How do you go about addressing prior stints at a holding company?

A few years back, I took a job at a WPP agency but shortly quit after 3 months - toxic team lead, unrealistic expectations, and was severely impacting my health.

I've gone on to work at various small-mid size shops and gotten a lot of great experience since then.

Now I'm interested in a role at a separate WPP agency, but I'm concerned that my extremely brief tenure will be a red flag.



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Won’t be a red flag but WPP has not changed much since you were last there

likehelpful

Was it a mutual decision to part ways? If so, simply: a few months after I started we realized it wasn’t the right fit so we parted ways.

If not mutual, some variation of the above.

If there are follow ups, like “what did you learn from the experience”, it helped you clarify what you felt was important in a role and helped you get better at evaluating potential jobs, as evidenced by my successful career progression after that experience.

In other words, make it a positive. If it even comes up.

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If OP left on their own accord they could say it wasn’t what they were looking for at that time or something along those lines

Pretty common in the industry. Lots of people start jobs only to find out it's toxic or not for them. So no biggie there in leaving. Everyone's got a story and can relate. But as mentioned, some WPP agencies haven't changed much. Probably gotten worse so be mindful of that.

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You can list it as freelance or don’t list it at all.

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Their agencies don’t like each other so they probably won’t care any more than a non-WPP agency would. The only difference is, they will find out that you already worked for WPP whether you tell them or not.

likehelpful

List it as freelance. Say you got a new gig after or the project was over/they ran out of money.

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The wpp agencies are slowly becoming very similar.

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