I was the news editor of smaller of the two sister papers from 2003-2006, when I was pushed out by the IT manager (offsite at the other paper). Life conspired to keep me in town, as my fiancee was wrapping her undergrad. I got laid off the next year because the next place I worked shut down. I was able to quickly find a temporary position out of state via networking, but after signing a six-month lease, that job evaporated in only 10 weeks. Next job ran five months before layoffs were threatened, prompting me to find a position at a small weekly in the town I wanted to retire in but turned out to be nominally editorial but functionally advertising, leading to my first panic attack and resignation.
Owing to a lot of other shit happening, I wasn't in a position worth even putting on a resume for 14 months. On the other end of that was 19 months at the local paper where I'd landed, cut short because I decided a 50% raise to go into marketing was worth the ethical costs (and would return me to where I'd started in 2003). I only had to endure that for 10 months, when our three-year contract was terminated. I quickly found work at an audiobook publisher, but nine months into that, I walked out from a dressing down from my boss, on the production floor, for doing what I'd been told to do (and not in a malicious-compliance sort of way).
A couple months later, a SWAT team rousted my family from our hotel room Christmas Eve, and to my wife's surprise, before we got to the ground floor, I'd dialed the batphone at the paper. After being a source on A1 for the Christmas edition, I figured I had nothing to lose by emailing the editor. The old IT guy was gone, and they were looking for a part-time, temporary copyeditor ahead of the desk being shipped off to Texas, so I started the new year working across from the city ed from back in the day.
I did not follow my job at first, as it was a pay cut in a far more expensive city, but after nine months of fruitless searching, I got back in touch and took the job here, which I had three roles at over nearly five years.
So I'm seriously considering removing several of the intervening positions and stretching both stints to paper over both the gaps and the instability itself, as there's no one to call to verify when I worked there. Being midcareer, it's hard enough to get past software gatekeepers in the first place, but seven mostly nonconsecutive positions in as many years can't be helping my score.
The two main wrinkles I can foresee are a wholesale refactor of my LinkedIn could be a red flag, and the most basic of background reports would place me in two other states before remote journalism work was a thing.
I don't like the idea of lying on my resume, but what I'm doing now isn't working.
Are there other risks I'm not considering? I'd love some stability going forward, but I'm not going to expect any job to last long enough that this could stymie a promotion.
Wow ... lots of good info here. You're correct that I'm in my mid-40s, but I'm not applying for any journalism jobs. What's left of the field isn't hiring people with more than a few years of experience anyway, and what's left of my network has moved into fields like PR that I'm not categorically against, but I'm extremely picky about where I'd be willing to do that. My marketing position was the apex of my earnings ($45K in 2012), but the culture was mocking our customers for buying our products when we weren't actually writing copy.
I've done a fair amount of automation coding in previous positions, and I did a full-stack bootcamp a few years ago that did not move the needle in terms of getting an interview. I've gone to networking events, all of which featured two types of people:
Most of my coding has been accuracy focused, from a tool that automated the auditing of hundreds of audiobook tracks to client-communication, productivity tracking and item placement in InDesign. But I've come to realize that I'd be miserable writing code on a team, given that everything I've done has been an unsanctioned project I've brought to the higher-ups after determining obvious deficiencies and having a functioning prototype directors begrudgingly accept solves problems. Generally, that's when the wheels start turning to get me to quit.
I've been looking nationally (remote jobs for now) since getting frustrated by Austin's employment scene. But in talking with others about the issues I've run into, it sounds like it's the same bullshit no matter where you are: If you don't have inside connections, there's no point in applying.
As to LinkedIn, I hate it with the passion of a million burning suns, but it's a necessary evil. I paid for resume assistance both in 2020 and earlier this year, and I've got bullet points with specific department savings that go all the way up to 83%, and it's still crickets. I've had a couple of conversations that weren't initially work related that ended with them putting in a word for me about not-yet-posted positions, but both ghosted thereafter.
I have about 100 connections from my career and several recommendations from former directors that all touch on my ability to see the big picture, anticipate problems and solve them before they become production issues. I'm not sure if anyone even scrolls down to those, because they don't seem to be doing me any good.
I did do some consulting here and there, but it's been a while. I've got a couple of former colleagues that would happily vouch for me doing "projects" for them, but I'd of course need to give them a heads-up about the role I'm interviewing for should it ever get to that step. But adding it back in as a line item couldn't hurt in the meantime.
Ultimately, it's absurd that looking for work involves wondering how many lies I can get away with. But that's the game employers are playing, and honesty is not rewarded.
I have no idea what I want to do, just a short list of things I know I don't want to do. This is what led to the upcoming appointment, as I've done lots of online tests that are supposed to give me direction and without fail bin me into journalism, marketing or PR, the last of which would need to be for an organization I genuinely believe in. Having designed and built a 24V solar house system, renewable energy is certainly a field I'd consider, but I've not seen any PR jobs posted in that area.
Though my background is in writing, that's really not an area I want to pursue both because I do not enjoy being assigned a topic and that's where LLMs are coming in hot. I'm much happier creating and manipulating datasets, the latter of which is 90% of editing (the other 10% being qualitative -- determining things like voice and wording choices).
Conversations and research have led me to think QA, prompt engineering (I was a linguistics major after ditching CS) and data science are my best fits, but with no titles in my history to suggest competence, it circles back to already knowing someone, which goes back to networking, and I cannot stomach another fruitless couple of hours where everyone pretends to love working.
Overall, from your feedback and what I've received on Reddit, I'm leaning heavily toward blowing up my resume and LinkedIn (definition of insanity and whatnot), essentially making sure to keep positions with recommendations and ditching most everything else between 2006 and 2014 in favour of longer stints at the two shut-down papers. I have no belief that these wholesale changes alone will move the needle (I don't know what the algorithms are looking for, but every little bit helps).
While this may sound like I'm not implementing many of your suggestions, I'm looking at the resume as a starting point for how I change my approach, and focusing on that may well make some of your other suggestions seem more feasible.
Thank you for putting so much thought and experience into your response; I will be returning to this as things progress, and there's a lot of useful, actionable info for others who come across it.
Don't think of it as lies. Think of it as "explaining what I was doing professionally, to learn, grow and strengthen my skill set during these periods of less active employment." Is glossing over the vast majority of your time that you spent living your life instead of hustling lying by omission? Maybe... but "I wasn't doing shit professionally because reasons" is not a message you want a potential employer to hear.
The other poster who said "never put anything on your resume you aren't prepared to answer questions about" is 100% right. Definitely think about what you're going to say, focus on the things you DID do, don't make up shit you DIDN'T do... resumes are supposed to be quick summaries anyway.
I definitely view it as the only lie being where I was employed when. I'm certainly not adding things I couldn't talk about in depth, including setbacks and how I overcame them.
That said, I'm going to be shit at a technical interview, should that ever come to pass, as I don't really have a preferred language. I determine the project first, then look at options and learn or brush up on whatever's going to be the best fit (or only option) for desired results.
From talking with friends and colleagues my age, I'm scarcely special in terms of the roadblocks I'm hitting. A couple of decades of experience and switching fields seems to be "irrelevantly overexperienced" to ATS.