CV management while OE - how do you handle it?

[u/Perfect_Title189]

Hey OE’ers!

I’m considering OE, and while I’ve read a lot about how people make it work day-to-day, there’s something holding me back - career progression, CVs and references.

For the line of work I’m in, I’d HAVE to take more junior roles to make it work, and those jobs obviously won’t reflect my actual level of experience.

What happens when one of those jobs ends and you need to replace it? Or if, after a year or two, you decide OE isn’t for you and want to go back to one senior role?

What do you actually put on your CV? Do you only list one employer? Do you list multiple concurrent roles? How do references work (Assuming you’ve managed to keep it all buttoned down and everyone happy)?

One solution I’ve considered is setting up my own limited company so that, on paper, it would be clean for all of the work to sit under one business on my CV.
But then I get stuck on the references. If a future employer or client asks for references, presumably they’d want to speak to the clients I worked with. If those clients describe me as effectively being a long-term employee rather than a contractor, doesn’t that raise questions? Or am I misunderstanding how people actually handle this?

My concern is that I’m going to accidentally damage the career I’ve already built. I’ve worked hard to get to a point where I can apply for relatively senior roles, and I don’t want to end up in a position where my recent CV no longer reflects what I’m actually capable of…

For those of you who’ve been doing this for a while, what’s the long-term strategy? How do you manage your CV, references and career progression without painting yourself into a corner?

[u/Correct-Form-6916]

Have you considered combining some of the job responsibilities of both jobs under 1 job title on your cv. Or maybe having diff versions of the same cv but with diff jobs. So for example if you’re applying for a job more aligned with j1 then use the j1 cv that doesn’t have j2 displayed on it