I was promoted a couple months ago, and I’m updating my resume to reflect my new position.
Here’s my dilemma:
My promotion took effect on the 1st of April. If I list my previous position as ending in March (which is technically accurate), I may give the false impression that there was a gap between positions. On the other hand, I don’t know how potential recruiters and HR people would view it if I listed my previous position as ending in April, even though that would avoid issues of a perceived gap.
Shoot, I don’t even put the month on my résumé. That neatly obscures the gap between when I left the Navy in March 2019 and didn’t start school until August 2020. I was… independently employed in a non-profit venture in the interim.
The point is that I’m NOT listing the day. With an ending of March, and a beginning of April, it’s possible that somebody might look at that and assume that there’s a month-long gap between positions, even though there wasn’t.
I think most people would be smart enough to figure that out, especially because it’s in the same organization. It’s not like a company would either let you go or allow you to quit then hire you back with a promotion.
On my own CV, for the two stretches where I held multiple positions within the companies, I put the company name in a heading with a date range, and then underneath I list the titles with the sub-ranges. This establishes that the period of employment with the company was continuous, and shows how much time was spent in each specific position.
Like this
McDonald’s Corporation (Mar 2002 - Nov 2008)
Junior Burger Flipper (Mar 2002 - Jun 2004) (detailed description)
Senior Burger Flipper (Jun 2004 - Feb 2006) (detailed description)
Ronald McDonald Birthday Party Clown Mascot (Mar 2006) (detailed description)
Junior Burger Flipper (Apr 2006 - Nov 2008) (detailed description)
I used to review a lot of resumes. I would have assumed you went from one position to the next at the end of March/beginning of April. (By the way, I also would not have been bothered by a “gap” of a few weeks if that is what happened)
I have also reviewed a lot of resumes. If you took a month off between jobs, I don’t care.
Employment gaps can be a problem, but honestly, if you are currently employed, I don’t care very much. I am more concerned about someone who jumps ship a lot than about someone who took time off to rear kids, or to take an extended vacation, or heck, who was unemployed but has since gotten back into the workplace.
related: we once hired a guy who had some temporary position at another firm that they wouldn’t make permanent. Two weeks after he started, they came through with a permanent offer, and he left us.
The hiring manager was PISSED, and raged about how bad the 2 week job would look on the guy’s resume. And the rest of us all quietly thought, “he just won’t mention that he worked here for two weeks, and no one will ever notice the gap or care.”
Also, a month could literally be a planned vacation. I once took several weeks between jobs. My husband was moving to a new academic job and had the summer off, and I negotiated for a delayed starting date of my new job. We visited Germany and Switzerland, and helped take down the Berlin Wall. (Literally – some budding entrepreneur rented us a hammer and a chisel, and we attacked a chunk of the wall that was still standing.) I never considered that an employment gap. I’m not sure if you can see it on my resume… but no one has ever asked about the time between those two jobs.
My wife worked on the hiring team in her last job (and I guess she does in her current one, but she just started) and a month gap or even several months’ gap is not something that would be noticed in her industry (data science.) Before she got this job, she even considered just taking the summer off for the hell of it, like it would not be an issue. But these things vary by industry. People jumping jobs every two years or so is also pretty typical at the places she’s worked and not something she’d find unusual if it came across her desk (in fact, that seems to be the way to significantly increase your salary quickly.)
What did this hypothetical person do for that one month as ‘Ronald McDonald Birthday Party Clown Mascot’ that wasn’t bad enough to get them fired, but was bad enough to get them demoted back to ‘Junior Burger Flipper’?!?
Yeah, I had a chance to take a whole month off between my last job and my new job, while still giving two weeks’ notice after having secured new employment. That would’ve left a discernible gap, as my old job would end in March and the new one wouldn’t begin until May. After a lot of agonizing, I decided to take only two weeks off, only because they were desperately understaffed at my old job, and I cared about the unusually large burden my departure would therefore put on them. But if their situation weren’t so dire, I would’ve taken the whole month without a second thought as to the brief gap on my resume.
This current job was the only one I applied for; if I hadn’t gotten it, I would’ve strongly considered quitting with nothing lined up. I could’ve afforded several months of unemployment. But I was sufficiently apprehensive about a gap of many months on my resume that I took one stab at finding a new job before quitting the old one.
I look at job history to see growth, and whether there are a lot of really short, random stints. If the trajectory seems haphazard, I think the person will leave. Either that, or they don’t get along well with their teams and get hounded out.
So if someone went from Junior Burger Flipper to Senior Burger Flipper and then back to Junior… I’d ask about that one carefully.
Just out of curiosity, how long should someone stay at a job, if not 1-2 years? Or how many 1-2 year jobs in a row constitutes an unacceptable “sting of jobs”?
It varies by field. As someone mentioned above, it’s normal to change jobs frequently in many software fields. But in my area, it takes me most of a year to train a new employee, and a couple months to hire a replacement. So if you leave in a year, you will greatly inconvenience me. I’d rather hire someone whom i expect will stay longer than that.
