Employment History

How to Find Your Complete Employment History

If you are applying for a job, chances are that you will need to disclose at least some details about your employment history. Most employers have a “work history” section on their job applications where you’ll be asked to provide past companies, dates of employment, and job titles for the last several jobs that you’ve held. Most positions will also require you to submit a resume with an account of your professional history.

How should you compile your employment history report, and how can you find or verify details that you don’t immediately recall? In this post, we will explore these questions in detail.

What Is an Employment History Report?

While you may associate the term “employment history report” with a type of background check, the truth is that there is no background check service that will allow an employer to get a full list of your past jobs. Instead, employers rely on applicants to self-report this information via job applications and resumes. As such, you should think of your employment history report as a resource that you compile on your own.

These days, most professionals present or save their work history in multiple places. The average job seeker has a resume on their computer that they can update and tweak at a moment’s notice if they need to apply for a job. Many professionals also have LinkedIn pages, which include a list of past employers and jobs.

If you already have this information at the ready in one or both formats, then you shouldn’t have much trouble updating your employment history report when it’s time to submit a resume.

What Is Included in an Employment History Report?

The work history section on a resume follows a commonly-accepted format in which each entry includes four key types of information:

• Job title
• The name and location of the employer
• Your dates of employment
• A list of your job duties, responsibilities, and key accomplishments

In some cases, you may also need to provide names and contact information for your past bosses or supervisors on the job application.

How to Find Your Employment History

How can you find your own employment history? No one will have a better knowledge of your work history than you will—in fact, most candidates can prepare their own employment history reports from memory.

It is possible to forget key details about your previous employers or jobs over time. If you are trying to compile a full account of your past work, you may be able to recall recent jobs without issue but struggle to remember employment engagements from earlier in your career. Alternatively, maybe you remember some things about a particular job (such as where you worked and what your general responsibilities were) but have trouble remembering others (including specific job titles or employment dates).

How important is accuracy in employment history reporting? Companies will often verify job histories for their candidates—especially for more recent jobs—by contacting former employers and asking about details such as job titles, dates of employment, responsibilities, salaries, and reasons for leaving. Because resume lies are a common problem hiring managers have become vigilant about checking this information. 

Disparities between your resume and what a prospective employer learns through a verification check can raise red flags and potentially cost you a job. As a result, you need to aim for complete accuracy when compiling your employment history report.

If there are details about past jobs that you don’t remember, there are steps that you can take to find your own employment history.

Step 1: Review documents that you may have in your possession.

Step 2: Contact former employers.

Step 3: Request details from the Social Security Administration.

f you need considerable assistance reconstructing your work history, you might contact the Social Security Administration (SSA). Since you provide all employers with your Social Security Number for tax purposes, your entire employment background should be trackable via SSN. You can submit a “Request for Social Security Earnings Information” to obtain an itemized SSA list of where you’ve worked in the past. 

The drawback to this option—and the reason why employers don’t use SSA searches to verify employment history—is that there is a substantial cost and a lengthy timeline involved with these searches. A “certified” version of your earnings statement will cost you $122, while a non-certified statement will cost $92. Wait times can be three or four months, depending on how busy the SSA is at the time when you submit your request.

You may also be able to obtain relevant Social Security information, including job history details, by submitting a request to your local unemployment office.

Employment History on a Resume

Once you’ve compiled a detailed and accurate rundown of your employment history, you can get to work building or updating your resume. Listings should include job titles, employer names and locations, employment dates, job responsibilities and skills, and job accomplishments. Updating the document regularly and saving both digital and paper copies are critical ways to keep track of your employment history to make sure that you aren’t forgetting key details over time.

You are not expected to submit a full list of past jobs and employers on your resume. Especially in the age of the gig economy, many professionals have nontraditional work histories that span many more work arrangements than traditional jobs. Instead of holding five or six jobs throughout a career, it is more common these days for an individual to work a dozen jobs or more. 

Keeping to the standard one-page limit won’t provide you with enough space to list every job that you’ve ever held. Instead, balance your resume between your recent employment and the jobs or gigs that best display your qualifications and skills for the specific position that you are seeking.