Short stints of employment on resume/application

designer-mommy, BSN, RN · Nov 5, 2018

Sorry in advance, this is super long. So up until I became a nurse I was never a job hopper. I was a super loyal employee who stuck around. Well, I've been a nurse since 2014 and now my resume looks like I'm a crappy person. Who knows... maybe I am?

I've quit and come back to the same company I work for currently TWICE. The first time was because a former coworker told me about her new job's awesome health benefits. Given the fact that my husband has CHF and ends up in the hospital with pneumonia any time he gets a cold, we need good health benefits. So I quit and soon found out that this new job expected me to lie through my teeth and break EMTALA all day long, so I only lasted 3 months. I had a huge ethical issue with that job.

I came back to my old job and stayed there for 2 years. I quit because I just had a baby and they were going to force me to switch from day to night shift. I couldn't do it with a newborn (my husband works night shift so we can work around each other's schedules for childcare reasons, so I'd have to find a sitter for 5 kids). So I got a job working day shift. It was way different than what they explained in my interview and completely unsafe. Also, my baby was about 9 weeks old so I was still getting my milk supply up and I was going 6-7 hours with no break to pump. This is my last child so making breastfeeding work was very important. I quit and came back to my old job who agreed to only make me work 1 night shift. I only lasted 2 months at the other job. Horrible, I know.

Ok now that I got that long, crazy story out of the way, I was wondering, do any of you have super short stints of work on your resume? How do you explain that? Does it hurt your chances of employment a lot? I'm afraid I'll be stuck at this job forever because no one will take me with my history, and I work in a field that I defifinitely don't want to work in for the rest of my life. I'm hoping I'll be ok, because most nurses I know personally have switched around a lot.

Thanks!