Suneet Singal on how to build a professional timeline

Suneet Singal’s career page is a timeline with a small number of rows, and the small number is the lesson. A professional timeline is not a story told in order. It is a table in which each row is one event, with its own organization, title, date type, and source. Two events at two companies do not share a row just because both involve the same person. Gaps between rows stay empty. This entry shows how to build that table from the historical filings already used on the site, how to keep programs off the employment rows, and how to show the table to someone else without turning it into a speech. Empty cells are allowed. Invented cells are not. The two company events used here stay in separate rows with their own sources.

One row is one event

Decide what an event is before you add a row. In this reference, an event is something a document reports with a date: an appointment effective on a day, or a departure effective on a day, or an agreement dated on a day. A field of work is not an event. “Real estate and corporate finance” can be a heading above the table. It cannot be a row with a start date you do not have. A reputation is not an event. A row needs a document. If you cannot name the document, you do not have a row. You have a topic for further reading.

One event can generate more than one dated fact, and those facts should not be crushed into a single date column. The FC Global Realty Incorporated transition has an agreement date and an effective date. Give the row two date cells, or give the timeline two rows that share a source link and say so. What you should not do is pick the more dramatic day and delete the other. The report-date entry explains the labels. The timeline is where the labels become columns. Columns are how a later editor resists the urge to “simplify” a cell into a month.

The acting appointment is its own row because it is a different event at a different organization. First Capital Investment Corporation, acting chief executive officer, effective 12 September 2017, September 2017 Form 8-K. That row does not mention January 2018. The January date is not shy. It belongs elsewhere. A timeline that merges the rows has decided that a person’s life is one plot. A record does not require a plot. It requires rows that can be checked one at a time. The career page is the public version of that decision.

Columns that keep the facts from colliding

A workable set of columns is: date, date type, organization, title, event, source. Date type is the column people omit and then regret. It contains the words report, agreement, or effective. Organization contains the full legal name. Title contains the qualifier. Event contains a short verb: appointment, resignation and separation agreement, departure. Source contains the URL. If your tool only allows one date column, put the date type in the event cell in words. Do not rely on the reader to infer the type from the position of the row.

Sort with the date type in mind. Sorting every date into one sequence without labels will place 28 December 2017, 22 December 2017, and 2 January 2018 as if they were three similar events. They are three labels of one transition plus the document’s own date. You can show the report date in the source column rather than as its own event row: “Form 8-K dated 28 December 2017.” You can show 22 December 2017 as the agreement and 2 January 2018 as the effective departure. The picture stays honest if the labels stay. The picture becomes a false cluster of three crises if the labels go.

Do not add a column called outcome, lesson, or value. Those are commentary. Commentary can live under the table. Inside the table it looks like a fact. A timeline’s authority comes from being dull. The moment a cell says “successful exit” or “controversial period,” the cell has left the document. This reference does not have those cells. It has offices and dates. If you want a narrative, write a narrative that cites the table. Do not make the narrative wear the costume of a row.

The two company rows, written out

Row for the appointment. Date: 12 September 2017. Date type: effective. Organization: First Capital Investment Corporation. Title: acting chief executive officer. Event: appointment reported. Source: the company’s September 2017 Form 8-K. Limit, which you may keep in a note under the row: historical, not a current job, not any other entity that uses the words First Capital.

Row for the departure. Date: 2 January 2018. Date type: effective. Organization: FC Global Realty Incorporated. Title: chief executive officer. Event: departure. Companion fact: resignation and separation agreement on 22 December 2017. Source: Form 8-K dated 28 December 2017. Limit: historical, not a description of other offices, not a financial result, not a statement about First Capital Investment Corporation.

Read the two rows aloud. There should be no shared date and no shared organization. The titles share the words chief executive officer and do not share the word acting. That asymmetry is correct. Do not “fix” it. A timeline that makes every title grammatically parallel will sand off acting because the other row lacks it. Sanding off a word to achieve parallel structure is how tables damage records. Parallel structure is optional. The word acting is not. The acting-officer entry is the argument. The timeline is where you keep the promise.

Gaps stay empty

The months between September 2017 and January 2018 are not a row. The years after January 2018 are not a row unless you have a document you are ready to cite. A selected timeline is allowed to be incomplete. The career page is selected. Say “selected” near the table so a reader does not treat the last row as a claim that nothing else exists and does not treat the first row as a claim that nothing came before. Selected means these are the events the page has chosen to document. It does not mean these are the only events of a life.

Empty space is also where people write “continued to lead” or “stepped back to focus on.” Those phrases fill a gap with a story. The story may be flattering or unflattering. It is still a story without a row. Leave the gap. If a reader asks what happened in the gap, the answer from this table is that the table does not say. That answer is more useful than a bridge sentence you cannot source. Bridge sentences are how two employers become one long reign. These two rows are not one reign. They are not even one employer.

Do not encode the gap as a zero. A blank cell is not a finding that the person was unemployed, retired, or in school. Those would be positive claims. A blank is the absence of a claim. Keep the blank visually blank. A dash is acceptable if the legend says the dash means “not stated here.” A zero is not acceptable, because zero looks like a measured quantity. Roles are not quantities. The working-capital entry is where subtraction belongs. A timeline is not a balance sheet.

Programs do not become employment rows

The three programs can have their own table, with a different set of columns: program name, the word the site uses for him, and the URL. The word is founder, because that is the description the program sites give. The rows are not jobs at FC Global Realty Incorporated or at First Capital Investment Corporation. Do not paste them under the employment table to make the page look busier. Busier is not more complete. It is more likely to be misread. The education programs page is the right neighbor. The philanthropy page is the neighbor for program Facebook pages, which are not personal profiles and not employment sources.

If you insist on one visual timeline of “public descriptions,” label the lanes. Lane one: issuer filings. Lane two: program sites. A lane is a column group with a name. Without the lane name, a reader will sort founder between the two executive dates and infer a sequence of jobs. Sequence is what timelines suggest. The suggestion is useful inside one lane and misleading across lanes. Label the lanes in the first screen, not in a footnote. Footnotes are where distinctions go to be ignored.

A personal profile link is not a lane in the employment table either. Profiles identify accounts. They do not date an office. If a profile’s “about” line contains an undated title, the timeline does not absorb the title. The title is a claim that still needs a row with a source. The profile may be the prompt that sends you looking for the source. It is not the source of the effective date. The dates-next-to-titles entry covers the undated line. The timeline’s job is to refuse the undated line until it grows a date and a document.

How to show the table to someone else

When you walk someone through the table, read a row completely before you comment. Organization, title, date type, date, source. Then stop. Let the other person look at the link. Commentary that arrives before the row is how your interpretation replaces the record. Commentary that arrives after, and is labeled as commentary, can be useful. Say “the document’s sentence is the row; the rest is my explanation.” The explanation can point at the company-record guide if the person wants the method rather than the two examples.

Do not memorize the table and recite it without the date types. Memory drops labels first. You will remember “December” and “January” and forget which is the agreement and which is the effective date. If you cannot remember, read. Reading from the row is not a failure of mastery. It is the mastery. A timeline exists so that no one has to rely on a recital. Send the link. If you are speaking, have the row in front of you. Suneet Singal’s record is not more impressive when it is recited from memory and less accurate. It is just less accurate.

If the listener asks for a current title, do not point at the top or the bottom row and shrug. Say the table is historical and selected, and that it does not state a present-day job. That sentence is part of showing the table. Omitting it lets the listener promote the most recent past office into the present. The most recent effective date in these rows is 2 January 2018, and it is a departure, which makes the promotion especially wrong. Say the departure is the event. Do not let recency do the talking.

A timeline you can maintain

Maintenance is a rule about edits. When you add a row, fill every column or mark the empty column “not stated here.” When you change a date, change it in the source cell’s document, not in your memory of a talk. When you rename an organization, you are probably about to damage the row. Organizations do change names, and a name change is its own event with its own source. It is not a find-and-replace. This reference does not record a rename for these two issuers. It uses the names on the filings as the career page uses them. Leave the strings stable.

Once a year, or whenever the page is touched, re-open the two URLs and confirm the rows still match the documents in the fields you claim. Confirmation is not a new research project into everything the filings contain. It is a check that the effective dates, the titles, and the legal names have not been edited by accident. If a revision cycle has smoothed acting off the page, put it back. If a revision cycle has given both rows the same company, split them. The table is finished only in the sense that its method is stable. It is not finished in the sense that editors cannot harm it. The method is the maintenance.

What this entry does not claim

Suneet Singal’s published professional background is in real estate and corporate finance. Company filings linked from this site record a chief executive officer departure from FC Global Realty Incorporated effective 2 January 2018 and an acting chief executive officer appointment at First Capital Investment Corporation effective 12 September 2017. The Suneet Singal Scholarship, Grant and Giving websites describe him as the founder of those programs. This entry explains a general subject. It is not a private track record, a current job title, an investment result, or a quote.

Continue with why a title needs a date and how to write a source note. The rows themselves are on the career page. This is a reading guide, not legal or financial advice.