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I'm updating my resume and would like to emphasize a short but relevant work experience from 3 years ago (web development), which was followed by a year of work outside my usual competence area (c++) because I want to keep working in the web industry.

I'm debating whether to add the 2-month work, I'm mainly afraid it looks like "filler" and fragments the experience history, but it was such a good experience and I don't want the focus to be on the following job if I omit it.

Since then I've had 2 more years of web development work (all of this at the same company), since I don't have a lot of overall experience I think the year of c++ will still stand out in my history.

Am I overthinking this ?

edit: The 2 month job was a loan to another department on a prototyping/experimental project, they needed a 'specialist' for the development work. To be honest I don't even know if the product made it commercially

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    You don't mention why it was 2 months. The why matters.
    – Bowen
    Mar 27, 2015 at 5:13
  • @Bowen I've updated the question
    – user29654
    Mar 27, 2015 at 12:15

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Am I overthinking this?

A little. Mostly you're coming to the wrong conclusions.

Include the short experience. It's relevant to what you're applying for and you want to emphasize it. It lowers the fragmentation of your history, rather than increasing it. Without this, you'll just have a gap before the year of C++ (which isn't going to hurt you as much as you seem to think). On a short resume, every little bit helps.

The 2 month job was a loan to another department on a prototyping/experimental project, they needed a 'specialist' for the development work. To be honest I don't even know if the product made it commercially

That's fantastic. They were making a new and unusual product and picked you to design it, even though you were in a different department. They recognized your talent and asked for you to take on a relatively big responsibility. Whether the product made it or not commercially doesn't matter, because that's almost entirely out of your hands. Definitely include this; it shows you were noticeable in a positive way.

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    You could even phrase that 2 month job the way you did in your question, emphasizing that they wanted you as a 'specialist'.
    – user8036
    Mar 27, 2015 at 12:20
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Since you didn't leave the company, but were simply on loan to another department, there is no gap on your resume. List the web experience alongside the c++ work as one of the projects you have worked on. List it first since that's what you want to emphasize. Depending on the format of your resume, you don't necessarily need to list the dates of each project you worked while at the company. Just list the project, your role, and the skills/technologies used. Most often, the dates are associated with overall time at the company.

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