These days, people’s careers can look all sorts of ways, says Angela Beatty, chief leadership and HR officer at Accenture.
“We’re not in a world anymore where we expect people to be 30 years with a company,” she told CNBC Make It at the Uplift conference by BetterUp. It’s not surprising to see people in various roles and companies throughout their careers.
But when it comes to red flags in a resume, there’s one thing that Beatty notices immediately: a series of short stints lasting a year or less. Here’s why that raises an eyebrow and what she recommends jobseekers do if that’s what their resume looks like.
It ‘makes me question if they’re able to gain some traction’
Short-term employment happens, says Beatty.
If someone is “straight out of school, I’m not expecting them to have a long stretch or stint somewhere,” she says. Maybe they have a couple of internships they were able to do throughout their degree, but they likely won’t have years at any given employer.
But over the course of, say, 10 years, if “you see a pattern” of short roles, Beatty says, that stands out. It “makes me question if they’re able to gain some traction and collaborate and work with others in a way that would enable them to stay at a place long enough to make an impact,” she says.
She’s not alone in this assumption. More than a third, 37% of hiring managers say seeing that a candidate frequently changed jobs could prevent them from moving forward with them, according to an August 2024 LinkedIn survey of 1,024 hiring managers.
It makes them think, “if you were only there for nine months, maybe you’ll only be here for nine months,” LinkedIn career Drew McCaskill previously told Make It.
Identify ‘if it was specifically designed to be a shorter term’
For those professionals whose resumes have numerous short stints on them, Beatty recommends providing context.
If you had a series of short jobs at the same company because you got promoted or made some lateral moves, make it clear it was all at the same place. If you’re a freelancer or contractor and were working on a few month-long projects, list them as bullets under the relevant freelancer or contractor title.
“Identify in a resume if it was specifically designed to be a shorter-term engagement,” she says, “so that as a person looking at the resume, I could see that.”
If it wasn’t, your interview could provide an opportunity to explain.
“Interviewers appreciate authenticity so, as long as it’s not a pattern of short stints,” Beatty says, “you can share that the role did not work out as expected and be transparent about why it ended while underscoring an example of the positive impact you made.”
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