Resume Writing, Too Long at One Job

There continues to be a lot of news stories of so-called professionals telling everyone how to find and compete for jobs in this economic downturn. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of bad advice out there (some good) but many of these so-called experts seem to all spin the same advice. One could speculate that these experts never actually build a career of their own. So from someone who has actually been in the trenches and has managed through several economic downturns here a little bit of Resume Advice.

First off. If you’re one of those (unlucky) individuals who has actually worked for only one or maybe two companies throughout the last 7 to 10 years or more; this part is for you! Being a professional and someone who has reviews candidates for-hire and conducted many interviews as various companies, I’m never impressed by anyone who has 10 or 20 years of experience in one company and one job. Why. Simply put, in most cases the individual never pushed themselves into new territory, taken on the unknown, and frankly they never leaned more then one way of doing something. This is the cold hard facts! Say you’re an accountant. Each company and/or division will always have some slight differences of doing their own accounting and even dealing with the different customers can also introduce new methods not always gained by sticking with one company.

So how does this fit with your Resume. If you have a lot of time in at one company (say 5 or more years in the same job) you need to segment it out into reasonable blocks of experience. Let’s say you worked for a company for 9 years and all that time your title was Sales Associate. Ok, rather then writing up one description on your resume with this one job, break it into two or three segments. The key here is break-it-up where it makes sense. Let’s say you worked with various clients over the years, use the timeframe you worked with these clients as “individual jobs”, and describe what your role was with each block of time. Granted there will be some overlap, but for example, say from 2001 through 2004 you worked with three clients, tracked sales, etc. On your resume put this down a one job. Then keep the same company name, title, etc on the second entry, let’s say that’s from 2004 through 2006. During this time you took on two more clients. In this section, summarize your previous responsibilities (i.e. they haven’t gone away), and add in with more detail the two new clients and your role with them. The point here is don’t lye or stretch the truth, but do point out your roles as you took on more responsibility.

In the end, you’ll now have a resume with substance, more key words, and more for your potential new employer to evaluate you on. I can’t stress this enough, show how you have grown in your work. Yes sticking with a company for years and years does show loyalty, but it also shows lack of growth. Which can be seen as an unwillingness to change, and in today’s market is not the message you want to be giving off.

Provided by Brian at www.freeclassnotesonline.com