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.
First off, you're NEVER unemployed. You're consulting / free lance writing. With your background that's 100% believable and no one ever checks on that. Even if they did... did you do ANYTHING related to your skillset to help ANYONE (friends, family)? They'll probably agree to be a former client a potential employer could talk to. Did you do any volunteer work? Get involved in any non-profits? Get references from folks there.
2nd, if you're working part time somewhere off and on... you're working part time there the whole time while also working on your consulting business. That's why you were part time. If you were promoted, you note the dates of your promotions.
My resume says "Consultant at Coyote, ltd" for an 8 year period. Overlapping with that period is 1 year as IT director at a now defunct startup, 1 year as a project manager at a cybersecurity firm and 1.5 years as Cyberoperations Director at a spaceflight electronics startup. The CEO at the space company tried to get me to sign a no moonlighting clause and I flat out told him no. He was a bit of a dick about it (and whined about "this is standard stuff!") I held my ground and they didn't fire me. Fuck that noise.
3rd, Don't hesitate to clean up your LinkedIn. I HATE LinkedIn. It's intrusive and invasive, it serves corporations while exposing humans to a hypercompetitive stressfest of bullshit career posts to "like" and "engage with" and it exposes your past dirty laundry (or job history at dumpster fire positions) to potential future employers in a way that feels icky. I fucking hate that company, and wish death upon it.
That being said, you DO need to use it and game the shit out of it. Every hiring manager EVER will check your LinkedIn profile to see if it mostly matches your resume. But they won't spend time to dig too deep into it unless your REALLY STRONGLY being considered for a senior position. They'll just check that it exists and you have connections with people from former positions. Which if you're NOT connected to former co-workers... get on that.
Add a "Freelance Writing / Editing Consultant" (or whatever) position to LinkedIn covering the years from your first to your final unemployment period.
4rth, You're applying in a field where a gajillion liberal arts / humanities grads are competing over jobs that are being replaced by generative AI at companies that are being looted by vulture capitalists and repurposed for propaganda by right wing billionaires. I'm SO sorry about that. It sucks.
Realistically, it's time to ask what ELSE your background qualifies you for...
Finally, your timeline makes me think you're in your 40s or 50s maybe? These are your PEAK earning years. Don't waste them.
Want to make a point clear here -- never put anything on your resume that you aren't prepared to answer questions about. That means if you're lying about freelance (whether the above commenter means to imply you should), then you should be ready to answer questions about your freelance lie.
Same goes for any projects. For CS, if you have a pet project you wrote 12 years ago, but it's interesting enough to note on a resume, glance over it enough to know what it's about. You might be surprised by your interviewer installing your app on their phone or something.
I don't think you should lie about freelancing and 100% agree about "not putting anything you aren't prepared to answer questions about"
If you're thinking about it as "lying" you're doing it wrong. You should think about 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.