A man I am coaching right now has spent his entire career with one organization. He started as a CRA II at i3 in 2006, and he is still there today, at Syneos Health.

But you wouldn’t know it from his LinkedIn profile.

When I first opened it, his LinkedIn work experience showed multiple different employers. He was a CRA II at i3 starting in 2006, then he held a title at i3/PharmaNet, then a Senior CRA at inVentiv starting in 2011, then at Syneos Health starting in 2018. To anyone who didn’t know the history of those companies, it looked like he had changed employers to get a promotion, and then moved again. A recruiter skimming his profile would see a choppy career. And maybe…move on. But they would never learn the truth.

The truth is a story of loyalty, resilience, and adaptability.

He never changed employers. He hung in there through every merger, every acquisition, and every new company name. In 2011, inVentiv Health acquired PharmaNet and completed its acquisition of i3. Then, in 2013, the combined CRO became inVentiv Health Clinical. Later, in 2017, INC Research and inVentiv Health merged, and in January 2018 the combined company became Syneos Health. Through all of it, he kept showing up and doing the work.

His experience was never the problem. The way his profile told the story was. And once his profile tells the story clearly, the same career looks completely different.

Clinical research careers rarely follow a straight line. CROs merge and change their names. Experienced CRAs take on contracts, sometimes two or more at once. Companies invent their own titles for the same role. People step away to care for family, earn a degree, or recover from a layoff. LinkedIn can show all of it clearly, but only when you know how to set up your work experience for the situations that don’t fit the standard form.

How to Add Work Experience on LinkedIn: The Basics

Most of this article is about how to effectively show your unique path on LinkedIn, but let’s start with a brief tutorial on how to add work experience. Open your profile and select Add profile section, then Add position. Or select the plus sign at the top of your Experience section. The form asks for your title, employment type, company, location, location type, start and end dates, and a description. You can also attach the skills you used in that role.

One tip before you start making changes: when you add or edit a position, look for the option to notify your network. When you are updating several entries at once, turning it off keeps your connections from seeing a string of announcements.

The rest of this article covers the situations the standard form doesn’t explain.

Promotions at One Company

When you have a progressive career within one company, you should highlight it. But I often see where candidates don’t link their experiences to company pages…so tip one is to always link your employment to the company on LinkedIn (when the company exists, of course). Then, when you held several titles at the same company, each title will be its own position, with its own dates, connected to the same company page. When you set it up that way, LinkedIn automatically groups the titles together under one company, and a recruiter sees one employer and a clear path of growth.

But when the individual titles aren’t connected to the same company page, they can show up as separate jobs, which makes a promotion look like a job change. Check your profile and make sure each promotion sits under the company where it happened. Career progression at one company should show up under one cascaded employment section on your LinkedIn profile.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Name Changes

This is the situation from the opening story, and in clinical research it is very common. When a company is acquired or renamed, don’t assume your LinkedIn work experience will update itself (renames might, but mergers and acquisitions will not). Unless you change it, each name might appear as a separate employer, and a long, steady career can look like a string of short jobs.

Three changes fix it:

• Connect the position to the company’s current name and page. List the full span of your employment under the company as it exists today, so a recruiter sees one employer and one continuous stretch of time.
• Tell the history in the description. But…and this is important…explain where you started, as well as each change the company went through while you were there. This is important for two reasons: First, as an example, if you list that you started working with Syneos in 2006, you may be seen as fraudulent because Syneos didn’t exist then. So having your i3 (in this example) as a different ‘Syneos’ employment while explaining you were with i3 right under the title will show your true history while still cascading the employment under Syneos. Which brings us to the second reason this is important: doing this ensures your loyalty, resilience, and adaptability become part of your story.
• Keep your resume consistent. Your resume and your LinkedIn profile should tell the same story, with the same company names and dates.

A description might read like this:

Joined i3 as a CRA II in 2006 and stayed with the organization through its 2011 acquisition by inVentiv Health, its renaming as inVentiv Health Clinical, and its merger with INC Research to become Syneos Health in 2018. Promoted to Senior CRA in 2011.

That one paragraph turns what looked like three short jobs into twenty years with one organization.

Employed by a CRO, Embedded at a Sponsor

Many CRAs work for a CRO but spend their days embedded at a sponsor through the CRO’s functional service provider (FSP) model. It is one of the most common questions I hear: do you list the CRO as your employer, or the sponsor that provided you daily work direction?

List your employer. Whoever issued your W-2 was your employer, and that is the company your resume, your LinkedIn profile, and any background check should all agree on.

Then use the description to explain the rest. LinkedIn gives you the space to say that you were embedded at the sponsor through the CRO’s FSP model, which studies you supported, and what you accomplished there.

A description might read like this:

Embedded at [Sponsor] through [CRO]’s FSP model, monitoring Phase III oncology studies across eight sites in the Southeast.

That is clarity at its best. A recruiter or hiring manager knows exactly who employed you, where you did the work, and what you delivered.

Consulting

Two Part-Time Contracts at Once

Many experienced CRAs work two (or more) part-time contracts at the same time. It is a smart way to work, but it can be confusing on LinkedIn. When each contract is listed as its own position with overlapping dates, a sourcer or hiring manager may not realize either one is part-time. They may think you held two full-time jobs at once, and that raises more questions than it answers.

The clearer approach is to show one job: your work as an independent consultant.

• Create one position for your consulting work. Use a title like Independent Clinical Research Consultant, and connect it to your own company name when you have one.
• Use the description to tell the story. Explain that you supported multiple clients at partial utilization, list the clients you supported, and describe the therapeutic areas and types of studies you worked on.

A description might read like this:

Independent CRA supporting multiple sponsors and CROs at partial utilization to fit each client’s needs. Clients include [Client A], [Client B], and [Client C]. Monitored Phase II and Phase III oncology and cardiovascular studies, including site activation, interim monitoring, and closeout visits.

You can write the description the way you would write a story in your About section, but focused only on the experience from that role.

A String of Short Contracts

The same approach works for a series of short contracts. Listing each three-month or six-month contract as its own job can make a strong contract career look unstable. But grouping them under one consulting position shows what it actually is: a single, continuous career as a contract professional, with a list of clients and the experience you built along the way.

Unusual Internal Titles

We often see where companies call the same role by many different names. As an example, our team keeps a list of dozens of titles that we consider equivalent to a Clinical Research Associate, and we call them doppelgangers.

It makes sense that you want to ensure your audience understands what you did if your title isn’t a standard industry title. Still, your title is your title. On LinkedIn, list the title your employer’s HR department has on record. Why? Because when a company runs a background check, the employment verification typically confirms your title, and it needs to match both your resume and your LinkedIn profile. Changing your title to something more familiar creates a mismatch that can cost you an opportunity…or even get you blacklisted from a specific company if they misunderstand your intentions.

What you can do instead is explain it. Add a note in the description, such as: This role is equivalent to a Clinical Research Associate, with full responsibility for site monitoring. A recruiter gets the clarity, and your title stays accurate.

Career Breaks

Time away from work is part of many careers, and LinkedIn gives you a way to show it. A career break appears in your Experience section, right alongside your positions, so a recruiter sees the reason for the gap instead of guessing (and you never want a recruiter to guess).

To add a career break to your LinkedIn experience section, open your profile, select Add profile section, and choose Add career break. LinkedIn’s help page explains that you can choose a type of career break or leave the type blank and explain it in the description. The types include:

• Bereavement
• Career transition
• Caregiving
• Full-time parenting
• Gap year
• Health and well-being
• Layoff or position eliminated
• Personal goal pursuit
• Professional development
• Relocation
• Retirement
• Travel
• Voluntary work

Professional development covers time spent earning a degree or certification. Voluntary work covers time you gave to a cause. Each break has its own dates and a description, so you can share what you did or learned during that time. Many people never use this feature, and it is one of the simplest ways to make a gap in your LinkedIn work experience easy to understand.

As a side note, volunteer work can also go in its own Volunteer experience section, which is a good place to show leadership, service, and skills you built outside of a paid role.

Help Telling Your Story

When a career has mergers, contracts, unusual titles, or time away, the experience is often stronger than the profile makes it look. The difference comes down to how the story is told.

That is exactly the work we do through Career Coach & Job Search Mentoring. We help experienced clinical research professionals set up their full profiles, so recruiters can see the real story behind every move. Our free community, live sessions, and coaching programs each offer that support at a different level, and you can find all of them at careercoachmentoring.com. In the meantime, check out our current open positions, as we may have something perfect available for you.

As always, let me know how I can help.

To Your Success,
Angela Roberts, Managing Partner of craresources