TL;DR: Group gigs under the one freelance employer they belong to instead of treating each client as a separate job. A resume section that reads "Freelance" with Client A, Client B, and Client C underneath should parse to one employer entry, not three. Check the parsed employer list against the original PDF and the job count drops to the real number.

```text
resume agent assigned freelance client names as employers  -  gig resumes list a company under each gig and the agent merged them all as jobs
```

1. Open the original PDF and find the freelance or self-employed section. Count the employer-level headings versus the client names nested under them. Expected: one heading ("Freelance", "Self-Employed", or the candidate's own company) spanning several client bullet lines.
2. Compare that to what the agent stored. Run the parse and list the employer names it extracted. Expected: the agent's list is longer than the real employer count, and the extras match client names from under the freelance heading.
3. Add an employer-grouping rule: when a heading says freelance, self-employed, contract, or independent, treat everything nested under it as projects of one employer, not separate jobs. Expected: re-running the parse yields one employer row for the whole freelance period.
4. Verify the date ranges no longer read as parallel jobs. Expected: the freelance period shows as a single date range, and total years of experience drops to the correct number.

## Use this when
- A parsed profile for a contractor or freelancer shows more employers than their career timeline supports
- The resume PDF has a "Freelance", "Self-Employed", or "Contract" section with client names under it
- Employer counts in the ATS look inflated for gig-economy candidates

## Not for this skill when
- The candidate genuinely changed employers every few months (real job-hopping, not one freelance block)
- Client names appear nowhere near a freelance heading
- The problem is duplicated dates rather than duplicated employers

## Variant phrasings
### Agent merged gig client names into separate jobs
### Resume parser treats each freelance client as an employer
### Parsed work history shows 8 jobs where the resume shows 3

## Why it happens
Most parsers treat every bolded company-like name as an employer heading. Gig resumes break that assumption because client names are styled the same way employer names are. Without a rule that says everything under a freelance heading belongs to one employer, the agent counts clients as jobs.

## Edge cases
- A freelancer who also held one full-time job during the freelance period: keep the full-time job separate and group only the clients under the freelance heading
- Resumes that list clients with their own date ranges inside the freelance block: keep the dates on the client lines but attach them all to the single employer entry
- Candidates who name their own LLC as the employer with clients beneath: treat the LLC as the one employer

## Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_T2UdEe4MdAvjp7jel4c_0g