Company name dropping etiquette (CV's/LinkedIn)

Question

I'm looking for some opinions on what is considered acceptable when looking to bolster your CV with the names of big, or interesting, companies you've worked with. In particular, in my situation as a consultant:

I'm a self employed IT consultant who is currently contracted to Consultancy Company A. Company A are an IT consultancy who are also something of a "body shop" supplying people to other IT companies, such as Management Company B, IT Service Company C and Infrastructure Company D.

On some projects, I'll be working with IT Service Company C who sells solutions to Client A and Client B.

My question is - who can I mention on my CV and how. For example, is it acceptable to put:

Consultant - Company A In this consultancy role, I worked closely with companies such as IT Service Company C, Client A, Client B and Management Company B.

Or do I need to be more tactful than that? More specific that I worked with Client A through Company C, or is it wrong to mention Client A at all?

For the purposes of this, I'm assuming that people who are close to the situation will read my LinkedIn page and so "impression" is quite important and I don't want to be seen to be extending on the truth. On the other hand, I really am working with "Client A" and often without any supervision from "Company C". This includes being on site and meeting the client.

Answer 1

When reading a CV, I expect to learn about what you did. So if you did Task X for Client A via company C, I want to see that. Saying "supported N clients for company C with Y relatd tasks" tells me nothing about what you actually did, so you'd go down in the pile of resumes.

Answer 2

In my experience, it depends on the duration of the projects for the various clients.

If there are a lot of very short term projects (less than one or two months in duration), an overall summary of all the projects under the heading Consultant - Company A would be more effective than listing each individual project and not providing any details due to space considerations.

On the other hand if these are longer term projects (multi-month or multi-year), it would be better to list the details of each project separately (under headings of something like Project X - Client A, Project Y - Client B, etc), but indicate that you were working through Company A at the time so that the job history lines up with any background checks.

I've also seen resumes that do both. They usually include an overall role of Consultant - Company A for the full timeframe they were employed by Company A and elaborate on the overall experience in that section, but have additional sections for the time periods that they worked at specific clients and put the project-specific details under each client. This might be the best approach for a site like linkedin, where it is easier to add multiple positions than to try to cram all of the details in the consulting company details section.

Example:

Consultant at Company A (2004 - 2014)

Phosfluorescently achieved real-time "outside the box" thinking tasks

Project XYZ at Client A (2010 - 2012)

Dramatically architected unique customer service solutions

Project ABC at Client B (2006 - 2010)

Globally streamlined fungible opportunities

Project DEF at Management Client B (2004 - 2006)

Efficiently utilized frictionless human capital