If you’re looking for a full time job, you should keep your prospects open to seasonal hiring positions. Seasonal jobs have plenty of benefits that you might not have considered when browsing job sites to identify potential opportunities. Throughout the year, there will be an increase in demand for qualified candidates to fill vacant positions for a short period of time. There are plenty of industries that see spikes in demand throughout the year during seasonal points, and these spikes can provide fantastic opportunities for job seekers and professionals to gain additional skills and experience while they seek full-time opportunities.
If you’ve been looking for work for quite some time, seasonal jobs might be the thing you need to take your resume to the next level and become the leading candidate with that extra experience. In addition, seasonal hiring periods will help you earn some money while you’re temporarily looking for other work. Seasonal hiring can also lead to full time opportunities for plenty of individuals, so you shouldn’t discount them because they’re initially labeled as short-term opportunities. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for spring jobs, winter jobs, summer jobs, or fall jobs, seasonal jobs all offer an opportunity for you to improve your resume and add to the potential skills and experience that employers are looking for when reviewing your resume.
We’ve highlighted some of the best ways that you can boost your resume during seasonal hiring, or how you can use seasonal jobs to elevate your resume for those full time opportunities you’re pursuing.
What Are Seasonal Hiring Periods?
Seasonal hiring periods typically occur whenever a major holiday or uptick in business is about to occur. Most often, seasonal hiring periods will occur in the winter or during the summer. Some industries see seasonal hiring upticks every year, like the travel industry, transportation industry, and retail industry. As more people generally take time off during the winter and summer holidays, these seasonal times offer a great chance for job seekers and professionals to enhance their resume, add additional experience, and learn some new skills in a new environment they might not have considered otherwise.
During seasonal hiring periods, many positions will be labeled as temporary or have a short-term duration. Not all seasonal work is related to holidays though, as there are plenty of industries that will consider short-term work as seasonal based on the type of weather in certain regions. For instance, during warm weather, there are more job opportunities for the boating and fishing industry. Another example is during the colder weather, there are plenty of additional opportunities for those individuals who want to help out in the shipping industry as retailers and businesses try to get all the gifts sent to customers for the holidays.
Why You Should Consider Seasonal Jobs
Even though most seasonal work is temporary, there are still several reasons you should consider applying to these types of jobs. If you’re asking yourself, “Should I put seasonal jobs on my resume?”, then the definitive answer is yes you should. We’ve outlined some of the key reasons that you should still consider seasonable jobs when you’re conducting a job search.
1. Help You Build Out Your Resume With More Experience
One of the main reasons that you should consider seasonal jobs is that they will help you build out your resume. In essence, seasonal work should always be observed as a chance for you to add more substance to your resume. Often times, one of the biggest problems that job seekers and professionals face when they’re trying to secure a full time job is that their resume doesn’t have enough content to be seriously considered.
This is often in part due to the job seeker or professional only having a few listed positions on their resume. Most of these listed positions are part-time positions they held while attending school. Unfortunately, while any experience is great experience, these positions or lack thereof often send the signal to employers that don’t have much professional experience. Even if this isn’t true, seasonal jobs offer a great chance for job seekers and professionals to boost their resume and truly stand out for those full time positions that they’re also applying to.
2. Help You Gain Professional Skills
The next benefit that job seekers and professionals can gain from taking advantage of seasonal hiring periods is that they can gain additional professional skills. Sometimes it comes down to the skills you list on your resume, and not the number of positions you list on your resume.
This is due to the fact that skills can often be more valuable than the number of different positions you’ve held in the past. Employers, managers, and HR professionals are constantly looking for professionals who can provide more value to them, and they see this potential value in the skills that you can provide them. The great thing about exploring a wide array of positions also means that you’ve probably been exposed to dozens of opportunities to enhance your skillset and learn something new that you can provide to future employers. Therefore, those individuals who do list plenty of opportunities on their resume will often be viewed as more valuable candidates because they had a higher likelihood of picking up new skills along the way.
You might see a short-term position as just a couple paychecks, but on your resume that short-term job can provide plenty of benefits to future positions that you’re hoping to earn. For instance, working in a seasonal retail job might help you gain valuable customer experience that you can then list on your resume, and instantly help you become a more viable candidate because you’ve been able to effectively say you learned how to interact with and handle customers.
Don’t overlook short-term jobs or seasonal hiring trends because it’s not the end-game for your job search. Instead, look at them as an opportunity to gain professional skills that you can then list on your resume to help you stand out more to potential employers.
3. Seasonal Jobs Can Act Like an Internship with Potential Full Time Employment
Another fantastic benefit that many don’t consider when pursuing seasonal jobs is that they can sometimes act like an internship. Even though the vast majority of seasonal jobs are just that, temporary positions, they can also expand into long-term full time positions down the road when things pick up or they need to hire additional workers.
Companies that are looking to hire full time employees will often look to hire those employees from within first. If they cannot find matches from current employees, they’ll then look to those temporary positions that were filled during seasonal hiring or internship periods. Employers, managers, and HR professionals will do this because seasonal workers and interns already know what the culture is like, expectations that have been set, and already have some training. This helps employers cut down on some of the more expensive aspects of hiring new workers.
Therefore, you should always treat seasonal positions as internships, because there is a significant chance that you’ll be considered down the road for a full time position and you shouldn’t automatically disqualify the chance of it happening.
Another fantastic thing about seasonal positions that you can use on your resume is that it’s another opportunity for you to identify whether or not you want to work in that particular industry or that type of role — which is exactly what professional internships offer.
Seasonal jobs are a great way for you to identify the company structure, identify the company goals, and evaluate whether or not the culture is the right fit for you and your career. Seasonal hiring periods are a great way for you to identify whether or not you can see yourself working in the organization for long periods of time, and they can often lead to potential full time opportunities for those top-performers when all is said and done.
Keep your mind open to the potential seasonal jobs that spring up from time to time when you’re conducting your job search because they could help you boost your resume with future employers.
The Shortcomings of Seasonal Hiring and Seasonal Jobs
While there are plenty of benefits to seasonal jobs and seasonal hiring trends, there are some shortcomings that you need to be aware of. We’ve highlighted some of the key shortcomings that you need to consider when you’re thinking about whether or not you should use seasonable jobs to boost your resume.
1. Less Extensive Training
The first shortcoming that you might find when you’re trying to find a seasonal job is that they don’t offer extensive training. Often times, these seasonal jobs are temporary in nature, so employers don’t provide extensive training programs that are designed to provide a wide array of skills to these employees. In some cases, you might even find that seasonal jobs only offer training for the first day and then they thrust you into the work without a moment’s notice.
On the one hand, this is good because it means that you don’t have to stress out about not having the necessary skills to perform the job duties, but on the other hand you won’t receive some expensive training or add a wide array of skills to your resume when it’s all said and done.
Even though you won’t be receiving a wide array of new skills to add to your resume, any new skill you can learn through temporary work will help you boost your resume and elevate the value that you can present to future employers in an effort to be considered for employment by them.
2. Low Paying Jobs with Minimal or No Benefits
Another shortcoming that you will often find with seasonal jobs or seasonal hiring trends is that they will offer job opportunities that are low-paying or have minimal or no benefits to offer. Seasonal jobs offer smaller paychecks with minimal or no benefits because they don’t foresee the employee sticking around longer than necessary, which means they don’t want to spend upwards of thousands of dollars to train employees and offer significant monetary value in things like time off, health insurance, retirement benefits, and more.
You can also expect that you won’t be receiving many company perks or company benefits with seasonal jobs. Some of the most common ones you might find when you’re a full-time employee include company perks, company discounts, etc. At a seasonal job, you won’t have much access to these types of benefits. On the odd chance you do have access to these benefits, these organizations and employers will often use these perks as a reason or justification for not offering more significant benefits or higher pay instead.
3. Repetitive Tasks and Responsibilities
Depending on how you look at this shortcoming, it might not actually be a large shortcoming for you. Due to the fact that seasonal jobs don’t offer extensive training as we’ve highlighted above, they will often assign temporary and seasonal workers to repetitive tasks with low responsibility. This means that while your work could develop into something more engaging for you, you shouldn’t expect it to be something that is unique each day.
Instead, you should fully expect that you might get bored every now and then while you perform these repetitive tasks and responsibilities.
How To Boost Your Resume for Seasonal Hiring
Now that we’ve covered some of the important things you should be aware of with seasonal hiring and the benefits you should consider, we’ve taken the time to highlight ways you can boost your resume for seasonal hiring.
1. Apply Early and Plan Ahead
The most important thing to remember when you’re getting ready to elevate your resume for seasonal hiring is that you need to get it ready so that you can apply early. There is no better time to keep your resume up to date when you’re getting ready to consider seasonal jobs. If you’re getting ready to start submitting your resume to seasonal jobs and you haven’t conducted a job search in a while, you probably need to refresh your resume. You don’t want to be submitting an outdated resume to seasonal jobs only to realize much later that you haven’t updated it in a while.
Take the time to plan ahead and make sure that you update your resume to make sure that it’s ready to apply early to positions. You want to get out in front of other candidates who are applying to the same seasonal jobs.
2. Follow Up Regularly To Highlight Your Resume
As with any other job posting that you’re applying to, you should be diligent in following up regularly with the seasonal job offerings. Often times, seasonal jobs will be posted weeks to months in advance of when they’re actually needed. As a result, some of these job postings might be left sitting there with no activity for quite some time. You don’t want your resume to get buried underneath other applications or be forgotten in general because there is no activity on the job listing.
Be sure to follow up regularly with the individual who listed the job posting, or reach out to the HR or management team responsible for the job posting if you can’t get in touch with the individual responsible.
You don’t want to pester them, but you do want to follow-up with them on a regular basis to remind them to check your resume. During the course of your follow-up correspondence, make sure that you mention your desire to work for them during the seasonal hiring increase and callback to important points on your resume that would help make you a good fit during their increased hiring periods.
3. Highlight Your Reliability
The next way you can boost your resume during seasonal hiring is to make sure that you highlight your reliability throughout your resume. One of the best ways that you can do this is to make sure that you change the job descriptions on your resume to emphasize how you were a critical team member during important tasks or responsibilities from previous positions or projects.
Even though the expectation for seasonal hires is much lower than traditional full time employees, the hiring managers are still looking for candidates who will be reliable and perform the work to their best ability. Try to emphasize and highlight your reliability throughout your resume to increase your chances of landing the seasonal job.
4. Choose the Best Resume Format
There are several different types of resumes that you can choose from when crafting your resume. But not all resume formats work well when it comes to seasonal hiring periods. When you’re deciding how you want to build your resume for seasonal hiring jobs, you should consider using a chronological resume format.
This resume format will help you present your experience and skills in chronological order and help individuals disseminate important information in a logical order.
5. Tailor Your Resume
Another important thing you should do when getting ready to improve your resume during seasonal hiring periods is to always tailor your resume to the job that you’re applying to. Fortunately, you can use the same resume for similar job postings, as the responsibilities and job duties will largely be the same for temporary positions.
Resume Templates That Will Help You During Seasonal Hiring
We’ve taken the time to highlight just a few of the resume templates that will help you during seasonal hiring.
1. Classic
This resume template is perfect for those individuals who are looking to secure a seasonal job with a traditional and classic resume template and resume format. This resume template highlights the position you’re seeking, gives you an opportunity to highlight what you’re looking for, and puts the important skills at the forefront of the resume.
2. Soul
This resume template is great for those individuals who are looking to leave their position title open and off the resume, but still want an opportunity to highlight what they can bring to the table with their professional summary and skills section. In addition, the outlined section headings make it easy for those individuals who are reviewing your resume to easily follow the progression.
3. Slide
For those individuals who want to drive home their professional experience, this resume template is great for them. This resume template highlights your professional experience, with clearly defined resume headings and sections that will help your reviewer quickly identify what they’re looking for.
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