Held Too Many Jobs? Adjust Your Resume

Several years ago, a Business Week cover story on "The New Job Market" included a striking illustration. A pair of fictional resumes appeared side by side. One, "Lawrence Ladderclimber," embodied the old, purportedly outdated approach of spending one's whole career with a single (preferably large and paternalistic) employer. The other, which the magazine presented as a career path in tune with the modern era, bore the title, "Jennifer Jobhopper."

It's true that frequent job changes are less of a liability today than they were in, say, 1975. But on balance, "job hopper" still has negative connotations. So if you've held five jobs in eight years, it makes sense to consider some resume tweaks.

A recent Wall Street Journal CareerJournal column by Dana Mattioli provides some worthwhile tips. Among them:

- Place a "tailored summary statement" at the top of your resume. This lets you "guide the recruiter through the document and influence how they interpret your job changes," Mattioli writes. A good first sentence would state your years of experience in a broad field, such as marketing, and then list a few related areas of specific expertise.

- Lump together any employers that proceeded your three or four most recent ones, into a "summary of previous employment" section that lists just a single start and end date for the entire period. Within that section, limit each job to the company name, title and a one- or two-sentence description.

- To create coherence, the column explains how to make your job changes tell a story of career advancement:

You may have to leave out positions that don't relate to the direction you're going in or are "too distracting," says Marci Alboher, author of One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success. If you've had jobs across different industries, focus on the connections between them, she says.

Try to show progression and that you've taken on increasing levels of responsibility with each jump.

- If you were downsized or merged out of a job, your resume can be worded to make clear your move wasn't voluntary. (Of course, that can raise issues too.) One expert quoted in the article recommends listing the current name for a merged former employer, and stating the pre-merger name ("formerly ABC Company") in brackets to the right.

Other suggestions include leaving out months from your job chronology, placing dates at the right of the resume where they're likely to get less attention, and using a "hybrid" resume format instead of the traditional chronological one.

Tips for Creating a Resume That Downplays Job Hopping [CareerJournal]