply create an entry that says “Freelance [Job Title].” For the address, you can use the city and state of your home or workspace. Then, for the years, include the entire range where you’ve consistently handled freelance projects.

With this approach, you get to group your related work experience into a single heading. However, you should only use it if the projects were legitimately similar and occurred in relatively quick succession. That way, what you’re sharing is an accurate depiction of your experience.

Make It Clear That a Role Was Short-Term

If you have several contract jobs that aren’t directly related, you may need to list them as separate entries in your work history. Often, professionals worry that they’ll look like a job hopper if they include each one. However, most hiring managers understand that contract positions and other kinds of short-term hires are common, so it won’t inherently work against you.

Just make sure that you clearly state that a position was project-based or short-term when you list it on your resume. That way, it’s easy for the hiring manager to see that the job wasn’t meant to last longer than it did, making it less likely that they’ll assume you were job-hopping or let go due to poor performance.

List the Positions Under the Recruitment Firm

If you’ve landed your temporary positions through the same recruitment firm and that agency has acted as your employer, you can list each of the contracts in one place. The recruitment firm is the company you were working for during those assignments, so you can list them as the employer on your resume.

With this approach, you can take one of two routes. If all of the contracts involved the same job title, you could discuss them as a single entry under one header. If there were several different kinds of assignments, you could use subheadings to break down various responsibilities.

Either option can be a great way for addressing contract consulting jobs, temporary positions, or other short-term work through a single recruitment agency. It lets you highlight all you’ve done while showing a sustained relationship with an employer, both of which can work in your favor.

Find Your Next Consulting Role

If you’d like to learn more about how to take your resume to the next level, the team at Alpha Consulting has more resources on our blog.  When you’re ready to start your next project-based role, the recruiters at Alpha Consulting are here to help.