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Related Discussions
Resume for old people
lizpil
Member
Hey everyone,
I'm an older student with lots of job experience. For the law school resumes, do they have to be extensive? Would UCLA care that I worked at Ticketmaster in the 90's?
Comments
I think approach it like you would any other resume - put in the relevant and recent stuff, cut off things in the past that don't matter as much. I've been out of school for 10+ years, so I didn't put in old summer jobs and part time things. There's usually a place within the application to enter in all of your work information, so your resume can be shorter.
I'm not an admissions expert, so definitely seek some information from someone with more knowledge of the admissions process here in the 7sage community. However, I will be limiting my resume work experience to my previous 3 jobs (10 year span) because they demonstrate professional growth and accomplishments, and other skill sets I feel make me a strong candidate now.
If Ticketmaster demonstrates an important skill or accomplishment then include it. If it was just another job, I don't think schools want a complete employment history and I would limit jobs to more recent and relevant ones.
Many schools are happy with two-page résumés, so some curtailing is fine.
Pay attention to the school’s resume prompt. Some specifically ask for all employment, both full and part-time. While preparing applications, I actually had to adjust my resume to reflect some part-time work that I initially left off my “main” resume. I ended up submitting 2 different versions of my resume depending on the school’s individual prompt. I feel quite confident that my grocery bagging experience in the late 1980's will be the deciding factor in my admission.
Thanks everyone. It's going to be interesting trying to figure these employment dates out. I was not the best recordkeeper in my 20's.
@"Leah M B" I've seen them ask for all employment information on the actual application and I just put in the relevant jobs listed on my resume. Have you been putting ALL employment history? I have also been out of school for a while. Like @lizpil, coming up with some of those dates will be interesting...
Yeah, I wasn't sure how to handle some of that stuff. I've worked for over 20 years since I was in high school. I ended up including most of it though because I thought showing work experience through college would look good.
I included everything except that for the really old stuff I condensed the description and for the newer stuff the description is much longer.
I was also told by a consultant that even though its been a thousand years since I went to school, that the school section should be at the top of my resume and not at the end after employment.
I called UCLA and Loyola. They both said do the best you can with date ranges. That's going to be my strategy is to ask every school what they want and then put an addendum. I'm just going to try to call each employer, if they still exist, in good measure.
Now to figure out when I got that ticket in Utah for having a pack of cigarrettes...
Yeah, that's how I approached it. On my resume, I only put my post-college experience, plus an internship from my senior year that I thought would reflect well. But on the application, most ask for your entire employment history and that took me for-ev-er to figure out. I've also been working for 20 years now, including high school employment. But I entered all that info to the application and then on the resume just listed the internship + post-college work, to give an overview of my career path, essentially.
Allow me to try and put your soul at ease, if it isn't already.
I took a class with an attorney who used to work for the state bar ethics committee. I once asked her if providing incorrect employment dates would be an issue for the bar admission screening process. She said that, so long as the applicant tried his or her best to confirm his or her answers, minor deviations should not be an issue (hence the final signatures on law school applications -- "I hereby acknowledge that all of the answers I provided on this document are true and correct to the best of my knowledge and allthatmumbojumbo"). She said incorrect employment dates may be a problem if they occur way too frequently, are way too drastic (e.g. claiming one worked at a company for over three years, when in fact he or she was terminated after a few months), are fabricated, etc.
Of course, every state bar association would be different. But you know what I am trying to convey.
@FixedDice Thank you! My application is going to be titled, "The girl with 1,000 addenda"
@"Leah M B" Thank you! My old gmail saved the day. I found some resumes from college. Thank you though for the input! I wasn't being thorough enough before I read this.
One thing you could do is hire a service to investigate your background. Trust me, they will be able to come up with the dates....
@"Chipster Study" Good idea. I will run a cursory background check on myself to see what it says.