Advice on refocusing resume?
August 4, 2011 9:44 AM   Subscribe

Help my mom (a social worker with 25+ years of varied experience) clarify and refocus her her resume?

My mom has a lot of experience in various fields of social work, and somewhat recently tried to transition from a clinical to educational setting. She successful, in that she landed a part time job at a therapeutic school in the CPS, but her position is being cut, and she's looking for a job again.

She's looking for help refocusing and clarifying her resume. She has a lot of experience, and a lot of skills, but she's afraid that they're getting lost or that it's too busy. To make things a little more complicated, she also has a large gap where she consulted while she was raising me and my siblings, so she's still a little removed from the workforce still.

At this point, she's both looking for positions in schools, and in more clinical settings. Should she have totally different resumes for the two different types of positions?

Any advice on how she can re-jig her resume to make her stand out and be more attractive to employers would be really helpful!

Let me know if any clarification is needed!

(Also, for privacy reasons, contact information on the resume was slightly changed)
posted by kylej to Work & Money (5 answers total)
 
Experience up top, education on the bottom. Get rid of career summary.

There's a lot of debate if anyone's resume should be longer than a page.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:56 AM on August 4, 2011 [1 favorite]


At this point, she's both looking for positions in schools, and in more clinical settings. Should she have totally different resumes for the two different types of positions?

Yes, I think so. The more targeted the resume, the more likely it'll be picked for further review.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:02 AM on August 4, 2011 [2 favorites]


Change the part-time consultant thing to just consultant.

The cover letter is going to be critical. Social work and teaching are two fields in which it's generally acceptable to mention the skills gained from years of parenting. They're used to women having choppy work histories because of family responsibilities.
posted by mareli at 10:16 AM on August 4, 2011 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: To clarify, she didn't transition to teaching, but to working as a social worker in schools. Thank-you for the suggestions, they're very helpful so far!
posted by kylej at 10:22 AM on August 4, 2011


She's got a lot of overlapping positions that make her work history confusing to read through. A modified functional resume might be just the ticket for her. In it, she would have two categories of accomplishments: one for clinical type settings, and one for school based settings. Then she could list her work history - just the position title, employer, and dates - in a later section.

This would make it easier to do two targeted resumes. One, for clinical positions, would have the clinical-related accomplishments listed before (and with more bullet points than) the school-based accomplishments. Then, for school-based positions, she would reverse them.

In the cover letter, then, she would make her case for why she feels best-suited for whichever type of position.
posted by DrGail at 11:48 AM on August 4, 2011


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