Tuesday, June 7, 2011

The Paycheck Changes... but the Work, not so much!

"Sometimes life gets in the way," is more than a saying to me. It's a mantra.

I have made a career out of temporary employment. I've had to. Over the past 32 years I've been raising 13 children, so many times the budget has needed a boost. So I go to work. Not counting the one day, or week gigs, I quit counting at having had 45 jobs. That was more than 10 years ago.

Recently I needed to put together an updated resume for contract work bid for the Municipality that I was part of. Over the years I have written MANY resumes. I've even done job-winning resumes for others. For myself, however, I was at the end of my rope with trying to make my experience and background fit on two pages. My husband and friends were enthusiastically encouraging how I could pretty much "do anything".

"Jane-of-All-Trades" isn't really a job description. It does not appear in the Occupational Handbook.

Finally, I threw in the towel and called a professional resume writer who also owns an employment agency. An agency I had actually not worked for, as I wanted someone totally unbiased. Someone who would be thinking of my resume from the viewpoint of a person looking to call me in for an interview (no one really gets a job through the resume, just the interview... then you have to sell yourself from there!)

For a mere $250, I too, could have access to this magical document.

For now I won't go in to how excrutiating the next three hours were. Well, other than I learned that I break a LOT of the rules when I look at writing my own resume. Flaws I wouldn't dare make on someone else's. All under the label of being "too thorough". So, one thing I learned was a few things about myself.

So now, I have an official resume.

Oh, and a really cool pen with multiple laser pointers on it.