Howdy folks. Since I have a few years of experience as a recruiter, I thought I might be able to help out with some of this stuff.
Hey GAF, quick job application question: I do a really good job at my current job and I'm pretty well liked by my managers. That said, when it comes to putting down references on Job applications, I heasitate to include them because I'm still working here. This is my first major job and I've worked in it for several years now, so I don't really have any other professional references outside of these. Unfortunately, a lot of job apps require so many references.
Any suggestions?
The answer to this question, in most cases, is going to be "no." The only time you would want to list a current manager as a reference (or even ASK to list them) is if they already know you are looking and they are cool with it, or if you're at the point where you don't care if they find out due to financial security or complete burnout with the job. I don't know your managers, but in general, you run the risk of getting fired on the spot or in the weeks to come after they've had time to identify your replacement. Should it be this way? No, and it might not happen to you, but most people can't afford to take the risk.
If they don't already know you're looking, and you want to work there until you find something different, I would definitely not even ask the question. A better bet for you is probably going to be coworkers. Since you're early in your career, a lot of employers understand you're not going to have a huge cache of managerial references to provide. If you can trust a couple of coworkers to help you out, I bet that will suffice. The fact that you have professional references at all will probably set you ahead. While coworker references aren't quite as coveted as managerial ones, there are plenty of people out there who are so terrible they can't even get coworkers to be a reference.
Stay in touch with your current managers after you leave, and I bet they will be great references for you down the line.
Come Monday I'm going to be interviewing at a company where I interviewed for the same position last December but got rejected. Which really threw me for a loop since it's an associate QA role, as entry level as you can get, and I have three years of experience in QA. Thinking back on my interview, the only part I can think went wrong was when I kinda stumbled over one of those Google logic puzzles the interviewer threw my way. For everything else I was confident in my previous experience. Hopefully this time goes better because just being able to get a steady paycheck and be back in the industry would be a win at this point. Any tips for a repeat interview?
Learn from the past, but don't dwell on it. If they don't mention your past interview, you shouldn't mention it either. If they're bringing you back for another interview, that most likely means that they liked you a lot, but that your experience didn't fit the exact need that they had at the time. Now that you have another shot, it's up to you to explain how your experience makes you the right fit for their present needs. Read up, be confident, study the description and the company, write a thank you note after the interview, and you will be fine.
I have a resume dilemma:
I've worked as a IT consultant for over nine years. I'm employeed and salaried by a consulting company, so I'm not independent. Currently, my resume lists this employment along with all my client engagements, including their durations. Some were several years long, others only a few months. Basically this:
Employer X - Nine years to present
Employed as consultant and contracted for various engagements (see below).
Client 1 - Six months to present
Accomplishments
Client 2 - Two months
Accomplishments
Client 3 - Five years
Accomplishments
And so on. Would you leave it this way, or would you remove all the individual engagements and list all the experience under the one actual employment? Like so:
Employer X - Nine years to present
All client accomplishments.
I get mixed results when I search for consultant resume advice. The advantage would be that I look more "stable" in terms of employment. Of course my current resume spells this out, but since average recruiters only look at resumes for six seconds, I have this feeling that they're seeing my resume and passing because the positions at the top aren't as large as those below. In other words, they think I move around a lot (bad) when actually I have had the same job for nine years (good).
For the most part, recruiters and managers like to see things broken down by client. For one thing, if you think of the purpose of a resume, it is the main tool that recruiters and managers have to see what you've done, where you did it, and how long you've done it for. Second, if you were working on-site at the customer locations, prospective employers may need to run background checks for the cities and states where you worked on-site. Discrepancies between resumes, applications, and reality can make for some confusing and drawn-out onboarding processes. If you're super unlucky, you could lose out on an opportunity.
I obviously haven't seen your resume, but if you're worried that it's making your employment history look spotty, you may want to try some other visual tricks to make it clear that all of the engagements had just one W2 employer. Sometimes, its just a matter of indentation, bulleting, or underlining.
At a MINIMUM, if you really want to get everything under one employer on the resume, you should include a line or a bullet listing all of the clients that you supported. Having worked a project for X company could be the difference between getting a job and not getting one.
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