Creating An Effective Resume

The easiest way to teach you to elaborate on your skills and talents, is to show you my own resume as an example. After you read this, if you still need help, please email me and I’ll be glad to read over your resume. I’ll even add my own touches to help you enhance it.

Women Who Think Too Much Publications
Publisher, Editor: Jeanne Marie

OBJECTIVE
To obtain a challenging position within your company’s structure while earning above average pay, working part time hours and securing a position with potential for advancement. This will be a second job, so don’t expect too much of me and I hope your objective isn’t to harass me if I’m late for work. Problems that arise at home do have priority.

QUALIFICATIONS
Hands On–I can change dirty diapers, wash baby bottles, wipe the green snot off the face of a runaway child, wash hair that doesn’t want to be washed, nurture your plants and keep your vaporizer clean, full and running.
I’ve washed close to a trillion dishes, changed numerous bed linens, wallpapered and painted nine homes and three apartments, hung curtains with nothing but a butter knife and rearranged extremely heavy furniture. (You do offer health insurance, right? Good! My back has been killing me.)
I’ve over a million hours’ experience in laundry and ironing. I’ve cleaned rugs that have been vomited on by children, guests, dogs or worse, and I’ll vacuum under your desk.

STAMINA
I once spent an entire winter hanging over a vaporizer with a twenty-pound toddler in my hands.
I can go weeks without sleep and still perform my duties.
I’ve cleaned and taken care of three children while my body was down with the flu and my mind was up with the anxiety.
I’ve supervised the same hell raising, fist fighting and bored kids on many cold or rainy days and I have endured over a thousand torturous school vacations. We suffered no fatalities, self-inflicted or otherwise. (And that was before Prozac.)
I’ve moved at least fifty times in thirty-five years, packed, unpacked and carried most of the stuff into and out of the moving truck, then back into the truck and out and in and out…you get the idea, I’m sure. I’ve even been allowed to take one end of the refrigerator. Thankfully, not the end that fell on someone’s knees. Hey, I told him I needed to rest a minute!

NURTURING SKILLS
I can starve a cold and feed a fever with one hand, while blindfolded, hopping on one leg. I’ll bring home-baked goods to work, at least once a week and often I’ll bring a hot meal too. (No, I don’t do it so everyone will like me. Well, maybe I do, so what?)
I know every allergist and pediatrician within a fifty-mile radius and most of the veterinarians.
I can guess your temperature by putting my hand on your forehead and I can nurse you if you get chicken pox, strep throat, diarrhea, the flu, ear infections or a cold. Managing your asthma and seasonal allergies are optional and will cost extra.
I’ve turned filthy, squalid apartments into clean, cozy homes and I’m sure I can do the same for your dumpy office. A few plants, a lot of hard work, a little paint from Wal-Mart and you won’t recognize the place.

NEGOTIATING SKILLS
Superb, due to weekly meetings over a span of twelve years with principals and teachers who wanted to throw my youngest child (the one my own mother wouldn’t baby-sit) out of school. I’ve also learned how to take the blame for my husband and my children’s actions and in the workplace that can be a very helpful tool. If you screw up, I’ll be there, ready and waiting to take the blame.

COURAGE
I’ve had three C-sections, one emergency and two planned.
I work well under pressure and I have bravely gone where most women dare not go–under the beds and into the closets.
I gave my hand (and my brain) in marriage, not once, but twice. Case closed.

JOB HISTORY

FREE LANCE WRITER
My Favorite Awards:
National Dean’s List 1994-1995
Survived Motherhood Without Becoming A Vegetable Award, 1996 (Self Bestowed)

NURSES AIDE, NURSING HOMES
Same as infant care, but duties involved much larger bodies, huge diapers and very odorous bowel movements. Daily contact with lonely people who had raised their kids and sometimes their grandkids, relatives who now visited them once a year. Socializing with people who’d hold onto my hand and beg me to stay when my shift was over because, “You’re all I have.” And it was true.

DAYCARE PROVIDER, MY HOME
Took care of other women’s children for ten years. The working mamas chased a career and I chased after their kids so that I could earn money while staying home with my own little angels. Once, I had three toddlers calling me Mama and my kids were all in school. Daycare had become a safe habit, but that’s when I knew it was time to move on.

WAITRESS\BARTENDER\MANAGEMENT
Slinging hash, taking verbal abuse from customers, carrying huge trays of food over my head most often through narrow aisles, picking up dirty dishes, taking verbal abuse from bosses, serving drinks and always, always, working with a smile on my face. Very similar to mothering, except for the smile.

EDUCATION
Quit school at 15-years old. Earned my GED in 1981 at age 27.
Rogers State College 1994-1995
Twenty-One Credit Hours, achieved under duress. (Re: Article, “When The Kids Grow Up.)

INTERESTS & HOBBIES

INTERESTS
Interested in having a life, thank you! I’m also interested in hiring someone to clean my house. Do you know anyone?
Activities involve thinking too much, writing it down and publishing it. Cleaning too much and hating it.

HOBBIES
My hobbies include photography, planting flowers that should win awards, avoiding baby-sitting or raising any of my fourteen grandkids and fighting with my computer until dawn. (Computer always wins.)

COMPUTER SKILLS
Obviously.

SPECIAL TALENTS, MISCELLANEOUS, FRINGE BENEFITS EXPECTED

SPECIAL TALENTS
I know a resume should be short but as you can see, with all my qualifications and experience that would be impossible. I also type, about 10 words per minute. (I’m very poor on the spelling.) I’m an expert on the phone, unless it’s one of those damn new smart phones. I will run your errands, pay your bills, pick out and sign your Mother’s Day cards.
I also write a blog, short stories, poetry and I am working on two novels and five children’s books.
I can write excellent excuse notes while half asleep, without thinking.
BTW, if I’m up all night writing, I will call in sick the next day.

MISCELLANEOUS
I’m applying by email because I don’t have a power suit. However, I’ll have a personal shopper help me find one if the job requires it. (I seriously hope not.)
I won’t wear pantyhose or high heels, under any conditions!
I’d expect to be reimbursed for the power suit, of course, as a man has always paid for my clothes and I see no reason to change my routine at sixty-two years old. I really do need a second job, even though I don’t have any free time, so I hope you hire me.

FRINGE BENEFITS EXPECTED
At my present job, the hours are long, the rewards are few and I hope you can match the stress level.
As I look back over my forty-year career as a wife, mother, grammy, writer, baby-sitter, nurses’ aide, food server and bartender, I realize that I gave my all; plus energy that I didn’t even have, so I’m really burned out.
Therefore, I hope you have a position where I can sit down and keep my thinking to a minimum. (Did I forget to list my stint as an Avon Lady?) I do need a good health insurance plan, as I’ve used up all the benefits on the one my husband has provided, (particularly, the mental health benefits) and I’d like a “Smoker’s High Risk, Accidentally Started At Age 36, Can’t Quit, Dammit I’ve Tried, So You Pay Off No Matter What, Life Insurance Plan.”

PERSONAL DATA
There have been times when I’ve enjoyed my present job.
Nights when I held my newborns, rocked them until dawn, got a hug from a toddler before breakfast or a homemade card from a first grader.
Even better, handprints pressed forever onto construction paper.
Watching my two beautiful daughters each have their own first baby, (which made me very grateful for my three C-sections).
Watching my son, my baby, turn into a large, handsome teenager and then into a daddy.
Watching my grandchildren grow into amazing little people and then, on to young adults. Being presented with three great grandbabies. These have been the high points.
The little love notes my husband still leaves for me to find when I wake up, the way he does the dishes after supper so that I can write and the neurotic phone calls he makes from work each day to see what I’m doing. (Wow, does he flip out if I don’t turn on the cell phone when I go out!) And I even enjoy the way that he’s still jealous, even though I’m a  way past middle-aged woman, twenty pounds overweight and too codependent to ever leave.
I love walking on the beach and reading poetry as the sun sets.

STIPULATIONS
I will relocate if your company pays all the moving expenses and you can talk my husband into moving again. We’ll need extra men to help with the refrigerator as my husband still has nightmares about a refrigerator falling on his legs.
Please, feel free to call me between noon and one o’clock EST any Friday, except if it’s the thirteenth and there’s a full moon.
For all other times, email will suffice because if I’m not home, my computer will take your message. I just hope that it will allow me to access my email without having to be re-booted.

Looking forward to hearing from you, but not too soon,

Jeanne Marie