Three years ago I lost my job, went for a two year degree, and have been looking for work ever since. Since long term unemployment is frowned upon I’m wondering if this would help.
My wife is disabled and with the assistance of aids I help take care of her. I also schedule them every month and if any of them quits I interview and hire replacements. Now I’m not getting paid for this, and since I’m doing this for my wife I’m worried potential employers wont take it as seriously as if I was employed by somebody. But it is work. Would something like this look OK on my Resume?
Volunteer care-giver
From 6/2009 - Present
[ul]
[li]Assist my wife with eating, taking medication, transportation, and other duties as needed.[/li][li]Hire and fire paid care givers.[/li][li]Make schedules for the care givers every month.[/li][/ul]
Personally, I’d leave off the part about it being ‘your wife’. Make it sound like it’s services you provide to a customer/stranger, because you’re hardly a ‘volunteer’ any more than I am a ‘volunteer prostitute and chef’ to my wife.
I might talk about how you do ‘continuous oversight and management of paid car givers’ - ‘hiring and firing’ is really a small part of it.
If it comes up in the interview, you can say it’s your wife, but if I read this on your resume, I’d see it as “Oh, he’s trying to cover up his unemployment”, and worse, I might read it as “Oh, he has a disabled wife, which means he’ll probably be missing lots of work to care for her”. Yes, that is discriminatory, but the fact is, the other resumes don’t throw up that potential red flag. You at least want to get the interview. I think this kind of honesty just means your resume will end up in the discard pile from the start.
When I was a career counselor, I had clients with similar histories. I would say that it is fine to do so, but I would refine it:
[ul]
[li]Care for a disabled family member[/li][li]Schedule, train, and supervise caregivers[/li][li]Coordinate appointments with medical providers <and whomever else>[/li][/ul]
Elevate your language, and leave off that it’s your wife (a potential employer might think that would make you more likely to call out).
On what basis is it discriminatory? Not trying to argue, but having been a hiring manager, this is not clear to me. I was not told I can’t discriminate against someone because their wife might be disabled. Only on factors directly related to him. Am I mistaken?
Agreed, but that wasn’t the part I was asking about. I inferred, perhaps incorrectly, that the point was it was illegal to discriminate against someone who offers the information that his wife is disabled.
Your original idea is terrible. A resume is a marketing tool, not a legal document. You need to express skills you are sure you have and why you are good for the position but, when it comes down to it lie (or fib if that is a more PC term) about the specifics about why you think you are good for it. It is a time-honored tradition that everyone and every company engages in. Abandon the high road and make it sound like you would be a good interview candidate. If you make it, and you become a great employee it is a win-win (in company speak). If you are too honest, you won’t ever get to meet them at all. Capitalism is a brutal game and you have to play it fast and loose if you expect to make it.
Don’t tell them about your wife at all even in the interview. There are ways to deal with that after you are hired legally. I say this from working for lots of companies almost everyone has heard of. They lie to you, you lie to them and the world is put back in balance.
The [Americans with Disabilities] Act also protects you if you are a victim of discrimination because of your family, business, social or other relationship or association with an individual with a disability.
Separately, it is illegal to retaliate against an employee for taking legitimate Family & Medical Leave under the FMLA to care for a disabled family member.
From time to time I might bend the truth, but I don’t lie because I don’t want to get caught in a lie. And if I’m caught in a lie, they have a legitimate reason to fire me or not hire me in the first place.
Well you don’t have a job now do you? Just sayin’. There is a big difference between spinning experience that you really have or covering gaps in a resume and claiming you have a Harvard MBA when you don’t. Like I said, it is a marketing document, not a polygraph and you just want one foot in the door. Don’t share your wife’s condition with any potential employer. There are federal laws that can help you with that after you have worked there for some time. Full honesty is not always the best policy and I say that as someone that has hired lots of people. Get the job, do your best work, and then work with your life circumstances from there.
Primary Caregiver - Volunteer
[ul]
[li]Provide care and assistance to a disabled family member.[/li][li]Interview, hire, and fire assistant caregivers.[/li][li]Train, schedule, and supervise other caregivers.[/li][li]Use Excel to create medical charts and caregiver schedules.[/li][li]Schedule medical appointments and arrange transportation.[/li][/ul]
Thanks. I think I’ll take off the volunteer part though. And I forgot to add the date.
There’s just one more problem. On my other jobs I put the address. If I’m trying to not mention I’m taking care of my wife then I can’t put the address, but yet it will stand out because the other jobs have addresses listed.
It looks like you are trying to bullshit people with a made up job. And I imagine it is probably irrelevant to the actual sort of work you want to do anyway.
A year long gap of unemployment is not a big deal in this economy. If anyone asks, just be honest and say you took a hiatus after school to help care for your wife.
Unless you can convince me that having the exact street address of a previous job will help you obtain an interview for a new job, take the addresses off. Print a copy of your present resume first, in case you get a job with an application which asks for exact addresses, but take the addresses off the resume.
(Although, if having a good job is the standard by how we judge who is qualified to give resume-building advice, um, I’m not qualified. Still, I don’t see why your resume benefits from having street addresses on it.)
I think it’s okay that they know it’s a family member, but a wife specifically would give me a lot of questions- specifically what will she do while you are working and will this lead to lots of missed work.
If I can believe it’s a sick parent or something, these questions are not so pressing…perhaps other siblings are helping or they have moved on to a nursing home. But for a disabled wife I am going to think that you have primary responsibility and this could become a problem for me as a business owner.