Last week I met with a city attorney who has been licensed in Nevada for a while. He helped give me an inkling as to what the legal community in Las Vegas is like. The guy was straightforward and casual, and probably very likable to those who know him, but mildly intimidating to a deferential nobody like me (who would like nothing more than to chat with him as a colleague might, but knows he hasn't earned that status).
I gave him a copy of my resume, in the event of future referral, and he looked over it. He mentioned that he'd read hundreds of resumes over the years, but that he'd never seen one like mine that conveyed no clear pattern. He found it perplexing, and I explained that I took the Whitman's Sampler approach to my past employment during my law school years. But I have to believe that I'm going to face a greater level of scrutiny in any interview, and should probably prepare a more serious answer.
On a related note, I would like to pose an open-ended resume question: where do you put the family-oriented job that is both chronologically first and last in your work timeline? A long time ago I decided to place it as the final entry, arguing that it is the least familiar to an employer, and therefore the least impressive. But now I'm thinking it should go first, seeing as how I've done the most recent legal work for the family business, and that the most recent paid non-family work I've done was in the last century. Any thoughts among my readers?
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3 comments:
So, expand. You worked for your parents, then did some other jobs, then worked for your parents again? I would say that if you did anything interesting and law-related (like helping your parents with their real estate transaction), that should be front and center, Mister.
I expand:
My parents opened a convenience store and gas station (and eventually pizzeria) in coastal NC in 1992, during my freshman year of college. I spent summers and holidays working for them. My legal jobs came during the summers of 1996 and 1997. After the great personal shutdown of 1998, I worked there for 3 years before finishing law school. Then I spent a year as a personal caregiver (not really resume material) and then studying for the bar exam.
There's a few legal-type things I did for my parents: negotiated a ATM kiosk lease (still in effect), handled the correspondence with FEMA and the SBA after the hurricanes hit, and worked on selling their property under a seller financing agreement (which we started in September and hope to close by the end of this month).
I suppose I could separate my stints with my parents if I had to (and if space permitted), referring to the standard clerk work until 1995 and the corporate-type work after 1998. But I'm probably going to do as you suggest, and bump the whole section to the beginning of the resume as the most recent employment. That's starting to make sense.
Glad I could help, in some small way. Looking for a job...it chips away at the soul.
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