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Careerchat III


S John

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11 hours ago, SpaceForce Tywin et al. said:

Resume question. Do you always have to list your past job experience is sequential order, or is it okay to put the most impressive stuff at the top? Just asking because a lot of my past work should blow people away, but my current job isn't comparatively impressive. 

Usually I would list in reverse sequence because most recent is most relevant and you can show the progressive development over your career.  But lots of people have non-linear career progression and still use this format.

If you think your current situation is less relevant or less impressive then just give it fewer words of description.  Use the word count to emphasize the experience you want them to notice.  If you mix the chronological order then that may be confusing, and possibly viewed as misrepresenting.

You could omit completely your current position but I’d suggest it’s better to show you are currently doing something rather than nothing. .  

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Mine is sequential but I also leave out 2 shorter-term jobs that I've had post-college that are of little relevance to my overall career track.  My 2nd professional job was at an engineering company where my responsibilities were not really related to anything I do now and I only worked there for 5 months. 

Later on I went to grad school after I'd had a couple professional jobs and right after I finished I worked in a temporary job for the city water department for 3 months in a role that might be best described as 'bushwhacker' while I was looking for more relevant work.  I was given a truck, a machete, and a stack of maps with storm water features that the city had no idea where they came out and I had to go into the woods and find them and put them on the map.  I was just doing this to make ends meet so that I could be picky about what post-grad school job I took.  That job was actually pretty fun, but my resume would read funny if I went from an 'Analyst' to a 'Bushwhacker' to a 'Researcher'.  Kinda like, hey, wait, what was going on with this one?  

Anyway, I get around not putting these on my resume because I don't bother to put anything more than the year when listing the dates I worked somewhere on my resume.  Since they were both short term I can leave them off without it looking like there were employment gaps.  And there weren't employment gaps, I just only choose to tell the relevant parts of the story, and some of it is also in the interest of keeping the resume shorter.

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That's kind of what I expected to hear. The issue is that mine is so stark. I was an assistant campaign manager to a state senator at 22, then spent a few years working for a U.S. Senator and then did party work and got fed up and left the political world. Since then I've spent a year at a major bank and a couple of years at a major hospital, do financial work at both in the dreaded cube farm. They aren't jobs to be embarrassed about, but they probably won't appeal to a NGO or something to that effect. I'm looking for the type of job that would look good on a law or grad school resume, and these last two gigs have little to no application in what I would like to do. The good thing is today I have officially hit the high end of my financial goals before going back to school, a year ahead of schedule, so pay isn't an issue, but the experience is. 

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Just a word on long commutes . . .

At one time, I commuted from Orange County, California, to Los Angeles, California, for about five years (1 1/2 hours on a good day, and there were VERY FEW good days.)  The money made it worth it, but more than that, I discovered audio books.  I swear there were times I actually took a couple additional spins around the block before getting home, just so I could finish a book. 

I eventually switched to the Metrolink train, but that necessitated my getting up at 5:00 a.m. to accommodate its schedule.  It made for loooooong workdays.

 

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3 hours ago, Theda Baratheon said:

Job didn’t let me know today like they said they would so I’ve been proper anxious all day. Tomorrow is gonna be horrible if they still don’t let me know but is it okay to give them a ring or an email on Friday? (2 days after they said they would) 

Sorry, but in my experience that's usually a bad sign: Either they have another favourite who didn't commit yet, so they try to keep you in the pipeline or they have a dysfunctional and/or unprofessional HR departement which usually spells trouble as well. I would not put a lot of hope in this job. :-(

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12 hours ago, Alarich II said:

Sorry, but in my experience that's usually a bad sign: Either they have another favourite who didn't commit yet, so they try to keep you in the pipeline or they have a dysfunctional and/or unprofessional HR departement which usually spells trouble as well. I would not put a lot of hope in this job. :-(

yeah I didn’t get it. I’m really gutted actually - it would have been perfect for me in so, so many ways. Too many ways. But they let me know by the most generic email ever. Oh well. I’m only 24 so I suppose I have more opportunities in the future. I finish my MA in less than a year & I’m finally ready to book my driving test and having a full driving lisence will open up lot s of jobs across country for me. 

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Sorry to hear the confirmation. But don't let that . My wife suffered through 18 months in a toxic work environment with a bunch of petty co-workers who made her feel like shit every day. After she finally quit (much to the relief of husband and children), she applied for a job she really wanted and got rejected after a long, agonizing wait. Coming from a bullying and toxic work environment, she already had low confidence and it really crushed her badly. And only 6 weeks later she applied for a job she thought that she'd never get, but still put an entire week of work into a killer presentation. And not only did she get the new job, it also has much better pay and better hours to complement her part-time Masters Degree than the job she was initially pitching for. So the lesson here is, don't give up and especially don't let these things eat up your self-confidence.

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1 hour ago, Alarich II said:

Sorry to hear the confirmation. But don't let that . My wife suffered through 18 months in a toxic work environment with a bunch of petty co-workers who made her feel like shit every day. After she finally quit (much to the relief of husband and children), she applied for a job she really wanted and got rejected after a long, agonizing wait. Coming from a bullying and toxic work environment, she already had low confidence and it really crushed her badly. And only 6 weeks later she applied for a job she thought that she'd never get, but still put an entire week of work into a killer presentation. And not only did she get the new job, it also has much better pay and better hours to complement her part-time Masters Degree than the job she was initially pitching for. So the lesson here is, don't give up and especially don't let these things eat up your self-confidence.

Thank you :) and I’m glad things worked out okay for your wife! Hope her Masters goes/or did go (?) well. I’m doing mine part time as well - they did ask how full time work was going to affect my masters degree. So maybe it’s worked out better for me too. 

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On 9/14/2018 at 7:16 PM, SpaceForce Tywin et al. said:

That's kind of what I expected to hear. The issue is that mine is so stark. I was an assistant campaign manager to a state senator at 22, then spent a few years working for a U.S. Senator and then did party work and got fed up and left the political world. Since then I've spent a year at a major bank and a couple of years at a major hospital, do financial work at both in the dreaded cube farm. They aren't jobs to be embarrassed about, but they probably won't appeal to a NGO or something to that effect. I'm looking for the type of job that would look good on a law or grad school resume, and these last two gigs have little to no application in what I would like to do. The good thing is today I have officially hit the high end of my financial goals before going back to school, a year ahead of schedule, so pay isn't an issue, but the experience is. 

I would NOT worry about what your work experience looks like vis a vis law school.  At all.

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1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

I would NOT worry about what your work experience looks like vis a vis law school.  At all.

Well that’s good to know. I just recall my poli sci and psych professors telling me that if I wasn’t going to go directly to grad school (and I was already taking grad level courses in poli sci), I needed to make sure to find a job in those fields before I going.

The thing I can never get over though is I could have gone directly to my alma mater’s law school for free if I hadn’t taken the LSAT. If I had just done that, I would already have four years of practicing under my belt.

*bangs head on desk*

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18 hours ago, Theda Baratheon said:

Thank you :) and I’m glad things worked out okay for your wife! Hope her Masters goes/or did go (?) well. I’m doing mine part time as well - they did ask how full time work was going to affect my masters degree. So maybe it’s worked out better for me too. 

She started the Masters degree this summer, class is only 2 days a week (Friday/Saturday), but the workload (papers, homework etc.) accounts for another 1.5 days, the rest is for work, family, volunteer activities etc. She loves the Masters Degree (Public Administration) but with a full time job it would have been near impossible.

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3 hours ago, Alarich II said:

She started the Masters degree this summer, class is only 2 days a week (Friday/Saturday), but the workload (papers, homework etc.) accounts for another 1.5 days, the rest is for work, family, volunteer activities etc. She loves the Masters Degree (Public Administration) but with a full time job it would have been near impossible.

Mine is all distance learning and part time so all done online (with a physical university though). Good luck to her! I’ve been juggling part time work, volunteering & a masters for a couple years now. It’s tough but definitely manageable and actually the strict time keeping personally helps me with my work more than having lots of free time would. I’m sure she’ll be brilliant ! :) but definitely a full time job might have been impossible for me too so maybe its worked out. 

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On 9/20/2018 at 12:08 PM, Theda Baratheon said:

yeah I didn’t get it. I’m really gutted actually - it would have been perfect for me in so, so many ways. Too many ways. But they let me know by the most generic email ever. Oh well. I’m only 24 so I suppose I have more opportunities in the future. I finish my MA in less than a year & I’m finally ready to book my driving test and having a full driving lisence will open up lot s of jobs across country for me. 

Sometimes it's not even that you're not good enough as a candidate (to be hired for the role), but that there's a slightly better candidate maybe with more experience or something.

The recruitment process can be excruciating from the other side too. We have to justify every step in the process and it's all scored. Sometimes we can't even choose the person we think would be best for the role because another candidate filled out their application form better and used more key words. 

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27 minutes ago, Isis said:

The recruitment process can be excruciating from the other side too. We have to justify every step in the process and it's all scored. Sometimes we can't even choose the person we think would be best for the role because another candidate filled out their application form better and used more key words. 

Thank god, I don't have to justify my recruiting choices, but I have to admit, that when you have a great candidate and he or she decides for another employer, that sucks. The thousands of Euros for the search (and the dearth of good candidates) are one thing, but someone saying that they found someone better is always a bit of a personal disappointment.

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I recently added two new people to my team, both women.  I've been trying to improve our gender balance but there's still a 10:1 gender ratio or worse in the applications we receive.  So I feel good that we made this improvement but we had to concede a bit on experience to make it happen.  Now I have just one more open position to fill, but the technical knowledge requirement for that could make it difficult; I'm pretty sure I'll have to accept someone with less knowledge and experience than the guy we lost. 

My own latest update is that I've joined a foundation board on a volunteer basis.  It's for a network of non-profit health centers in Chicago, serving low income and mostly uninsured people.  I hope I can help them develop the foundation to support the operations of the organization, but I also know that I'm not suited to being a fund-raiser.  I'll see how it goes.

I took my team out on Friday for a volunteer activity.  Usually our team-building excursions involve a fun activity like whirlyball or table tennis, but I thought it was good for us to do something meaningful too.  It went very well but everyone was exhausted afterward so it felt like it ended on a down note.

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  • 1 month later...

If anyone's interested, there is a serious need for line cooks in all kinds of restaurants in the Detroit area.  I just read an article in our newspaper about it.  We have restaurants popping up everywhere around here, but a lack of bodies to fill the jobs. 

Hope this linky-dink works:

https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/dining/mark-kurlyandchik/2018/11/15/skilled-labor-shortage-changing-metro-detroit-restaurants/1933709002/

 

ETA:  It's a pain to read unless you're a subscriber.  :(  But they quoted a sous chef who left his job at an upscale restaurant to be a line cook because of the better hours and pay. 

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Well the meeting is about to start, and I’ve made up my mind that the die is cast. I’m not going to let racism in the office go unchecked anymore, and if it ends with me getting fired, so be it. The good news I spoke with some friends last night and got several job offers, including one that would allow me to return to D.C. We’ll see how it goes…

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