Page 123 - Marky Stein - Get a Great Job When You Don't Have a Job-McGraw-Hill (2009)

Get a Great Job When You Don’t Have a Job

Dates

If you’ve been using months and years when presenting your
work history, try this little trick (which is completely acceptable
on modern résumés, by the way). Do not use the months on your
résumé at all. Let’s look at a sample of a hypothetical job for
which you note both the months and the years that you worked
there and compare it to including only the years that you were at
the position.
Example of months and years:

Job Title, Company, December 2006–
City, State January 2007

How long does it look like you were at that company? You’re
right—about one month. A very short stay at a particular com-
pany raises suspicion in the eyes of the employer. Were you “job
hopping”—just looking around casually and leaving if the job
didn’t work out for you?

• Did you quit prematurely? Were you fired? Could you
not adjust to your responsibilities or to the personalities
of those you were working with? Did you quarrel with
your boss or your supervisor?

What happened, and why did you stay for only a month? Are you
afraid of commitment? Are you unable to keep your word? All of
these fears and more enter the employer’s mind when he sees
one, two, or a pattern of short stays at positions.
Although, in my own opinion, you have a right to leave a job
for almost any reason whenever you wish, most employers don’t
see it that way, and it makes sense from their perspective. As you
already read, when you put together all the time it takes to do
the advertising, paperwork, interviewing, and training of a new
hire, it can cost the employer well over $10,000 and sometimes
much more.
When a company is making an investment like that, it wants
you to stay at least long enough for it to get a return on its invest-
ment—that is, profitable productivity from your efforts.

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