Resume Question

Suppose you go to work somewhere and have multiple positions over time.  Is it more proper to present the final position and imply the others through the description, or to present each position (of any significance or duration) as a different job, or to combine them in one entry while listing the various positions.

The answer is probably “it depends.”

It’s not the only job where I’ve had this kind of thing happen, but the relevant for instance is Stream.  I started when it was Corporate Software, as a software support rep (or to sound more impressive, software support engineer), supporting Microsoft Word 6.0 and everything before it.

After about 14 or 15 months of that, way too long really, I went over to Microsoft Visual Basic support.  There I was a developer support rep (or “engineer"), supporting VB3, VB for DOS, and the last releases of QuickBasic and Professional Development System for DOS.  We didn’t support Delta, though I did get a briefing on it one time from the same Microsoft person who gave us Visual Source Safe training so we could also better support that.

I was there long enough to support VB4, VB5 and VB6, and to get cursory training enough to have some idea if anyone called for help with VBCE, the version for Windows CE.  By that time I was in a position to decide who would go to Charlotte for a couple days, get the CE training, then deliver the watered down training to the team.

The company changed from Corporate Software to Stream International shortly before I went over to VB.  By the time I left, it remained Stream, but the other two parts had spun back off and Stream was strictly about support, no software and license sales and no publishing or translating services.

Anyway, eventually I became a senior developer support rep, or SDSR.  If you blinked you missed it.  It was delayed by one of their periodic variations in how freely they would promote people and in how directly being an SDSR was tied to being a mentor.  Mentors were who you called or walked up to if you were working on a call or an open case and needed technical or other advice on resolving or handling it.  I couldn’t even tell you exactly when I was promoted, though I would no doubt have a record if I could find the resume I created for internal consumption.  Then again, on some resumes I used only the year(s), so that would simply be 1997.

From SDSR I went to TDL; Technical Development Lead.  Part of the reason I got the first promotion in the first place, apart from it being several months overdue and them having been rationed, was because it was a prerequisite for my manager’s plan to promote me to TDL.  They had eliminated the TDL position completely, for a while, and brought it back at Microsoft’s behest.  The equivalent in application support - Word, Excel and so forth - was Consultant.  Basically a line supervisor, someone still technical enough to man the mentor line and to know what to say about your performance from a technical perspective when listening to calls and doing your annual or six month reviews.  Managers were better off not to be clueless technically or about the product, but could be, and increasingly were, ironically more so in the much more technical product support groups.  One of the ways in which upper management broke the company was to eliminate internal promotion to managerial positions above TDL/Consultant level.

I know exactly when the TDL position covered.  At least, I think it was November 1997 it started.  If not, it was December.  It ended when I left in January 1999.  Two weeks later the other TDL left, which I wasn’t expecting.  Immediately after that they learned that the support contract would end completely in April, so they didn’t replace us officially, while at the same time allowing every SDSR to say they had been a TDL for that last few months, to pump their resumes.

In the midst of all that, I was unofficially the lead person on web response support from sometime in 1996 until I became TDL.  I was also officially the team liaison to our Microsoft counterparts in there somewhere, before I started doing web responses full time at Microsoft’s instigation.

Anyhow, I have digressed a bit.  One way is to put the company name, the final position, and mention the significant points to the duties or accomplishments in all positions.  Another way is to put each position as a distinct job, describing each even if they overlap in nature.  Another way is to put the final position, list the other positions, with or without dates, listed or narrative, and then do a lump description.

Are you aware of any preferences between those options?

1. awhile back you did a post “I can be succinct”
   that looked like a pretty good resume to me.

   one page, key words,

   Posted by  on  10/03  at  02:04 PM  from 

2. Jay, actually that was a huge deal with my resume, as I had several jobs within the same corp in both steel and consumer products.

   I’ll look and see if I have my resume around here and I can email it to you.  I had a friend pull it together for me and I’ve been told it’s really good.

   I, of course take no credit for that. At points I almost don’t realize it’s MY resume. 

   Posted by Tammi  on  10/03  at  05:22 PM  from 
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