Grandma's Turning Blue... the same color as the films I sell online...

April 2, 2007 10:50 AM

ResumeFilter: Objective or No Objective? List the unrelated work history or leave it out? Does doing work for your college count as "work history" if they paid you but it also counted as a class?! Please help me with my resume!

I think I've found a great job and it is actually in the field I want to be in! While I will soon have a degree in the field and a lot of experience thanks to school, I have very little experience outside of that.

This is common for recent college grads, but I'm 28!

The fields I'm looking into is web design and graphic design, a field I believe I am talented at. The college I am about to graduate from seemed to agree as they paid me to design their IT department website, the site for the Creative Arts Magazine, and the school paper's website. These sites were also considered projects as they replaced classes that my advisor felt were beneath my level.

I also served as web editor, design editor, and editor-in-chief of the school paper, positions I was also paid for.

My other work history is mainly retail & retail management experience.

Also of note, and a fact that gives my grandmother heart palpatations, the new job is in the "adult entertainment" field.

So here are my "hard resume" questions:

- When moving into an entirely new field, do you include the unrelated work experience?

- Does work that counted as a class but you were paid for count as Educational Experience or Work Experience?

- I've seen a few sites that say to leave off the "objective" as it is considered pointless (it always boils down to "get a job with you") and can negatively effect scanning... are they right?

- I will not graduate until May, but my graduation date is going to be backdated to December 2006. How the heck do I include the info on my resume? (My college will say I haven't graduated if you called today, but if you called in May, they'd say I'd graduated in December).

- How do I tell Grandma that I'm gonna be a pornographer?

posted by aristan to work & money (10 comments total)

Put together a 'portfolio' - a description of work in the field that you've done, and include links to those sites. That's really more relevant than your resume in this instance, anyway.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 10:58 AM on April 2, 2007

1. Include the unrelated experience if you can think of any way to spin it so it's related...or if it fills huge gaps in your resume that you think will seem suspicious.

2. Work that counted as a class and was paid can count as both or one or the other. I'd count it as work experience myself, since that's what people hiring you mostly care about.

3. Objectives can be good if you have a really broad base of experience and it's not immediately clear from your resume what you want to do. I added an objective to my resume when people saw I had software experience and writing experience (and, um, was female) and assumed I was looking to be a technical writer. Since I wanted to program computers, once I figured out it was ambiguous, I removed the ambiguity.

4. Say December 2006 and explain this to any recruiters who call you. Explain this to anyone you list as references so they know about this weirdness.

5. Good luck.
posted by crinklebat at 11:00 AM on April 2, 2007 [1 favorite]

1. Include the unrelated experience as long as it demonstrates something strong and positive about you. For instance, I actually consider a great plus when I receive applications from people in their 20s that list waitressing and counter-service jobs, even though they are in the museum field by the time I see them. This tells me a lot about work ethic and how they arrived at where they presently are.

2. If you were paid, list it under work experience. Work experience carries more weight than educational experience.

3. An objective can be heplful if it says something more than 'to get a job with you.' That sort of objective is worse than pointless. However, an objective that says something about what you have to offer and hope to get out of your job can be very helpful. For instance 'to use my creative and leadership skills to refresh and advance an established company's corporate image' tells me you're thinking more deeply about what you'd be best at.

4. What crinklebat said.

5. Does she really need to know? You're in publishing!
posted by Miko at 11:13 AM on April 2, 2007 [1 favorite]

I covered employment issues for a television show a while back.
In my kind of professional opinion:
No Objectives section.
Skip the unrelated stuff unless you have nothing or it really shows a serious accomplishment. To most hiring people, the paperboy and gap clerk jobs on the professional resume equal a net loss of respect.
Do list all related graphic and web work. Do not mention that it was a for-credit class substitute unless directly asked, which is when you should describe that scenario quickly, clearly, and directly.
You should have a simple one-pager at this point in your career. You were paid for the work at college, so IT website design, magazine design, and then the newspaper stuff is really quite enough.
With the graduation stuff, just put "scheduled for graduation with degree x May 2007."
Good luck with Grandma.
Go forth and be confident.
posted by BillBishop at 11:17 AM on April 2, 2007

My experience looking at resume's when trying to select a new employee:

1) Include everything that you can make relevant to the job you are applying for. It doesn't matter what field it was in, whether it was an internship or a paid job, whatever, include it if you can spin it right. I tend to skim parts of the resume that appear irrelivant to the job we're hiring for.

2) I like objectives, or anything that makes reading the resume eaiser, IF it has real content. Your objective should sound authenitc and should be a thinly veiled forum for showing off some relevant skill or experience.

3) No one is going to check on your graduation date. Just put in the date that seems more favorable, and if it comes up, explain what happened. I doubt it will come up.
posted by serazin at 11:24 AM on April 2, 2007

As far as telling Grandma ... it's now a family story that when my great-grandmother asked uncle (then just out of college) what he did for a living, he said, "Well, you know what VisiCalc is? No? Oh. Well, it's sort of like that." You don't necessarily need to go into details.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 11:25 AM on April 2, 2007

Writing an objective will help you clearly define what you want - then you can streamline the rest of your CV to support that objective.

Anything that does not support the objective does not get mentioned.

Anything that can count as a transferrable skill and thus can be aligned with your objective stays - as long as you make clear how it fits into the objective.

If you take that approach it helps you write a consistent CV. Once you have a CV which is in line with the objective the CV will stand on its own - without the objective if you prefer.

However an objective will make a CV easier to read and will tell the reader a lot about you.
posted by koahiatamadl at 11:37 AM on April 2, 2007

1. No experience is truly "unrelated." You can always, always word something to showcase a specific skill or duty that you think your employers would find appealing. Just be prepared to back it up in the interview.

2. Work if you got paid a decent amount as sometimes they ask for your salary history.

3. I vote no on objective mainly because I try to put my objective in my cover letter. I find cover letters to be a more flexible medium to convey your objective. But who knows if they get read?

4. What will it say on your paperwork? I've never heard of backdating graduation dates. I'm a recent graduate and I made it a point to show on my resume that I worked consistently after graduation to make up for my lack of experience.

If you are a full-time student I think it would be best to say that you graduate in May to account for those five months, even if you have something else going on in that time period. It's probably better to look super busy (school + other stuff) as opposed to way too free (just other stuff).

5. Your gram loves you, I'm sure, whether or not you tell her the details. The point is you're working using your skills and talents and you like your work.

Good luck!
posted by kitalea at 12:11 PM on April 2, 2007

This craigslist post may have some decent pointers.

I personally would avoid the objective unless it actually adds information to the resume. Most objectives don't -- they just state what's obvious from the experience, skills, and cover letter. This isn't always true, and I only have experience with one field, programming / web development. With a more varied background, and particularly if you were posting a resume online without targeting a specific job, I suppose it could be useful.
posted by coined at 6:55 PM on April 2, 2007

Not sure about the US, but here in Australia it's not that uncommon to say that you finished in November, but will be graduating in April.

This is because quite often graduation will happen a LONG time after you finish your coursework. Therefore, I'd just say that you finished in x, and will graduate in May. I don't think the employer will even batt an eyelid.
posted by ranglin at 7:22 PM on April 2, 2007