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.

Nah, i go to work to provide a roof over my kids head and food on their table. That is very much being a mother to them. Besides which, if they are at school it really makes no difference does it? Maybe the teacher is their mother

Sorry that was meant to reply to soup dragons suggestion that working mothers are somehow not mothers.

gilly not a majority by any means but that small group who decide to be sahps because they don't want to work, rather than because they genuinely want to or need to. I'd rather not be too specific but eg the lady that lunches type and other end of the scale the daytime tv and ignore the dc type. Or example I met years ago with one very easy school age dc who sat around all day bemoaning her hardships because tax credits didn't cover cleaners or any of the other luxuries she thought she deserved for the hard task of the school run and turning on cbbc, whilst her dp worked all day. Her poor dd was just ignored.

I have no doubt that in different circumstances they'd be the wohp that expects all their colleagues to fit in round their precious dc.

So twats because they are twats rather than because they are sahps.

Dd and her friends only get to see the former example of idiot parenting though or I imagine they'd judge the twatty wohp too.

The same way that "working" mothers forget that they are not looking after their own children whilst at work when they claim they are still.

Why the inverted commas?

I wasn't especially bothered by SoupDragon's claim that I'm somehow not a mother, I'm quite satisfied that I am. I'm puzzled by her putting "working" in quotation marks, as if I'm not actually employed and earning money. I sincerely don't understand what she can't grasp about this.

For the purpose of any SAHM parents here taking offence -

Job hunting is a process. Rejection and feedback is part of that process. It's always hard to hear someone tell you what you are doing wrong, or why you weren't good enough. But it might mean you do a better job next application.

I'm not yet a Mum (currently 14 weeks pregnant with baby 1), but I have been through the rejection process. I went for a promotion this year, didn't even get shortlisted for an interview. As hard as it was to hear, I asked for the feedback. I've just found out this week that I've got a different promotion that I went for (and yes, they do know I'm pregnant and did when they interviewed me!) which is actually more up my street than the first promotion would have been. I was up against some really great candidates and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have beaten them but for the feedback I got from my previous unsuccessful application.

Ultimately, we do ourselves no credit when rejected if we refuse to accept the feedback and/or say it's just wrong for us to be judged for those reasons. Whoever is recruiting knows what they are after. You may be it, but you have to speak their language and sell yourself right. Humility and willingness/ability to take on feedback and respond to it won't just make you better job applicant...it may make you a better employe too.

So please don't take the feedback on here from people who do the recruiting (which isn't me, btw!) as being a judgement call on your lifestyle choices. It's about making you better at the job application process.

Final note from me - good luck out there to all those SAHM in the process of returning to work - I genuinely hope you all are successful and find decent roles that suit your needs.

😘

soup I was a ft student with a pt job till dd started school. Dd came to work with me. This doesn't mean I parented more, or better than anyone who used childcare. It just meant I couldn't afford childcare and was shit hot at both multitasking and my job.

I'd love to know if all those bleating about wohp not raising their dc and the rest of that crap would be willing to see a significant drop in their own incomes and lifestyles in order to fund average income and a sahp for every single family in the uk, including lone parents. Because surely if people think the poor dc of wohp are missing out they should put their money where their mouth is.

Pooryorick- I can only assume soupdragon meant working 'mothers', as she seems convinced that once someone is at work, they cease to be a mother or father. In her eagerness to criticise WOHM she maybe got the inverted commas in the wrong place?

Ah, that kind of dimwittery is a bit easier to understand as it's much more familiar and tedious. It was the idea that I'm not ACTUALLY employed, that I just pretend I am through some sort of sneaky trickery of semantics, that was throwing me a bit. Gotcha.

I'm as sure as I can be that I have both a child and a paid job, so....yeah.

I've been on MN for 11 years and there's always a weekly SAHM-bashing thread!

I agree that describing a housewifery-role in grand terms is silly. But it's only a reaction to the sometimes undisguised sneering that accompanies confessing that one does not work. I just say "I don't work," or "I'm a housewife." So shoot me. Stupidest of all are those women who say, "I'm a mother not a housewife." No, you're a lazy arse, not championing women's rights by not putting your dh's pants in the washing machine.

Trying to reenter the workforce is hard and I understand why people feel forced to cobble together some codswallop about "time management" etc. I recently filled in a lengthy form for a job, and then came the question asking about my employment for the last five years. I tried writing "not working" and "household duties" and various other permutations, but I was told I was eliminated for having an employment gap. I feel I'm in the same category as an ex-con having to explain my absence from society!

I think people should only put things on CVs that are
a. relevant to the job
and
b. something above what everyone does to get by in life.

So for example if you are applying for a job in childcare, caring, paediatric nursing/doctoring, supporting families in some way etc then experience in looking after children might be relevant (although still a bit of a long shot as lots of people have experience looking after their own children so it's not unusual)

However putting on a CV that you have cleaned your own house or paid your own bills just looks stupid as everyone does that whether they work or not. I don't really think there are many 'transferable skills' that you learn just from staying at home that aren't learned by working parents too. If you do voluntary /committee stuff then that's different. Not saying it isn't worthwhile to stay home looking after children but the tasks you do are not sufficiently different to what most people who work do that it's going to be of benefit in a work situation. Let's face it most of it is completely unskilled as evidenced by the fact that most people rear children without any training or experience - we are evolutionarily equipped to do it!

LadyibCent. How is this a SAHM-bashing thread?

It seemed to me it has quite a lot more working-woman shaming, than SAGM-bashing. Nasty passive-aggressive questions about the OP's "guilt" at WOH.

I wouldn't do it but can't criticise women who do. As an employer I look at all cvs with an eye on how that person will fit in and how they present across the board, qualifications, enthusiasm, gin drinking capacity, empathy etc.
A lot of very able & personal women have had their work confidence knocked by being SAHM and try to justify the fact that they're even 'daring' to apply by over compensating with this sort of pseudo-job description (not putting down SAHMs for one minute) so please cut them some slack.

Ladyincement- Read the OP. This isn't a SAHM bashing thread at all. In fact I can't recall any thread which has ever been started specifically to have a go at SAHM (not saying there haven't ever been, but I can't remember any)

The OP was addressing the issue of the bad advice dished out to some SAHM which is putting them at a disadvantage when they come to apply for jobs. The WOHM on here have given advice about how to cover time out of the workplace in a straightforward way on a cv, and many of us have cited examples of having recruited people who have been at home.

Honestly it sometimes feels as though as soon as someone sees SAHM or WOHM in a thread they jump to the conclusion that it must be slagging off one group.

I can't say it enough times- it's not a competition, very many of us WOHM would have been equally fine as SAHM, we just chose a different path.

It's not a SAHM bashing thread, it's a shitty CV thread.

A lot of very able & personal women have had their work confidence knocked by being SAHM and try to justify the fact that they're even 'daring' to apply by over compensating with this sort of pseudo-job description (not putting down SAHMs for one minute) so please cut them some slack.

Well said. It's definitely not a good idea to put this in a cv but let's look at the real issue - women who DO want to get back into the workforce finding it very difficult. That's the real problem

A lot of us who recruit have made it quite clear that we don't view a period as a SAHM as remotely negative. We're not SAHM bashing, we're just saying that it isn't very professional to go into detail about it on your cv. Use a few words ("career break to look after young children") and move on. I've just recruited someone who had a 10 year career break with her children. Her academic qualifications and previous work experience were what interested me, the career break was neither here nor there.

I am in no way trying to "bash" SAHM by saying that what they do at home has no relevance to their ability to do a highly technical job. It's just a fact.

It's not a SAHM bashing thread, it's a shitty CV thread
This this this this this!
If anyone is silly enough to write a CV with irrelevant nonsense on it, they can't be annoyed if they don't get shortlisted.

The thing with transferable skills is that there is an element of context dependency. E.g. I'm really good at overseeing education projects and if i wanted to move jobs then project management would probably be transferable. Im also good at doing pastoral things with teenagers, but that doesnt mean my interpersonal skills equip me to work with adults with learning disabilities or mental health issues.

Context matters sometimes and part of writing a good application/Cv is working out which bits are relevant and which bits arent.

"If anyone is silly enough to write a CV with irrelevant nonsense on it, they can't be annoyed if they don't get shortlisted."

I remember my first boss, a lovely but formidable lawyer, tossing an otherwise ok C.V. In the bin because the applicant had listed "shopping" as a hobby and given an email address that was along the lines of "[email protected]"

I've been contacted recently a few times by women (from a fb mums groups) looking to get back into work and from people in my old industry trying to get into my new one.

In all cases when we talk about CVs I advise them to look closely as the job description - almost all will have bullet points and key words. Look at every sentence in that job description and make sure your ability to do that skill/process is in your application. Include all those keywords.
You need to make sure you're showing the recruiter 'yes I can do that, and that, and that.'

Good CVs are thin on the ground. I've done a fair amount of hiring and it's a struggle to find good people. I know HR/staffing screen out a load of promising people before they even get to me.

That's another hurdle - a lot of big companies pre screen and that often rules out people who have the potential and skills but perhaps don't tick all the boxes (such as people who have been out a while) immediately. It also means I get a lot of CVs which DO tick those boxes but don't really have the skills or temperament I'm after. Frankly HR and staffing are a hindrance in the process of finding talent in my industry. I'm sure at the top of the tree it works differently but at my level they are more harm than help

Oh that sounds a pain, CVs come straight to me, there's no pre-screening. That would infuriate me as I am quite happy to overlook "blips" if I can see someone has potential.

I remember my dad bringing home lots of CVs to sift through and me (being a teenager) being offered some to look through for my thoughts (and to see what a good / bad CV looked like for my own future job search)

Some CVs were hand written. Even in the 90s, you knew to type a CV.

A guy had written "married with no expenses" which my mum and I took to mean "No kids, thank god"

Several CVs with spelling errors and inappropriate email addresses.

There was one guy who admitted his career gap was due to a struggle with alcoholism. My dad interviewed him as a, he really admired the guy's honesty plus b, it struck a nerve as we had family members who were alcoholics. I don't know if the guy got the job though but I hope he got something.

OP thanks for the timely post, I'm in the position of returning to work soon (hopefully) and this thread is very useful!
However tempting it is to put down my skills in diplomacy, war prevention (it's been a long week ) and organising the shit out of a meal planner I will continue to simply refer to a career break and move on to the criteria on the job spec.

It's not the career break that would put employers off. But the type of person who writes Home Management Executive on previous job description together with a list of their punishing schedule of school runs.. They just sound like a twit and PINTA who would get everyone's back up.