I have a job listing where I was hired on as a temp, for about 6 months. The following year, the company re-hired me as a permanent employee. (“Hey, you already know the systems. Saves us training!”)
Currently, my resume shows each job separately, in the interest of transparency & full disclosure. So I have something like “Acme Roadrunner, Inc. Mar-Aug 2008” and the temp job description, and then another listing for “Acme Roadrunner, Inc. Feb 2009 - Sept 2014” with the job description of my permanent role. The 2 positions are related - temp was as an admin helping with platform migration for a client portal, permanent was basically account manager & webmaster for the same portal, essentially running the show. Unfortunately, this seems to cause more confusion than it clears up, especially since the co. name is duplicated.
Could I simply give one listing, from the initial start date as a temp through the end date as a permanent? Would it be considered lying or something, if the break between 2 hires is not disclosed on my resume?
Does it matter that I was not hired through a temp agency? The manager for that team hired me directly, I guess, for the temporary position.
(It would have been simpler if it had been through a temp agency, I suppose, since the co. name would not be a duplicate.)
Any hiring managers or H.R. folks among the Doper folks who can weigh in on my best option?
I’m neither, but I would fall back on my general rule of thumb: unless you’re looking for a new job that is critically related to the skills from that old job, don’t list any work experience more than 10 years old on your resume. And in your case, since the skills are duplicated with more recent experience, I’d definitely lean toward just letting that 2008 listing age out of your work history on your resume. If you have to fill out an application that demands a complete work history, then you can bring it up and explain if you need to.
Your resume, though, should focus on two things IMHO: skills that match the job you’re trying to get and recent work experience that showcases (if possible) breadth of scope and increasing abilities.
If removing the temp job leaves you with a large time gap you’d have to explain (ie. it’s not the oldest job on your resume), I’d leave it in.
If it’s the oldest job on your resume, you could go either way. Maybe it’s irrelevant and you drop it, or maybe it shows they liked you and later hired you as a perm.
I wouldn’t combine them into one job starting Mar 2008.
If a company has an opportunity to let you walk and instead chooses to bring you back in a larger role I think it speaks highly of your work. I would try and keep something that shows that. “Promoted from previous temporary position to oversee…”
I’ve worked temp jobs and when the agencies tweak my resume they always list themselves as the employer, which is correct., Your agency, not the company you were assigned to is legally your employer.
If you have multiple short term, say 3-6 month assignments, list your agency as your employer and just your major tasks, duties, accomplishments.
Re-reading your post, which is a bit confusing, it seems you were hired directly for a set or open term, then were brought on a a permanent employee, correct? If so, my above post doesn’t apply and you could just list your entire time with the company as one line and list your various duties. If the interviewer is interested, they may ask you what the breakdown or your assignments/tasks were, i.e. 6 months doing XXX, then tasked with XXX after.
“I was brought on board to do XXX and after six months given the new role of overseeing XXX”
You can do your resume any way you want, including no dates. I was recently a resume screener for a couple of different jobs (one I knew a lot about, one I didn’t). Make it short. Whoever is screening will look for skills and possibly where you’re working right now. I also gave a plus to people who successfully used the STAR (situation, task, action, result) system to state three or four professional accomplishments. (Don’t know what happened after I forwarded them, but those did get forwarded assuming the skills were a match.) This is because even without knowing that much about that one job, I did know they wanted someone who could write a coherent paragraph.
If they want the dates on an application, I would combine them if it’s that long ago.
Yeah, but the hiring manager doesn’t give a crap if TempUtemps or ContractPro issued your paychecks each month. The actual work your performed is at your client company. The agency lists themselves on your resume in order to market themselves. For example, some years ago I did a year long contract at a Fortune 500
insurance company. I don’t put the name of the contract agency, I put the name of the insurance company because my job entailed going to insurance company every day and doing insurance company shit, not cold-calling job hunters and hiring managers.
If you do a long series of short temp stints through the same agency, you might want to put the agency down so as not to give the impression of “job hopping”.
For the op, to simplify things for the person reading the resume, I would just list both jobs under a single company, and then separate them as you would different roles within the same company. Something like this:
Temp (through TempPros), 2/2018 to 8/2018
Blah blah blah
How do you not do dates on a resume? How does the reviewer know if you’ve been at your jobs for 2 months or 20 years? Or if you just worked there or last worked their 20 years ago?
Exactly. The IRS and the state care about who your legal employer was. A prospective employer doesn’t; it wants to know where you were and what you were doing.
I would combine the two, but note in the position description that it was a temp-to-perm hire after six months. I agree with sitchensis that a T-to-P hire is something I would like to see as a prospective employer.
Now, I would treat the application differently; it will invariably contain a clause indicating that all the information is 100% accurate and that any inaccuracy will be grounds for termination, so I would want to be scrupulously detailed about who your legal employers were in that context.
I like honesty in an application/resume. The first question that came to mind is if they call the place and ask for start and end dates, would they include your temp position time? If not, it could cause you to get disqualified because they think you are lying.
Thanks for walking me through this, you guys. There’s some solid, practical advice here - I knew I could count on y’all!
Now, to actually sit down with the damn thing and re-write and edit. I have other crap that needs to be added anyway, so I’ll incorporate the tips posted here as I do so.
Well, the place I was screening them got 150-200 resumes per position listed, so what I was doing was weeding out resumes that didn’t have the relevant skills/qualifications. The application at this place did have a place for dates, but they didn’t need to be on the resume and in a lot of cases, they weren’t. If someone said they had SEO experience, for instance, you’re pretty much assured they did not get that experience in 1975. Now in the interview it might be important whether they worked this skill in 2005 or 2017. But that was for the next level up to decide.
I will note that approximately 75% of applicants did not read the job listing.
That’s what I was going to say as well. Listing it separately points out that you were temp for a whle, and
Keep in mind that your resume is first and foremost, a marketing document for YOU. It’s not some sort of legal chronology of your working history, or anything like that, even if some people seem to think they are, or should be. (if that was the goal, we’d have a standardized template of some kind in use throughout the various industries)
So list things / spin things in ways that cast you in your most favorable light, just like advertisements and sales pitches do. And listing that as two jobs only really does one thing favorably for you- show that you were good enough to move from temp to permanent. Otherwise, it makes your tenure look shorter, and at a glance, makes you look like you’ve had more jobs than you really have, neither of which are a good thing.
So if the best thing going for that job is that you managed to convert it into permanent employment, then set it up and draw attention to that by listing them separately. Otherwise, just keep it as one entry and indicate the conversion in-text.
First of all, you wouldn’t be “disqualified” at this point. Typically you would have already been given a job offer so they are just confirming that what you said is accurate. What I’ve experienced is at worst, someone from the background check company or HR might call me to clarify a discrepancy. For example, one company I used to work at that got acquired and no longer exists.
In this day and age of various contractor and temp gigs, I think most companies are understanding that it’s not always clear cut.
For example, the company I mentioned previously, I worked there about a year:
Hired by a small “boutique” supply chain consulting firm (Company A).
Firm was acquired by a well-known failed 90s dot-com (was a billion dollar company with a thousand employees…now 30 people after the merger). This is my official “employer” for tax purposes (Company B).
My only client for my entire time there was a well known global consulting firm A.T. Kearney. My official status with that firm was as a “contractor”
The actual end “clients” in the sense of who actually is paying for these services was 1) an airline, 2) a chemical company, 3) a Dutch FedEx type company and a couple others I can’t remember.
In the time that I left, my employer was acquired by another firm (Company C).
So my resume options are:
Company A, Company B - ok but unnecessary as I was only at A for a month or so before it became Company B. It doesn’t add anything and makes it look like I had more jobs than I had.
Company B - This is fine. Optionally Company B (Acquired by Company C)
A.T.Kearny - Also appropriate, but I indicate that I was there as a “contractor”. This is the best option for me as it is consistent with the rest of my resume “story”
Each end client - Appropriate in some cases if you are there for an extended time. As these were all relatively short projects, it’s probably better to just list the skills or maybe the client names in the description of my job.
Company C (formerly Company B) - This is ok. I do this for a different position where my leaving was largely due to the merger.
Really what you are doing is telling a story of what you did and where you did it. What you don’t want to do is misrepresent your roll or the dates you worked.