To consolidate or not consolidate is the question

I remember giving advice ( or actually my opinion ) a few weeks back on whether to consolidate or not.

For example - If you worked for a place for 5 years and kept changing roles, year to year would you list your last job title and roll up your years of service into one job or break them out?

I don't think there is a hard fast rule and I always leaned towards rolling them up. It reads easier IMO, and people want to know about the now. With that said this could be a poor way of looking at it.

Thoughts?

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Comments

darkerosxx

I was looking into this recently, myself. I'm going with this option

Company
Title Z, month/year bla to month/year bla
Title Y, month/year bla to month/year bla
Title X, month/year bla to month/year bla

-job description/tasks/roles/whatever

With Z being the latest position, and X being when I first started.

N2IT

The problem I have is what happens if you are in a role for 6 months then 8 months then 1.5 years then 9 months. It begins to look really strange. At that point consolidation maybe you best option whereas if you have 2 years, then 3 years then 5 years then 1 year breaking them out might make more sense.

It's really a strange topic and problem to have.

darkerosxx

N2IT wrote: »

The problem I have is what happens if you are in a role for 6 months then 8 months then 1.5 years then 9 months. It begins to look really strange. At that point consolidation maybe you best option whereas if you have 2 years, then 3 years then 5 years then 1 year breaking them out might make more sense.

It's really a strange topic and problem to have.

I'm not judgy about it, but I personally think if you're going to list a company, you should at the very least list all the positions you held and the times you held them. I think any good manager can understand how an agile company could move people around faster than others and that it doesn't have to mean anything about the employee. If I were hiring, I would definitely ask how and why of the circumstances, which if they were good circumstances, would give the candidate an opportunity to explain and stand out from the crowd. However, I definitely understand there are many sub-par hiring managers who would look at that and immediately think it's a negative.

apr911

darkerosxx wrote: »

I was looking into this recently, myself. I'm going with this option

Company
Title Z, month/year bla to month/year bla
Title Y, month/year bla to month/year bla
Title X, month/year bla to month/year bla

-job description/tasks/roles/whatever

With Z being the latest position, and X being when I first started.

I use a mix of this method and consolidation which probably avoids your concern that

N2IT wrote: »

...if you are in a role for 6 months then 8 months then 1.5 years then 9 months. It begins to look really strange....

Basically, I consolidate like roles. From a resume perspective, a hiring manager (whether internal or external) doesn't need to know the 11 different titles on 8 different teams Ive worked on over the last 4.5 years or the various Jr-Mid, Mid-Sr level promotions Ive gone through. Those sorts of things can be discussed in an interview. They do need to know when my job title (and responsibility) fundamentally changes however.

Unconsolidated, my job history would look like this:

Company A - 53 months
Jr Windows Admin - Team A - 3 mos
Jr Windows Admin - Team B - 3 mos
Jr Windows Admin - Team C - 3 mos
Windows Admin - Team C - 6 mos
Sr Windows Admin - Team C - 2 mos
Sr Windows Admin - Team D - 3 mos
Jr Network Admin - Team E - 8 mos
Network Admin - Team E - 8 mos
Network Admin - Team F - 5 mos
Sr Network Admin - Team G - 11 mos
Sr Network Engineer - Team H - 1 mos

Ive bounced around a lot internally to fill gaps in various teams. I dont list all this out because it's quite cumbersome (even listing out just the change in title Jr-Mid, Mid-Sr roles ends up with 7 different positions) and really how did my role as a Jr Admin on Team A differ from Jr Admin on Team B or C or even mid/senior level admin on Team C for that matter?

My consolidated resume looks more like this:

Company A - 53 months
Sr Windows Admin - Team C - 20 mos
Sr Network Engineer - Team H - 33 mos

I always list the highest titled position Ive reached but the team I list for depends on a complex analysis (in other words, an inexplicable gut feeling) of my tenure, standing & how recently I was on the team.

For example, my time as a windows admin is listed as team C because I spent over 50% of my time on the team and I was held in high regard on the team. It might not have been the most recent team I was on as a windows admin but I wasnt a windows admin on team D for very long, so tenure & standing wins out.

Meanwhile my time as a Network admin/engineer gets listed as Team H because its my current team, so recent wins out.

If I had another different titled position after being a Network Engineer on Team H for 1 mos, Id be much harder pressed to list Team H as my team. It'd probably end up being listed a Team G because 1. I had sufficiently long tenure. 2. I was held in high regard on the team. 3. It is relatively recent.

I could also make a case for Team E because I had the longest tenure and was held in high regard but at nearly a 1.5 years ago, its not really recent.