Resume question for those with crappy jobs Forum

[NiccoloA]

Should I include the crappy jobs at Walmart during half a school year and two summers and my university's workstudy job on my resume?


I have no internships, no great work experience, the jobs I held were for pocket money and I changed them often (more than 4 jobs in 4 years).

I'm afraid that if I put them on there, I'll be laughed out of the admissions pool because I'll look like a dumb kid who wasn't good enough to aim for anything professional.

I'm afraid that if I don't put them on there my resume will look like a big white hole of nothingness. I've been involved on campus, but not enough to fill up one page of a resume, and only with marginally important student organizations.


I hate resumes.

[bdubs]

Something > Nothing

I don't think schools will fault you for working random jobs through undergrad. If you had graduated and worked many, many jobs in a short period of time it would be more troubling.

[ThreeRivers]

Yea I listed Giant Eagle, A local deli, Red Robin as my work experience... lol

[NiccoloA]

Thanks for the responses. So would something like this (Google Doc) be acceptable?


I know it is now turning into a resume critique when I first just had a question, but I'm on edge about this all of a sudden for no apparent reason.

[bdubs]

That's fine, although it should be max 1 page (I know Google Docs does funny things with formatting).

You don't need bullets under self explanatory positions unless you really did something outside of the scope of that employment. I would use a one or maybe two sentence description.

[coldshoulder]

You speak five languages? Nice.

[kurla88]

Thanks for the responses. So would something like this (Google Doc) be acceptable?


I know it is now turning into a resume critique when I first just had a question, but I'm on edge about this all of a sudden for no apparent reason.

You can also include descriptions of what you did for student groups.

[omega918]

In your descriptions, also, I would try to reword things to add more depth to the tasks. For example, did you just do "data entry", or did you "utilize systems of organization for multitudes of complex data/documents..." Even better if you created or updated the system of organization.

The resume is your opportunity to sell yourself. Employers, law schools, and lawyers do this all the time for themselves, and we must do it too. Don't outright lie and say you did things you did not do, but definitely use language in your favor to make you sound as impressive as possible