I was the news editor of smaller of the two sister papers from 2003-2006, when I was pushed out by the IT manager (offsite at the other paper). Life conspired to keep me in town, as my fiancee was wrapping her undergrad. I got laid off the next year because the next place I worked shut down. I was able to quickly find a temporary position out of state via networking, but after signing a six-month lease, that job evaporated in only 10 weeks. Next job ran five months before layoffs were threatened, prompting me to find a position at a small weekly in the town I wanted to retire in but turned out to be nominally editorial but functionally advertising, leading to my first panic attack and resignation.
Owing to a lot of other shit happening, I wasn’t in a position worth even putting on a resume for 14 months. On the other end of that was 19 months at the local paper where I’d landed, cut short because I decided a 50% raise to go into marketing was worth the ethical costs (and would return me to where I’d started in 2003). I only had to endure that for 10 months, when our three-year contract was terminated. I quickly found work at an audiobook publisher, but nine months into that, I walked out from a dressing down from my boss, on the production floor, for doing what I’d been told to do (and not in a malicious-compliance sort of way).
A couple months later, a SWAT team rousted my family from our hotel room Christmas Eve, and to my wife’s surprise, before we got to the ground floor, I’d dialed the batphone at the paper. After being a source on A1 for the Christmas edition, I figured I had nothing to lose by emailing the editor. The old IT guy was gone, and they were looking for a part-time, temporary copyeditor ahead of the desk being shipped off to Texas, so I started the new year working across from the city ed from back in the day.
I did not follow my job at first, as it was a pay cut in a far more expensive city, but after nine months of fruitless searching, I got back in touch and took the job here, which I had three roles at over nearly five years.
So I’m seriously considering removing several of the intervening positions and stretching both stints to paper over both the gaps and the instability itself, as there’s no one to call to verify when I worked there. Being midcareer, it’s hard enough to get past software gatekeepers in the first place, but seven mostly nonconsecutive positions in as many years can’t be helping my score.
The two main wrinkles I can foresee are a wholesale refactor of my LinkedIn could be a red flag, and the most basic of background reports would place me in two other states before remote journalism work was a thing.
I don’t like the idea of lying on my resume, but what I’m doing now isn’t working.
Are there other risks I’m not considering? I’d love some stability going forward, but I’m not going to expect any job to last long enough that this could stymie a promotion.
Don’t think of it as lies. Think of it as “explaining what I was doing professionally, to learn, grow and strengthen my skill set during these periods of less active employment.” Is glossing over the vast majority of your time that you spent living your life instead of hustling lying by omission? Maybe… but “I wasn’t doing shit professionally because reasons” is not a message you want a potential employer to hear.
The other poster who said “never put anything on your resume you aren’t prepared to answer questions about” is 100% right. Definitely think about what you’re going to say, focus on the things you DID do, don’t make up shit you DIDN’T do… resumes are supposed to be quick summaries anyway.
I definitely view it as the only lie being where I was employed when. I’m certainly not adding things I couldn’t talk about in depth, including setbacks and how I overcame them.
That said, I’m going to be shit at a technical interview, should that ever come to pass, as I don’t really have a preferred language. I determine the project first, then look at options and learn or brush up on whatever’s going to be the best fit (or only option) for desired results.
From talking with friends and colleagues my age, I’m scarcely special in terms of the roadblocks I’m hitting. A couple of decades of experience and switching fields seems to be “irrelevantly overexperienced” to ATS.