Job Advice

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I need some job advice
Is anyone in HR? I don’t know what to do about my resume. I had to quit my job as a pharmacy technician. I had only been at this place for three months. The reason I quit is that ever since I fell off that stupid horse and fractured my back in August, I can’t stand for more than a couple hours before my back is screaming.

What do I do with on my resume? Do I list that job? Do I put it in my cover letter? Do I use a cover letter?

Yes, I’m close to 40, and I’m an idiot.

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But you’re well-loved. Never forget that.

3

There are a lot of ways of organizing resume information besides a detailed chronology - you could do it by grouping related skills, or just mention significant career highlights. I think it really depends on the nature of the job you’re now going for; if you’ll be doing something vastly different in your new position, then you may not need to mention unrelated job experiences. I don’t think you ever need to list the reasons why you left a job, there’s nothing to be gained from that.

I’m not in HR or anything - you might want to check out What Color is Your Parachute for advice & recommendations. Good luck & I hop you’re feeling better!

4

I’m not in HR but recently worked with several very good headhunters and job consultants.

Two general principles they told me may be helpful for your situation.

  1. The purpose of the resume is to highlight your skills and good qualities so that someone can–in a thirty second (or shorter) review of it decide that it is worth bringing you in for an interview. The purpose of a resume is not to account for your whereabouts since graduation from college. In other words, to echo what fessie said, you don’t need to put down everything you ever did in chronological order, thus highlighting gaps that you’d rather not talk about, etc.

I found it helpful and effective to write a 3 or 4 (or 5) line summary at the top of resume. This helps focus the reader on your message: the specific reasons why you would be perfect for the job for example (and I’m obviously just making this up) a job at a company selling drugs to veterinarians:
pharmacy tech with 10 years experience in largest pharmacy in Minnesotta.
Competitive equestrian with several trophies in show jumping
Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry with minor in Marketing.

  1. If there is a subject you feel weird talking about, or a question you are nervous about dealing with (e.g. arrogant interviewer says “why the hell did you leave that job after only 3 months? Did you get fired for incompetence or something?”) you want to figure out a simple, SHORT, answer that addresses the question, and then a segueway into another topic. You want to make it clear that you are running TO something, not running away from something.

I would not bring up the subject of what you have been doing recently unless someone asks. If they ask, I would say you were recently working as a pharmacy tech. If they ask why you left, I would say that due to an injury, you left because of a medical issue that has now been resolved. Then I would change the subject to talk about how excited you are to be talking to this new company because of their ________ program.

  1. A cover letter should be about how working for this company or organization is exactly the opportunity you’ve been looking for because [insert short paraphrase of the 3 to 5 line list on the top of your resume.]