Submitted by dvgeoster on
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Hi all,
Bluff: How to manage Official and Unofficial Job Titles on Resume
My job title on my resume is bothering me. On the offer I accepted last year for my first role out of university my job title was listed as Management Trainee. However one of my first discussions with my boss, director of a small company, was that I should have a secondary one for clients to see, I had no idea as I was too excited about getting into the role so I adopted my predecessors title of Estates Consultant.
My question is how to present this on my resume I'm not sure if I should have a preference either way.
Bluff: How to put a change in responsibilities on a resume.
My main role is somewhat seasonal with short on site projects with intensive recruitment, training and supervision running through the academic year (October to April give or take) and so my role has evolved. My boss and I decided I would suit a customer support position, with no directs but working more closely with clients. This was chosen due to the businesses demands and my ability communicate with external clients . I'm not sure if I should be including these other responsibilities as a accomplishment i.e. "Given expanded responsibilities for dealing with client requests"
My issue is I've started to get some accomplishments in my support role and don't want to blur the line between paragraph job description and bullet point accomplishment.
Any opinions on either of these would be greatly appreciated.
Many Thanks,
David
David, When I was a
David,
When I was a younger guy, recently out of university I put the jobs on as two but I was young an foolish and looking to make a 2 page resume back then for some reason.
I would wordsmith your responsibilities section to say something regarding the change & increase in your responsibilities, then you can put both titles on the same job. An example
Company X Mgmt Trainee / Estates Consultant Dates
Just my 2 cents - quite likely flies in the face of the MT resume format which I can't remember off the top of my head at the moment.
Best of luck
V
David - For the job title,
David -
For the job title, I would either use your official "HR" title if you have one, or the title you would put on a business card. At some companies the official HR title is either jibberish or does not describe your role. Where I work people may have HR titles that say "Dir Reg Cl Pr Srvs" or simply "Mgr", and if it were me I'd expand that a bit on my resume. If you're more concerned with your actual job title and whether it aligns with your responsibilities you can take that up with your manager (but be cautious about telling him it's because you want it to look right on your resume!).
As for the accomplishments - The sample accomplishment you've quoted isn't really an accomplishment. If I saw that on a resume I would assume it meant the person hadn't actually accomplished anything worth noting. Everyone is given more work to do in their jobs as they get more proficient, and it's not something you really need to highlight. I tend to feel the same way about people that put various awards as assomplishments - Those are usually just not that impressive to justify including, unless they say something like "Awarded as #1 analyst nationally out of 670 associates". Responsibilities go on top as prose, accomplishments underneath as bullets. If your responsibilities really expand significantly then you could note that in the responsibilities section, but I wouldn't really use up the space to highlight it.
-Jib
Thanks
Thanks both for the feedback.
I've found the job title issue difficult as I work in a small (10-20) company and was taken on through a government programme the job advertised was one title then I was involved in a consultancy side of the business putting together unksilled teams of 5-15 to deliver week long on site projects and then it morphed to getting into a software side of the company it feels somewhat out of sync. When I went to an event for the software side of the company this was only reinforced.
As for the change in the role I felt that doing front line support, software testing was a shift in the role But I think you're right jib88 it probably is just treating a responsability as an acomplishment.
What would you think about the following aspect of the role change as I managed a two month software development project with a developer assigned solely to the project? This basically involved taking a buggy version of existing outdated software and making it work with the latest systems with some client requested features to just before the final testing before release.