You know the drill, you've had two or three jobs over the past two years and you worry that employers will view you as restless, unable to commit, or a problem employee that's being passed from company to company. You may have good and sound reasons for your choppy employment history, although you feel like you're being eliminated even before you have a chance to explain yourself.

To make matters worse, this often evokes the generational divide. It's a sensitive issue for the baby boomers, who still dominate the management ranks. They were raised in an environment where you only worked for two or three companies your entire career.

Here are three tips for dealing with this common resume blemish:

1. Address the problem head-on: It's important to remember that the biggest concern a recruiter will have is that your job hopping is related to performance issues. The concern will be that one or more employers have terminated you due to poor performance issues. Why? Above all else recruiters fear having to answer to a hiring manager about a bad hire. Stating the reasons for your job changes in your cover letter and on your resume is a strategy that often works well. It might say, "Left the company due to the company shutting down our department."
2. Consider combining two short work experiences into one resume entry: Our philosophy is that honesty is the best policy, so you'll never hear us advocating being anything less than truthful on your resume. Far too many people have paid the price for being caught with mistruths in their past. With that said, your resume is a marketing document designed to help you tell your story. Combining two or three stints into one resume entry may help you get by the reflexive bias some recruiters have when they see a work experience section of a resume with a large number of entries.
3. Amplify your accomplishments and performance: One way to overcome the bias that you're a performance problem is to focus on your awards, commendations, and accomplishments. After all, few problem employees receive the employee of the month award. Keep in mind; there are limits to how you can employ this tactic. I recently saw a candidate's resume that attempted to "paper over" her job hopping past. In two instances she was in the job less than three months but her resume included a long list of accomplishments for each of those positions. Most people can barely settle into a position in their first three months, much less dramatically overhaul the business and increase sales by 200% (as the candidate had stated on her resume).

Rob McGoven is the CEO and founder of Jobfox. For the past 15 years he has helped people get ahead in their careers. Rob started Jobfox to help workers connect with employers in a whole new way. Prior to Jobfox, he was the founder and CEO of Careerbuilder. In his spare time, he wrote the book Bring Your "A" Game: The 10 Career Secrets of the High Achiever.

Last updated: January 2010