McDonalds in the meantimeI' ve been looking for work for over three months now. I went from graduating from school with an AAS, to working briefly at a clinic, to being fired. Many of my potential employers rejected me on the basis that I have less than a year' s experience in the medical field. I' ve never given up and keep trying, but it' s getting frustrating and my support has been dwindling. 1) How do I explain the three months' gap in my resume wherein no one would hire me? 2) I' m worried about my former employers bad-mouthing me. What can they legally say about me? According to my sister, all they can say is that I worked for them for such-and-such a time. They can' t say they fired me or why. Is this right? 3) Suppose I took a low-level job in the meantime, such as McDonald' s, just to tide me over. Would that help my resume or hurt it? In other words, is it better just to hold out for a good job? How would McDonald' s look on my resume after college graduation? 4) Where am I supposed to get that coveted experience they all seem to want? Do I just keep trying until someone decides to take a chance on me?
1. Gaps happen. If you left a job unexpectedly, it's reasonable to assume that t will take come time to get a new job. 2. The laws for employee info disclosure are covered under Free Speech. No laws against a company saying ANYTHING. Your sister's wrong. That said, many companies have internal policies against saying anything nonfactual. 3. If you take a low level job, either omit it from your resume or else simply say something brief like Fry Cook 2/2007 - Present and give little or no information. You don't want a job like that taking up serious space on your resume. Now: A. Why not go right back to your college's Career Center and use them again? You're essentially entry level just like a fresh grad. B. You're definitely going to have to explain why you got fired from your first job after three months. Get over your reticence about it. Start by explaining to us. They fired me because I stepped back from doing a patient care task that I didn't feel comfortable doing. I made a judgment call: I didn't feel my skill with the required instrument was enough to avoid hurting the patient (I'd only used it a few times, and then only on relatively healthy patients; this one was not). So I stepped back and left it for another, far more experienced #### to do. Unfortunately, they took that as insubordination. So the next day they handed me my papers.
Okay, I'll have to explain - you mishandled the situation badly. You were correct to have not done a task you were unqualified for. But you had a responsibility to get the task done. In other words, it was your responsibility to have found someone else to do the job or at least to have reported your concerns to management rather than just let the thing drop. I wish I could tell you how to present this in interviews, but I'm stumped. I know I could have handled it better. But in fact, no it wasn' t my sole responsibility. The doctor never singled me out to do that task, he just put it out to the assistants who were available. We all picked up tasks for each other all the time, I honestly thought nothing of it. And I did tell the other clinical assistant about it (she was also the office manager). I knew about the patient' s condition because I had taken him back to the room to begin with to get him ready for the doctor. Then the doctor came out and asked for someone to go back to do the task. The ofc mgr asked me in front of the doctor whether I was going to do it, which surprised me, since I' d already told her about it. I said, I' m sorry, but no. So she got right up and went to do the task, nothing more was said, and I honestly thought nothing more of it until the next day when they handed me my papers. But it doesn' t even make sense that the doctor would even hand the task to us. According to the patient' s chart, and his own statement, it was the doctor who had always done the task in the past, not the assistants. I realize that it' s solely at the doctor' s discretion, but it still struck me as strange. It makes me think that maybe they were trying to get rid of me, and this just gave them their excuse. (and no, I will not be mentioning that theory in my interview.) | |
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