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I work as a UX Designer (Senior Level) in a company I joined 5 years ago. It just got renamed 3 times (!).

Currently, I am updating my CV and am asking myself how to display the name changes. I don't really want to have 3 separate entries because this will look like I changed the company each 1 1/2 years and in fact it's the same company.

Would it be okay to just take the current name of the company and display it as one entry? Or will my future employer research and find out that the company I listed just got founded in 2016, which could make him think I'm a fraud.

Am I overthinking this? Does HR do such extensive research?

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  • @MartinTournoij: Not a duplicate, but very similar/closely related.
    – V2Blast
    Commented Oct 27, 2018 at 7:52

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While HR might not do extensive research regarding the founding year of a company, a potential employer might be wary of three separate entries in your CV.

I think the best approach for this would be to write the current name of the company for the whole time you have been employed and include the former names in parenthesis.

So if your company was called X from 2015-2017, Y in 2017, and is now called Z, you could write:

2015 - today: Company Z (formerly Company Y, formerly Company X)

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    I might also include the specific dates, ie : 2015 - present: Company Z (formerly Company Y[2017], formerly Company X[2015-2017])
    – J...
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 14:29
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    I'd consider just the latest name change, or consider "Originally" with the original name, skipping the intermediate names. Gets a bit confusing/detracts attention from what matters otherwise.
    – Notts90
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 18:51
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    @J... I think that would be overdoing it. What's important on the CV is when you were working there, not when the company changed name. Mentioning the earlier names is just so there won't be any inconsistencies if the reader decides to look up more information about the company.
    – kasperd
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 18:59
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    @Notts90 That's a relevant point, though I think as long as it is only 3-4 names, it's ok to mention them all. Also if you only name the earliest and latest name the company has had during your employment, you might be skipping the name it is best known by.
    – kasperd
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 19:01
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    @T.E.D. "née" means born (specifically the feminine form). It's a bit odd to use it for a company.
    – Tashus
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 19:42
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Would it be okay to just take the current name of the company and display it as one entry? Or will my future employer research and find out that the company i listed just got founded in 2016, which could make him think im a fraud.

Yes, just put the current name in your CV/resume.

Nobody would think of "fraud" when they research the company and find out it was renamed, without at least asking you about it first.

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    Quoting the question: "Or will my future employer research and find out that the company I listed just got founded in 2016, which could make him think I'm a fraud." Pretty much this. Who says they will do enough research to find out it got renamed if they just stumbled over it having been founded a year ago? No, this advice risks beeing rejected and never finding out why.
    – DonQuiKong
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 14:04
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    So, the hr-person googles the company, lands somewhere where it says "founded in 2016". If it doesn't say "changed name in 2016" right next to that and there are 10 other candidates, do you really believe they'll keep looking and not just put the person on the blacklist and go on? And more important do you really think that will never ever happen? Because even one time is neough to go through the "trouble" of clearing it up in the cv.
    – DonQuiKong
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 14:32
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    Agreed, absurd to worry about. I've gone through exactly this and had no trouble with my resume. I'd also be quite happy to be filtered out early by a company with such poor vetting practices.
    – Matthew Read
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 17:50
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    There is absolutely nothing at all unusual about working for a company before it is officially founded. Anyone who doesn't know that people often work on the technology and products that a company makes before it is formally founded as a corporation has no business recruiting.
    – David Schwartz
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 22:50
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    At a minimum, putting the information on the CV will prevent the HR person wasting their time on making sense of the discrepancy.
    – Tgr
    Commented Oct 27, 2018 at 23:55
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List the last company name, because that is the one that will be on your other paperwork and it is the one that is true at the time of writing the CV.

If your potential new employer does research, he will not find that the company was founded recently. What kind of shoddy research would lead to that result? He will find that it was renamed recently.

If the renaming is the result of a merger with another company that was founded recently, then I personally would list it as something like "XXX in old company name (merged with new company name in 2016)" just to be entirely clear.

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    @DmitryGrigoryev: No, it's not. It's similar, but it's phrased differently and covers some other details. Also, for everyone downvoting, downvoting because an answer is similar to another answer is not a good thing to do.
    – Jack Aidley
    Commented Oct 26, 2018 at 14:56
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The choice of only listing the current company may be ok, if the current company honors all your years of service.

If the current company does not (had this happen) and says you have only been employed for the time they branded you, then I would do something as follows... list each title and company and show years of service overlapping them together:

Title @ Company3
Title @ Company2
Title @ Company1
Jan 2013 - Oct 2018
List of accomplishments...

The reason for this is to avoid the prospective employer from calling to verify your employment and hearing that you only worked there for 1 year instead of 5. They could assume you falsified your history to hide a lack of employment.

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