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After graduation, 15 years ago, I started my own business freelancing. Since then I've held 3 full-time positions, each longer than 3 years. While in those positions I accepted 1-3 small projects a year and kept my freelancing business going. Between my full-time positions I freelanced full-time.

I'm not sure with how to represent this on my resume.

The advice in the Resume Workbook is to list the ongoing position in chronological order based on it's start date and *not* to list individual projects seperately. This pushes this work to the bottom of my resume. I'm left with two gaps (3 and 5 months each) between my full-time positions.

The 5 month gap between my last two roles included a large project for a very prestigious client. I'm especially sad to put that at the bottom of my resume.

What is the best way to put this experince on my resume?

Jaime_Martinez's picture

I have a similar work experience in that i was self employed/small business for 12 years between full time positions. I would not worry so much about the position on the resume (top vs bottom). I would be more concerned about confusing the potential employer with where your priorities are. I would easily look at an overlapping work history as a red flag of someone who could not focus on one job and give 100% to either role. As a remidy, I would, in chronilogical order, list the most important experience relavent to the position applying for. For example,

graphic designer 2011-2012

grocery manager 2012-2014

graphic designer 2014-2016

vs.

grocery manager 2012-2014

freelance graphic designer 2011-2016

Not listing a full work history is a healthy tradeoff for a logical flow. I would also argue that it is not disingenous since it represents your primary role each year. I could be completely wrong on this, so I hope we can get more input.