AIBU to think SAHMs shouldn't put this nonsense on a CV/job application

[windygallows]

In the last year I've recruited for numerous part-time jobs, receiving applications from many women who took time out to be with family and are now returning to work.

Many of the applicants have been straightforward and simply noted on their CV that they have been SAHM - simple.

But increasingly applicants, perhaps based on some guidance from career counsellors or MN, are finding more creative ways to describe their absence from the workforce.

One, we'll call her Mrs Jones, wrote that for 10 years she was employed by the 'Jones family' and that her work involved 'organizing international travel for her family.' Because organizing a holiday is similar to the tasks led by senior executives.

Another wrote a list of every task she did at home from getting groceries to cleaning the house which, while impressive as an exhaustive list, doesn't really mean much when applying to an office-based role. Especially as it's basically a list of everything most employees have to fit in outside of work.

More galling are the claims that women make about the critical role they played - with my favourite being the one who 'Spent 7 years looking after my two children who needed and deserved my attention.'

There is huge value in the work that SAHMs do but please, please don't put this kind of waffle on your CV. You never know if your interview panel will consist of a FT working, single mom like me who finds it pretty insulting that working means her children apparently lost out on 'the attention they needed and deserved.' Urgh.

t's incredibly offensive to those of us who actually have developed those skills in a professional capacity and is a clear sign the person putting it on their CV doesn't have the faintest idea what the role entails

Incredibly offensive? You offend extremely easily. Slightly annoying yes I can see but this seems extreme.

Taskrabbit sounds good!! I will have a look.

Witchity - you may also want to look on DoIt or similar volunteering type sites as there are some paid roles there for small charities and similar organisations. Your experience sounds like it would work to run admin and fundraising for a charity.

Do your children have any charitable support? if so, do you think it would be worth asking the charity(ies) if that have anything that might be suitable for you, or if they can recommend any others which can?

Do-It - not Dolt as it's written!

Binkybix

Perhaps I am. You wouldn't find it offensive if someone claimed that their normal experience of everyday adult life (regardless of children) was in some way equivalent to your professional experience in a field that's backed up by work experience and qualifications?

Maybe I should start claiming I'm a dermatologist because I watch blackhead removal videos on YouTube. I mean it's basically the same thing, right.

I would think it odd and slightly annoying but certainly not incredibly offensive.

Fair enough. You're obviously more zen than me.

I'll put that on my CV

I wouldn't find it incredibly offensive- I'd just sigh and bin the cv. Fortunately those Cvs don't come along too often.

I agree @TinselTwins.

I had a job for about 15 years (in the 80's and 90's,) with the local authority (office/admin/secretarial type thing,) and it was a piece of piss. Coffee machine on tap, 10 minute break every hour, 70 minute lunch hour, chatting about the previous night's telly for half an hour every day, swapping fashion and hair tips, and doing bits of typing and filing and photocopying in between. AND it was well paid. I was on £13K in the mid 90's.

I had a career break in the early noughties (of 7-8 years,) for several different reasons, I tried to get into the workplace again around 2010, and every job I applied for wanted you to do 6 or 7 different things that would, at one time, have been done by 6 or 7 different people.

Eg, when I was at work in the 80's and 90's, there was a typist, a filing clerk, a wages clerk, a receptionist, an accounts clerk, a PA, and someone who did stock ordering and who sorted deliveries. 7 people for 7 jobs. Now they have 2 people for those same 7 jobs, (usually both employed part time - like 22 to 25 hours a week each,) and they both have to do all the tasks when the other isn't there. I have even encountered some places where they employ just ONE (full time) person for everything that 6 or 7 people used to do. I shit U not.

In addition, I encountered a number of workplaces that wanted you to do stuff outside the normal work you'd expect for that job.

EG, I applied for a job as a receptionist/admin clerk at a gym. I was told at interview that when reception is quiet, I will be expected to go and work behind the bar, and do waitressing in the restaurant, and I will also be expected to help clean the gym equipment.

I also applied for a job as a booking clerk at a little hotel, and fully expected to be asked to do admin and filing and reception etc. But I was told I would also be expected to to housekeeping, and change beds and clean toilets.

AND I applied for a job as admin clerk at a big supermarket, and the job description was taking customer phone calls, and general typing and filing and photocopying. At interview, they told me that when the phones were quiet, and there was not much admin to do, I would be expected to go on the checkouts, and stack shelves.

I have 3 or 4 more examples, but don't want to go on and on, but you probably get the idea!

It's not that I think shelf stacking and waitressing and so on is beneath me, (or cleaning, and changing beds!) but that was NOT what I applied for.

When I was at work in the 80's and 90's, this would have been unheard of. It was one person, one job. I mean FFS, would you employ a plumber and say to him 'when work is a bit slack, we will expect you to scrub the floors, do the washing up, and do an hour's worth of photocopying?' I would imagine most plumbers (and other tradesmen) would tell you to fuck off. Yet it seems to be run of the mill for a number of other jobs to add in loads of extra duties; some that are sod-all to do with the actual job you applied for.

Also many jobs now have zero hours contracts, and pay about half what they used to. The workplace is not what it used to be, and it's no wonder people struggle with stress at work, and with finances, and have to go to food banks etc...

(For the record, in the end, I decided to become self employed. Won't say what I do as it's a bit outing, but it was a very good decision to become self employed. )

Oh and re the OP. I would refrain from putting housewife and mommy duties, but putting any skills you have at all can't hurt, surely...

accrual I just left big4 and honestly the 28-31 year olds put in charge of audits had no clue how to run a team and I shudder at the thought of them interviewing experienced hires. Most of them were still living at home and couldn't manage their laundry let alone anything else. As a mother of 3DC I got more out of my audit team because I managed them like I manage my ASD child, using ABA techniques.

To all on here who are hiring, if you want the best you do have to look through fluff. The research shows a person employed has the best chance at getting a new job followed by someone unemployed followed by someone entering (or reentering) the workforce. We have our own prejudices which we are blind to. DH has a new assistant and she is terrible. The person I wanted him to hire was looking to return to work since her DC were all now school age. It's been a huge lesson to him.

I don't think I'd like to be managed as one would a child. No wonder there is dissatisfaction with Managers if that's going to be the new method. Sorry. It's mad.

Want2bSupermum
I don't work in a big 4 environment so we probably attract a different kind of hire. I'm not sure there are many of my colleagues who would respond well to being managed as you would your ASD child though.

I'm wondering whether that was just clumsily expressed. Perhaps she meant she can see some parallels in the methodology behind ABA and management techniques, rather than actually managing staff like she would manage her child.

I agree with Vivienne and accruel that any manager actually doing the latter would quickly find it wouldn't go down well!

@Want2besupermum

I hear ya.

My husband currently works in middle management for a big company (won't name as potentially outing,) and they have found that women aged 30-40-ish who choose to come back to work after 15 years or so away are often very good workers. They are eager to prove themselves, eager to please, industrious, and good at prioritising and doing 5 things at the same time.

They took on two women in the office a few months ago; a 43 y.o. mother of 2 who has been off work since 2001, and a graduate who left uni last june, who recently returned from 4-5 months travelling on a round-the-world trip her dad paid for as a gift for graduating. The graduate won't even make a coffee or do photocopying or filing because it's 'beneath her.' She also spends half her working hours on her smartphone, flicking through tinder, facebook, and twitter, and uploading photos of her desk, fan, coffee cup, and other office bits and bobs on instagram.

So it's rather foolhardy to exclude mothers returning to work, as they can be invaluable with the life experience they have.

(Not saying all uni grads will be layabouts by the way, just that it doesn't follow that a former SAHM will be useless, and the uni grad will be an asset to the company!)

I don't think anyone on this thread has ever been saying that former SAHP are useless.

I think those of us involved in recruitment agree that it's about getting the right person for the job. We can all cite examples of people who've got it all on paper but aren't up to the job, and mums who've been out of the workplace for years and waltz in and are fantastic. But those are individual examples; you can't make generalisations from them

Many just don't want to work, they enjoy being at home, they don't see it as the most valuable use of their time to be at home, more they'd rather not work if they can help it, having kids are a good excuse and they'd rather never go back.

I was surprised this comment got some of the responses it did. I'm part time, I'd always want to work since I don't have any other source of income stream myself, but I did see having children as a good reason to move towards the employment pattern I'd wanted for a long time. I quite like working a bit but full time is too much. DH is the same. We like being with our kids but don't necessarily think they'd be worse off if we did more hours. However he in particular would have struggled to go part time without the childcare 'excuse', if you like.

I'll admit my comment before was facetious but it is interesting. I don't feel those years at home with my kids were wasted. Not just because I think they benefitted from my being there (although writing that without people reading it as a criticism of WOHMs is impossible for some reason), but because I learned loads of skills doing it. Not exactly the same skills you learn in the workplace, no - but skills that are transferable and are actually DIFFERENT from the ones I learned in my fairly substantial career. How do you write that on a CV? That I don't consider that 'dead' time in relation to my career but that it taught me things I would not have learned if I hadn't done it? Things that might make me a valuable employee?

It's not true to say this skills are learned by every parent either. Being at home all the time with small kids is different from working out of the home full or part time. Not better, I'm not saying that, but of course it's not the same experience. Of course my time has been spent differently. And it's taken a lot of inner resourcefulness to manage it. That's the truth - why am I seeing for wanting to say that in a job application?

Funny how my experience of applying knowledge learned as a parent is dismissed. Do a google to learn what ABA is. You might learn something about how to more effectively manage people working for you.

To all on here who are hiring, if you want the best you do have to look through fluff.

The fluff shows bad judgement.

Plantsitter- IME people tend to learn new things when they become a parent. Not specifically whether theyre a SAH or WOH one.

I certainly learned things about myself, discovered reserves I never knew I had, and yes some new skills too, when I became a mother. I think it's the parenting which enables you to learn these things, not whether you continue to work or not

You're right, OP.

Just posted something on another thread relating to this, namely about the resilience and skill sets you build up as a SAHM. However, that doesn't mean you have to dress that time up as something it's not! And you're right to point out that working parents have to do this stuff too...

@babbitywabbit As an infertile person, someone who wrote that they learned uniquely useful skills just by becoming a parent would be incredibly offensive to me. You don't learn anything by becoming a parent necessarily, it all depends on your mindset & the same skills of time/workload management can be developed via caring, work, and volunteering.

The fluff shows they made a mistake. They need training. Doesn't mean they are going to be bad at the job you are hiring for.

Truthfully most lower paid jobs don't require much judgement. You have an operating manual and set procedures which dictate what action should be taken by the employee.