I read it as the OP wanted to leave off 5 years of previous employment, not fudge the dates of her current company. Assuming that 5 years is not relevant experience, I think that is fine.
@nottelling, you said a resume without graduation dates is evasive. But a good resume is like a good college essay. Your goal is to get them to want you… the “prompt” or “format” isn’t actually the important thing. Graduation dates can easily be provided on request.
I just didn’t put what I did from graduation to 1987 (5 years). The first two years I was a staff accountant for the state, and the next 3 years I was self-employed doing something entirely different…then I went back to the corporate world. Since it was so long ago, I decided to just leave those 5 years off. I have the correct dates for the job I’ve had for the past 28 years.
By not putting those dates, nor the dates of graduation, one would assume I’m 50. I’m not lying, just omitting info.
Oh, okay, I misread the original post. The years she is listing for the most recent job are correct (1987-2015); she just doesn’t plan on listing the previous job. That seems fine; any job she had from 1982-87 would not be relevant. I simply misread the first post; apologies.
As to graduation year, “evasive” is probably too strong a word. On seeing a resume without a graduation year, I’d assume someone was trying to hide their age, which would be an accurate assumption.
I know what you mean about the graduation date. I struggle with that.
If the staff accountant experience is relevant, you could keep it. Did you have multiple positions/assignments within your 28 years? That is a long block with one company, and not all hiring managers would see it as a positive.
One way to present it might be (editing because my formatting didn’t work below, but you get the idea):
[bold]Accounting Vice President, XYZ Corp, 6 years[/bold]
Responsibilities included:
[bold]Tax Reporting Department Manager, XYZ Corp, 5 years[/bold]
Responsibilities included:
Etc. for your current company
[bold]Staff Accountant, State of MN Department of Revenue, 2 years[/bold]
Responsibilities, blah blah
I think you are mistaken in thinking people would think you are 50 in seeing a resume where relevant job experience starts in 1987 but no year of graduation is listed.
If you had graduated in 1986, you would have included the year.
I’d assume either that you’d graduated some meaningful number of years prior to 1987; why else would you leave it off. I’d assume idly that it was AT LEAST five years prior to the earliest date in the resume.
OR I’d wonder if the degree was a recent thing and most of the job experience was non-professional.
The one thing that I’d be pretty sure of in reviewing the resume would be that you DIDN’T graduate in 1986 or 1987.
So, if you are worried that the resume gives the mistaken impression that that was when you graduated, I don’t think you need to worry about that.
You can’t lie on application but on resume you can leave off redundant information.
I haven’t had my date of graduation on my resume for at least 20 years. In my world, it’s not a problem at all.
I know there’s an issue about health insurance, but have you considered starting your own business? I worked in corporate accounting and then realized that doing the books for small companies is basically the same, just with smaller numbers. The marketing might be difficult at first, but if you get a good set of consistent clients it could work. And you could sleep in.
I certainly don’t put that I worked for a while as a librarian when I was looking for my first job in architecture. But the best thing about being self employed is no one ever asks me for a resume any more. All they care about is my recent experience.