2 ms·

I dunno, OP seems to have realized (according to other comments) that it was a bad move, and "I randomly decided to give up a job that in retrospect I could hav

by geofft 6y ago

I dunno, OP seems to have realized (according to other comments) that it was a bad move, and "I randomly decided to give up a job that in retrospect I could have put up with" does sort of seem like a personal emergency. :) To be clear I'm definitely not saying that you should make up a story "I had to take care of my grandma" or whatever. I don't advocate lying (and as a personal quirk I'm very unlikely to tell an outright lie). But it's going to be very difficult to explain why you left all of those jobs in a way that doesn't scare an employer. If you can drive the conversation to roughly "it was a bad time in my life," that seems a) basically true b) personal enough that it'd be unprofessional for the interviewer to probe for details c) unlikely to make the interviewer fear that it will be an ongoing problem. I guess the real advice here is, come up with an answer for this very foreseeable question, which you can say with a straight face and without getting yourself into more trouble.

memling 6y ago
> But it's going to be very difficult to explain why you left all of those jobs in a way that doesn't scare an employer. If you work at a place for two months, don't put it on the resume? If you have a gap in your employment, you need to be able to talk about that, but you don't have to talk about each stop. In an interview, I'll ask about gaps. One ran something like, "I was laid off in {year} and took {weeks} to recover. It took me {months} to find a job at {company}. I took the role because of my financial situation, but I'm interested in you because I think our situations overlap better." That's not quite verbatim, but similar to what I had with someone we hired (I was part of the interview team, but I've never been a hiring manager). It didn't raise any red flags to me. His experience at his prior employer wasn't good, but he communicated effectively that he felt like we'd be a better fit, and we were. Anecdotally, we had a candidate come in who was junior but pretty well educated. A thin resume in his situation would have been fine: we understood where he was coming from. I perceived a little insecurity from the two-page resume that could've been reduced to a few line items with a stronger emphasis on skills he brought to the table, and with a little probing on technical matters found that his purported experience was not what I would've expected from his background. Less in this case would've been more. I don't know the OP from Adam, so I'd hesitate to offer much advice here; from the comments I'd think that there's a good reason to talk to a good counselor about the personal background and challenges and address the professional retooling after: but that's hard when you're down on your luck without money. Churches often offer this sort of service, but reading between the lines I'd guess that may not be an avenue for the OP. Professionally I'd concentrate on starting over or looking to see if there are trade schools that would accommodate. One local to me is completely free and would provide a skillset for at least earning a living while trying to pursue other interests.
- geofft 6y ago
  It sounds like OP's employment history consists entirely of 2-month-ish stints, and so leaving short stints off would mean having no professional experience on the resume. Now, that might actually be the right answer in this case (your "starting over" suggestion, more or less).

by geofft 6y ago

memling 6y ago

> But it's going to be very difficult to explain why you left all of those jobs in a way that doesn't scare an employer. If you work at a place for two months, don't put it on the resume? If you have a gap in your employment, you need to be able to talk about that, but you don't have to talk about each stop. In an interview, I'll ask about gaps. One ran something like, "I was laid off in {year} and took {weeks} to recover. It took me {months} to find a job at {company}. I took the role because of my financial situation, but I'm interested in you because I think our situations overlap better." That's not quite verbatim, but similar to what I had with someone we hired (I was part of the interview team, but I've never been a hiring manager). It didn't raise any red flags to me. His experience at his prior employer wasn't good, but he communicated effectively that he felt like we'd be a better fit, and we were. Anecdotally, we had a candidate come in who was junior but pretty well educated. A thin resume in his situation would have been fine: we understood where he was coming from. I perceived a little insecurity from the two-page resume that could've been reduced to a few line items with a stronger emphasis on skills he brought to the table, and with a little probing on technical matters found that his purported experience was not what I would've expected from his background. Less in this case would've been more. I don't know the OP from Adam, so I'd hesitate to offer much advice here; from the comments I'd think that there's a good reason to talk to a good counselor about the personal background and challenges and address the professional retooling after: but that's hard when you're down on your luck without money. Churches often offer this sort of service, but reading between the lines I'd guess that may not be an avenue for the OP. Professionally I'd concentrate on starting over or looking to see if there are trade schools that would accommodate. One local to me is completely free and would provide a skillset for at least earning a living while trying to pursue other interests.

geofft 6y ago
It sounds like OP's employment history consists entirely of 2-month-ish stints, and so leaving short stints off would mean having no professional experience on the resume. Now, that might actually be the right answer in this case (your "starting over" suggestion, more or less).