How to find your employment records for your resume

If you are writing a resume after several years, you will have to do some heavy digging to uncover your employment history. Most of the time, you won’t remember all the details about a number of your past jobs. This is why it is important to keep a well-maintained record of your past and current jobs.

What information about your jobs goes into your resume?

Your resume provides a brief snapshot of your career to an interested hiring manager. The work experience section is one of the most important elements of your resume because recruiters are extremely interested in it. Each job entry you make on your resume should showcase the:

• Name of the employer – First, hiring managers want to know the companies that have hired you. This is a great chance for you to do some name-dropping if you have worked for industry giants.
• Location – You should tell hiring managers where your employment was based at. You only need to mention the city and state here. If you were working remotely, you can mention that too.
• Job title – Highlight the job title using bold letters. Potential employers pay a lot of attention to your job title. This article teaches how to list multiple job titles with the same employer on a resume.
• Relevant dates – The dates when you started and ended your employment must go on your resume. Stick to a consistent date format. The most common ones are MM/YYYY and Month/Year.
• Professional achievements – Once all the details have ben provided, you should start adding professional achievements to your resume. Use 3-6 bullet points per entry.

How can you uncover your employment history to write a resume?

Finding your employment history for your resume will require just a little bit of your time and a lot of elbow grease. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Check your old resume

If you have saved resumes from previous job applications, they can help you find out a lot of information about your career history. If your resume is more than ten years old, you may have to do some fact-checking to verify the information in there. There might be missing information too, since resumes have changed a lot in the past decade.

2. Go through tax records and pay slips

Your tax records and old pay slips are great sources of information about your last employment. Old tax records will contain details about your previous employers, company addresses, job titles, incomes, etc.

3. Use your old contracts

If you keep your information organized, you might be able to find signed copies of your past employment contracts. These contracts will mention all the details you want, including details about your roles and responsibilities.

4. Look at your online profiles

One of the biggest benefits of having an updated LinkedIn profile is that you get to see your entire work history at a glance. If you have a habit of using online job sites, they too will contain information about your career, such as old resumes and job applications.