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.

Unfortunately, if like me every job has about 100 applicants. The employers are looking for a reason to put a cv in the bin. Employers don't have to concern themselves with people's personal life!

I would think anyone that put this crap into a work CV needed a reality check. I manage to run a home outside office hours. It's a role, not a job.

I blame brain-rotting women's magazines trying to persuade people 'the skills you have learned organising a family are transferable to the workplace'. They are not particularly transferable. Unless the job is running someone else's family. The skills you need in the modern workplace are a lot higher level than booking a few online flights and a hotel stay, something the average 16 year old could probably do wth aplomb.

For us jacking in my career gave my OH the support that allowed his career to develop, and gave me huge freedoms to do as I wanted to

If you are happy whats your issue?

If you wantes to give up and work and wanted more freedom and got that, great.

But you then cant complain its difficult to get back to work, if/when you want to.

Anyone taking a long break from work will find it difficult to return. Unless some of that time has been spent developing yourself professionally.

No one is saying everyone should share MAT/PAT leave but many people will not even entertain it, regardless of circumstance.

PS The thing to put on a CV is 'Career break' and if you are asked say you were looking after young children. Sorted.

It's worth thinking about what you would do if you were left on your own suddenly in that situation too, and unable to get a job.

I dont blame these mums for trying to make themselves look better though.

Thats the point of this thread. It doesnt make them look better.

I personally wouldn't hire someone who put waffley bullshit on their cv.

I would welcome any mother though, stay at home or otherwise, I've found they manage to get a million jobs done before lunch and are organised and efficient.

I don't think it's magazines. I think it's careers advisers and cv advisers who don't really know what they're doing or what businesses will be looking for.

I'd suggest for people finding it tricky- do some volunteering if you can afford to and have time, or some relevant back to work courses.

I do sympathise, but trying to make out being a SAHP is the exact same thing as the corresponding professional employment is unlikely to help your application.

And while I am on here, I will rant briefly about the bloody colleagues who think they are the first people to ever have children and prattle on about childcare and how we all have to reschedule our lives to fit around their kiddie timetable.

One colleague of mine wanted teaching rescheduled for 200 students and associated lecturers so she could use nursery one day less a week. Even though that meant everyone else would be massively inconvenienced, especially lecturers and students with young children themselves.

I mean, grow up, people. Smell the coffee.

Some of the patronising crap on here from people claiming to be managers - treating the people they manage as they would their own children, and not wanting Lower paid people exercising judgement... dear god.
This! Fucking awful posts from want2bsupermum. Decent employees wouldn't stay under that type of management, so she'll get her wish of having a team of unemployable automatons who can't think for themselves.

I don't think it's magazines. I think it's careers advisers and cv advisers who don't really know what they're doing or what businesses will be looking for.

I think its both.

SAHM have a lot more CV credibility if they have run the PTA, been school governors, helped on school trips and so on. Except all too often it's all the working parents who seem to carry the load and the SAHMs are off doing I don't know what (or perhaps it's just around me they do this).

Once we had a SAHM who was having a career break step down from a key governors' committee rather dumping us all in it 'because I am going to be job hunting and that takes time'. Only everyone else on the committee was already at work full-time with long commutes in jobs like hospital consultant and so on, and managed to turn up regardless of whether they were personally job hunting and so on, on top of this. Her comment went down like a lead balloon.

dailymailreadersarethick- good post.
I actually started to wonder whether want2bsupermum is genuinely is in a management position. As well as not wanting lower paid people to exercise any judgement, she also said she manages her staff using the ABA techniques designed for teaching people on the autistic spectrum. If this is true, how the fuck have they not all resigned en masse?

Haha brilliant! Fair play to them! What do you put on a CV when you haven't been in employment for many years? At least it shows they're imaginative and willing.....apart from the one who wrote their kids needed and deserved her full attention bluerghhh martyr!

I explained my gap with "Career break to raise a Family".

I then went straight into the Qualifications I gained during that time, the Training and Voluntary work I done alongside being a SAHM.

It explains the gap fully, but gets straight back to the skills and training that are relevant in the work place.

If the experience is relevant to the position, use it.

If it's not and it's just fulfilling basic parts of life then don't because it demonstrates poor judgement at best, and at worst really rubs people up the wrong way

That advice is true whether you're new to the workforce, established in the workforce, seeking a promotion or whether you're a SAHP looking to return to work.

Tbf we have a senior manager that thinks the same as supermum.

It does happen. But in our case the staff did threaten to walk. Even the entry level staff, after speaking with her.

This manager leaves next week. She feels her style doesnt fit with us. We feel she isnt managment material as she isnt willing to develope her managment skills and try new techniques.

We also want our entry level staff to use their own minds and judgment.

"I think my prejudice is that I've worked FT throughout the 11 years I've had children (with exception of mat leave) so find it a bit irritating when women make claims on their CV about how their children couldn't be without them or at interview explaining how they just couldn't put their children in daycare."

And that's what it is, OP, a prejudice. At least you recognise that.

BoffinMum - well said - it reminds me of when Joey in Friends was out of work. "Spread the jobs out, man! You'll have nothing to do on Friday otherwise!!"

YABVU. Being a stay at home parent is a sadly undervalued and I'm not sure that employers always understand exactly what SAHPs do... so much prejudice... as is evident from your own post. One is asked on application forms exactly what previous employment entailed... so I see no reason, that parenting, being the most important employment imaginable, should be excluded.

I think women who work FT often feel such guilt at leaving their children with carers that they sometimes feel animosity towards those who do stay at home.... which I suspect is the posters issue!

I trust you're doing irony bbismad.

If not, excuse me while I PMSL!!

I would say that you are too sensitive then, frankly.

Bbismad I don't agree and several previous posters have explained very well how the skills of a SAHP are also amply demonstrated by WOHPs. There isn't any role which a SAHP does that a WOHP doesn't already do, and the fact that SAHPs do them more often doesn't give these skills additional value. I'm struggling to think of anything I have done as a SAHP that I did better than when I worked full time. I just did it more often.

I certainly felt myself slowing down a gear in terms of what I thought was possible with my time when I was at home though and I think that could well be the case with others too. For me I didn't like that feeling of a slower life based on just one aspect of myself but presumably others enjoy it and that's why they stay at home. It's possibly the speeding up again when you need to go to work that is the challenge for many.

But why would anyone who wants a job, risk offending the person who could give it to them?

You would have to be a special kind of idiot to do that.

I currently have a SAHM/domestic slave waffle paragraph on my LinkedIn profile as I got fed up with recruitment consultants contacting me as previously I just stated taking a career break to raise young family.
It made me chuckle writing it and most people seeing it I'll know anyway!

I can't imagine putting on a serious CV to send to a prospective employer though. I'd consider putting voluntary roles from Preschool groups/ committees.