Time in graduate school is not time unemployed. So you don’t really have that big a gap. In this economy, one year isn’t a big thing to explain.
I would make a version of the resume with this and without this experience. Only send the one with it if the experience is relevant to that particular job. (And in fact, I’d make as many versions of the resume as there are kinds of jobs you’re applying for. )
No need to include the street address of previous jobs on your resume. That’s only wasting space that you could be using to describe your accomplishments.
This. Look, too many people treat the resume like an interview. It’s not. It’s a list of your qualifications.
The recruiting staff have a job posting that has a list of qualification that are required and ones that are desired. All they’re doing is running down your resume and trying to find all those requirements. That’s it. You’ll either get a checkmark or an X next to each one. The people with the most checks get the interviews.
So what you need to ask yourself is whether or not any of this caregiver stuff applies to those requirements. If they don’t, then I doubt the recruiter will even READ that section.
Furthermore, people treat unemployment stretches like some sort of black mark on their record. It’s not. Sometimes it’s a bonus! Recruiters just want to know if your experience is recent. I don’t think you forgot how to use MS Word in a year. So you’re good. The benefit for you is that you can start right away. There’s no “Oh, I got the job? Ok, then I have to get a counteroffer from my company and then give them two weeks. I’ll get back to you.” When I was recruiting, I actually preferred working with unemployed people- they were always available and got back to me quickly.
My advice to you- delete the whole section and just let them infer your unemployment.
I would not put it on my resume to apply for an office/clerical position. Don’t consider the 2 years you were in school to be unemployed time. It is a perfectly valid reason to say you went back to school instead of working for 2 years. If anyone questions the last year just say you had a family member with some health issues but now you are ready to work again. Don’t dwell on your wife’s condition, keep things based on your paid work experience and schooling.
Volunteering is a valid way to get work experience, but listing your time taking care of your wife, IMO, makes it like you have nothing else to put on your resume, and it is kind of a stretch to say you ‘volunteered’ for this. Yes, you did it without pay, but to me volunteering means you sought out the work, and usually there is someone who supervised or can provide a reference to the work you did. In this instance there is no one to vouch for your quality of work except your wife, who hardly counts as a reference. (Don’t get me wrong, I know how hard it can be to take full time care of someone.)
If you learned a new skill that is relevant to the position while taking care of her, if for example you taught yourself excel to keep track of her care, just list excel as one of your skills.
FWIW, I am not in HR but I do work in an office/administration position and I was involved in choosing candidates and interviewing the woman who job shares with me.
Thanks, but I haven’t added it to my resume. I was just asking if I should. But as for unemployment being a good thing, a month ago a pit thread was made linking to this article saying pretty much the opposite. That’s part of what has me worried, but oh well. Not much I can do about it.
At any rate, I may have another way to obtain a job. I went to a Goodwill job placement center and an employment specialist I talked to knows of two agencies that place people in jobs for the government or non-profit agencies. A certain percentage has to be people with physical problems or disabilities. I’m not disabled, but I was able to get a doctor’s note limiting the time I stand at my last job because I have bad feet. That might be enough for the job agencies. I’m going to try that route.
I have been in a position to hire people at numerous points in my life and have ALWAYS seen the functional resume as some kind of cover for something the candidate is trying to hide. Unless your functional skills are very unique or you are switching industries, I would generally reject it. Since this is an office/clerical job, I doubt the skills are that unique, so I’d recommend steering away from it.
I also disagree with leaving the caregiver experience off and letting someone ‘infer’ your unemployment. If I have a resume that ended in 2007/2008, my first thought would be 'This candidate isn’t very detail oriented and sent me a copy of an old resume and/or couldn’t even be bothered to update their resume. Pass on this one."
I agree with Velma that going to school is not the same as being ‘unemployed’. List it like it were a job in the chronology of the resume.
Now that we know what kind of job you are looking for, I would re-word the ‘Caregiver’ position to focus on office/clerical skills. That is “Drafted schedules in Microsoft Excel”, “Designed and developed procedures for paid care providers in Microsoft Word”, “Interviewed candidates and oversaw paid care giver services to the client”, “Organized files and managed data”, “Provided direct patient care”, etc.
Once again, I would not mention your ‘wife’ or even ‘family member’. HIPAA laws prevent the employer from asking a lot of questions about the ‘client’ and whether or not it is legal, if you throw out that kind of information, you’d definitely be placing yourself in my secondary pile if I was the one hiring. As I said, I would assume it means you’d be taking lots of time off work to tend to this person whether or not this is true, and I would be afraid to even ask for clarification because you might try to make a case out of it, even if you really weren’t the best candidate.
I agree with what others have already said about addresses. Leave them off.
You are very focused on the fact that any implication this person isn’t your ‘wife/family member’ will somehow mean you are living a lie and that you will magically be fired down the road, if hired. In my experience, the only time this happens is when someone is otherwise looking for an excuse to fire you anyway, in which case, you were going to be fired regardless, and this was just a convenient excuse. It would be doubtful I would even ask for references for a clerical type job if I was the hiring manager, and might only ask for a basic demonstration that you know how to use MS-Office. If pressed for ‘who was your employer?’ on the care giver position, you can simply say you were ‘self employed’.
I wouldn’t put it on your resume as if it were a job. A lot of interviewers will ask you for specifics about your job that will reveal you were merely caring for your wife, and that will make you look like a liar. Don’t make yourself look like a fool by trumping up your caregiving as if it were a job.
I have known some people who went through a period of unemployment due to caregiving. They mentioned that in the cover letter. IMHO, that’s the appropriate place for explaining deficiencies in your resume. Having gone back to school will cover you for two of the three years anyway. And one year of unemployment isn’t exactly unusual these days.