I’ve been at my current job for 5 1/2 years. Last week I interviewed for a new position and had to resubmit my resume to the hiring manager of that dept.
The interview went well but at the end the manager said the one concern is that my jobs prior to this long term one were 1 year, 2 years, 1 year again etc. I questioned what they meant and then had to explain that no, the last 4 entries on my resume were not me flaking out and switching jobs constantly. Those 4 entries were the same employment, it’s that I worked at a place that merged, got bought, merged again and if I changed positions I put the name that the company had at that time.
No big deal in this situation. I’m interviewing at the company I already work for and the manager said oh ok that makes sense.
But if I had sent that resume to a place that didnt know me, that misunderstanding may have cost me an interview. So should I have kept the original name of the company on my resume for the totality of my work experience there?
So don’t list those as 4 separate jobs at a year or 2 each – list it as one job for 5-1/2 years. Within that, list them as separate positions that you were promoted to. List the current/most-known name of the company for all of them – add the other name as a parenthetical comment if you think that’s needed.
The same thing applies in reverse to resumes. too.
I worked as a consultant at a single firm for several years, but at various assignments at different clients for 1-2 years each. On my resume, those were listed as separate items for each assignment, with descriptions of the client, the project, and my role in the team. They wanted to emphasize my experience with various projects at various clients, so they wrote the resume to list each one as a separate ‘employer’.
In your case, you want to emphasize your steady employment for a single company, with a series of increasing responsibilities within the firm. So write your resume that way.
Would it be better use the best-known name, then add the other name in parentheses? For example, if you were in a company spun off by a major name like Microsoft or IBM, you’d most likely want to highlight Microsoft or IBM respectively and not the spin-off, wouldn’t you?
I certainly wouldn’t present them as four different jobs - that’s positively misleading.
I’d present it as one job with a single employer which was A Inc (B Inc/C Inc/D Inc), giving the current name of the company first and the former names in brackets afterwards.
Or whatever style or layout works for you, but definitely presented as a single job.
I had a job that changed ownership 3 times in the 5 years I worked there. Like you, it was the exact same job, just different names.
I list it as one job on my resume. If asked, I’ll mention that it changed a lot, but I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone ask.
Since I left it’s been sold yet again, and I don’t even know who they’d contact if they wanted a reference check. But that goes for almost every job on my resume; last summer when I went job-searching, I was a little worried since the only place on my resume that anyone had a chance in hell of contacting was my then-current employer, who I obviously didn’t want anyone to be talking to. Every other company on my resume had either gone out of business or been bought & sold so many times that they were pretty much nonexistent as far as being the company I had worked for.
Didn’t seem to matter at all, though. I had two job offers, and though both asked for references, neither called any of them.
I have encountered something similar due to promotions. I list every position that has any relationship to another one under a single listing, and include a parenthetical to indicate sub-date ranges.
E.g. you could do:
1/2005-5/2010 - CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet - IT Project Manager
(known as InterSystems Computer Corporation from 3/2007-5/2010)
(known as Uncle Frank’s Olde Time Software Shoppe from 1/2005-3/2007)