When you are creating your resume, you don’t need to put every random job you’ve ever had. What companies do is they look at your jobs on the resume, and at most call the employer and ask them if you worked for them and how you did at the job.
There is no way for a non government employee to know if you worked other jobs. Keep off any jobs that you worked at for less than 2 years and use every skill you learned as a skill for your resume.
Nothing hurts your resume more than having 3 or 4 jobs in a span of 2 years because it shows you are unreliable.
On the other hand, having a one year gap without any work raises its own red flags. Need a good reason to have large swaths of not working.
“I was providing end of life care for a family member.”
You get benefits for that (in some places), and why would you not list that on the resume ahead of time to explain the gap?
Omitting Information is the largest red flag you can provide.
Because resumes are for listing relevant work experience not a timeline of your life events.
Being a caregiver is relevant work experience, quite sad that some people think caring for others isn’t relevant for a large portion of work…
Talk about not trying to sell yourself wow. If shows a whole bunch of characteristics that are known for employability. Wild you wouldn’t want to show that you don’t mind putting others first, can work in a steel environment, caring, works well with others, etc.
Caring for a family member would have no relevance to just as many, if not more, positions than it holds relevance to.
Like any tech related position beyond (at quite a stretch) helpdesk, not relevant.
There’s something to be said for character reference in your resume, but most places are more concerned about more tangible skills.
Like another commenter suggested, maybe under an “other experience” section, but not in the same area as relevant work experience unless you’re trying to pad things.
Caring for a family member (caregiving isn’t actually just limited to family members FYi) includes but not limited; dealing with financing, scheduling, transit, meal planning and prep, etc. you’re the persons care taker, you do everything they would normally be doing. There’s every day tasks that are relevant to every job that’s out there. There’s a reason why people can’t hold jobs while being a caretaker after all… or does this mean absolutely nothing to people?
Tell me you think being a caretaker means sitting around doing nothing all day….
You aren’t thinking like a hiring manager.
Being a caregiver is relevant work experience if the job you’re applying to is for caregiving, or at least something semi-related like the medical field.
But if you’re applying for programming or sales positions it’s entirely irrelevant.
Dealing with finances, scheduling, planning and transit aren’t relevant to a sales position? That’s an interesting take.
Do you not realize what being a caregiver involves?
I wouldn’t list it because it’s in a section that is titled “Work Experience” not my life journal. I even personally call mine “Relevant Experience” and note to please reach out if you’d like to see more, out of respect for their time. My full experience would take up like five pages of resume with everything else. Besides, to me the point of the resume is to get to that phone call, and after that I figure I can talk to anything they’d like to know.
Man I wish I lived in a place that had benefits like that.
Being a caregiver is its own work experience, you should list it. How is it any different than the paid jobs that do the same thing?
It also shows your willing to put your own stuff aside and help.
I guess if you’re just using this as a lie, you wouldn’t realize all the actual benefits something like this could do for your resume.
Sure but being a caregiver doesn’t help explain why you’d be good for a software engineering role, or whatever.
Actually, caring for others, is quite a relevant work trait for even software engineering. Don’t want a bunch of people who can’t handle communicating with others or can’t get someone to do something.
It’s all I how you spin it, and clearly you aren’t using this for anything but a lie if you think it’s not valid work experience.
We get it, you were a caregiver. Good job.
Tell that to the AI that processes 1000 resumes a day filtering ones that seem more “at risk” or “less professional” than others
I work in the medical field, and everything you are saying is complete nonsense. If you’re applying for medical school or nursing school or something, talking about that experience can be part of a personal statement or entrance essay, but it has no place on a CV or resume. To a certain extent, taking care of loved ones should be a basic requirement for being human, not a special experience or qualification for any kind of job.
Sheesh, I must have missed the memo where caretaking a family member required making it your entire personality. Hope you and your family member are doing ok.
As a team lead who is in the process of hiring for three separate positions, I would treat any applicant who insisted on the transferability of their clearly unrelated skills as a “not a good fit” candidate. I get the importance of soft skills, and I value those, but to maintain that a caretaker can seamlessly fit into basically any job role with just a little imagination is disingenuous and a little embarrassing. I’m looking for concrete skills, not spin. By all means, put your best foot forward, just don’t wear clown shoes while you do it.
Decided to take a break from the capitalist system.
Indeed thankfully for us, covid which can reasonably span from 2020-2022 but yeah true.