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When the Job Is So Bad You Leave It off Your Résumé
Give yourself permission to proceed
I’m not ashamed to admit I used to be pretty oblivious and “traditional” in my view that people shouldn’t hop jobs so often. In doing this, I used to think unfavorably about workers who couldn’t seem to stick it out — you know those people with a bunch of three- or six-month stints on their résumés.
My feeling on this was very much on the side of a business. Knowing it can cost a company up to nine months of an employee’s salary to replace them, I felt it was unfair for people to hop so quickly. HR guru Roy Maurer suggests it takes at least one year to really land at a company.
That’s all good and fair, but what if that year simply can’t happen? What if you land somewhere and immediately know it’s wrong? What do you do in those seemingly impossible situations?
I used to advise giving it the old college try, but my suggestion now? Get out quickly and quickly forget. (If you’re in a financial position and life cycle to do so, of course.)
Jobs and careers are not the same
I joined the tax-paying workforce over 25 years ago. Some of my early work was putting away books in a library, serving food, and selling clothing. I would define all those things as…
