How to handle extensive non-job experience?

I know the general consensus on experience gained through self-study is that it's not qualified to be listed as experience the way it would be if it were gained while on the job.

But what about when this experience is quite extensive? My situation:

I have worked with web infrastructure technologies(Apache/BIND/etc) for about 10 years, which is longer than my "professional" career. Most of this is volunteer work for websites, doing their infrastructure support/management. I've consulted with several web hosting companies and currently operate one myself, which is profitable in it's market. I would consider my experience with this stuff to be on par with someone who does it for their day job.

In my experience, non-consulting employers generally do not look favorably on consultants and the self-employed, as they never know when they're going to jump ship, especially so in the industry I target(large enterprise; ie, banks, school districts, multinationals).

How would you handle listing this experience?

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N2IT

forkvoid wrote: »

I know the general consensus on experience gained through self-study is that it's not qualified to be listed as experience the way it would be if it were gained while on the job.

But what about when this experience is quite extensive? My situation:

I have worked with web infrastructure technologies(Apache/BIND/etc) for about 10 years, which is longer than my "professional" career. Most of this is volunteer work for websites, doing their infrastructure support/management. I've consulted with several web hosting companies and currently operate one myself, which is profitable in it's market. I would consider my experience with this stuff to be on par with someone who does it for their day job. With the excepti

In my experience, non-consulting employers generally do not look favorably on consultants and the self-employed, as they never know when they're going to jump ship, especially so in the industry I target(large enterprise; ie, banks, school districts, multinationals).

How would you handle listing this experience?

How's your resume set up? Do you have a skills section listed?

That experience is quite extensive and popular. I would somehow leverage that experience within your resume. I think Skills or Technology would be a start. The only other way that makes sense to me is list that as a seperate job consecutive with the jobs that you had/have at that time.

I personally don't think the consultant title will hurt you if you also show work experience for 2-5 years, (more 5 than 2) in some sort of IT capacity.

forkvoid

My "professional" IT experience is mainly with Windows and OSX, and spans 7 years, with the past four doing sysadmin work. I've held steady jobs in enterprise IT the entire time.

I do have a skills section, but I'm afraid it doesn't do the skills justice, as they're not really mentioned anywhere else in the resume.

N2IT

forkvoid wrote: »

My "professional" IT experience is mainly with Windows and OSX, and spans 7 years, with the past four doing sysadmin work. I've held steady jobs in enterprise IT the entire time.

I do have a skills section, but I'm afraid it doesn't do the skills justice, as they're not really mentioned anywhere else in the resume.

The way I see it you have no choice. I would rewrite your resume and list consultant as a job on your resume and list the entire 10 years. I would keep it brief so you don't take away from your professional experiences, however make sure you list PHP, Apache, etc. I am thinking 5-7 bullets at most. You want to keep it specialized to really drill in the idea of specialist or expert.

Did you form an LLC or some kind of corporation? Do you work under a registed company? You could list owner/engineer (example) and then list your companies name. Not necessarily in that order.

Just some ideas.