Resume for a non-traditional student with irrelevant work experience

[BVSdXD]

I am weighing a few strategies for how much of my work experience to include in my resume, and I would appreciate some advice.

For background, I am a non-traditional applicant: I took the scenic route (six years) completing my double-major in undergraduate and, 11 years later after that, completed my graduate degree this past summer. Aside from participating in extracurricular activities, which my need for employment prevented, the "Educational" portion of my resume is not a problem.

My main concerns center around how to do address all the time spent between completing my bachelors and masters degrees.

As things stand, my resume includes only my most recent place of employment (which seems standard), as well as work experiences and leadership positions that play key roles in my personal statement. However, the bulk of my work experience in between undergraduate and graduate school consists of menial blue-collar work (three different employers). The nature of my work at those jobs is clearly irrelevant to my ability to succeed in law school, and I am concerned that including those jobs would distract someone looking at my resume from the concise, stream-lined presentation I feel my resume currently offers.

I recognize a resume need not be comprehensive and serves more as a marketing-tool than an exhaustive account of my experiences, and that law school resume differs from something I would provide when applying for a job. Hence, my resume is currently only a page long and very well-arranged to be pleasing to the eye upon first looks.

But I can also see how someone closely scrutinizing my resume might find themselves raising questions about what else I was doing with my time besides the work experiences and leaderships role that my resume currently mentions, leading to concerns about why I do not mention as much.

Should I...
(A) include that additional information on the resume itself, sacrificing brevity and conciseness for comprehensiveness,
(B) provide an addendum that fills in the gaps on my resume, and mention on my resume that such an addendum has been provided, or
(C) stop overthinking all this?

Thanks for your help!

[Luke Haqq]

Hi BVSdXD!

Should I...
(A) include that additional information on the resume itself, sacrificing brevity and conciseness for comprehensiveness,
(B) provide an addendum that fills in the gaps on my resume, and mention on my resume that such an addendum has been provided, or
(C) stop overthinking all this?

Given what you explained, I'd go with (D) another option/none of the above. To start, it's not (C) overthinking it--the resume is great chance to have a powerful, impactful page. With that in mind, adding unnecessary information can dilute it, which is a reason against (A). In some cases, an applicant might struggle to put together an information-packed page, for example, if the person is applying while in undergrad and had not been especially active in extracurricular activities. But in many other instances, the applicant will have more than enough experiences, awards, and other material to include in the resume, and the choice becomes what to leave out and what to include.

(B) is certainly a possible route. If so, a concise one such as a single paragraph would probably be sufficient. But there might also be reasons against writing an addendum even though it's an option. Namely, if you see this as a weakness of your overall application package, then writing about it in an addendum can spotlight and draw attention to that weakness when not writing the addendum could avoid this. Without the addendum, it's possible that a reviewer might miss a gap in chronology on the resume.

Finally, for some other options, you might try to incorporate those missing years into the personal statement, even if only in a single sentence. If that doesn't fit with how the rest of the statement flows or if it still seems like highlighting a weakness, then you might consider not mentioning this employment at all. In the end, look to the application instructions. Schools typically require employment to be listed on their application forms, so it's possible that you could list the jobs there without needing to include them on the resume or an addendum. Application forms differ from school to school in terms of the thoroughness they ask of applicants in listing employment experience. Some might ask for each and every employer as far back as high school, while others might only ask for select or relevant work experience to be listed. If you've followed the application instructions, then it seems fine to omit work experiences as you see fit to present yourself best on your applications--if a reviewer has questions, a school that is interested in you could always reach out for clarification, and you could use that communication to provide context and to reiterate your interest in the school.