The Washington Free Beacon posted a hilarious hitpiece on Vice President Kamala Harris this morning. It’s a three-reporter byline, featured prominently on their website, and heavily promoted by its editors.
Their big scoop: HARRIS LEFT HER JOB AT McDONALDS OFF HER RESUME. PICS OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN!!!
Yes, for real.
These dipshits are doing GOTCHAS by digging up Harris’s post-college and law school resumes and pointing out that she left off a few weeks working the deep fryer between her freshman and sophomore years at Howard University. This hard-hitting investigation is just asking questions about why the Vice President didn’t mention the McDonalds gig when she applied to be a summer law clerk at the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office in 1987. Instead, she included stints at Charles Schwab, the FTC, a senate internship, and clerking at a law firm.
Listen, I'm backing the Harris campaign 100%, but if you look at the history of San Francisco area politicians, you will see that very few are "clean." I would not be surprised if it was the same for her.
I don't list my high school/college part time job on my professional resume either. It isn't that I'm assumed of where I worked, or it didn't happen, it's just that it feels like small potatoes and not relevant to when I'm applying to a new job in my field.
It goes beyond that and... if played "well" this could actually be effective.
For decades, the idea was that Democrats are out of touch hoity toity college kids who don't care about The Working Man(TM). That has grown much less effective because... college debt is a massive issue because so many millennials went to college. And the republican candidates are all silver spoon kids who never worked a real job in their entire lives.
But if they can keep consistent pressure AND keep trump or vance or rfk from ever talking? Kamala will eventually have to acknowledge things and there is no "polite" way of saying "My work at McDonald's was a summer job that had no bearing on my professional career". Because that means:
You don't think working for Ronnie is a "real job"
You are "better" than that
You are "hiding" your past
All of which is obviously nonsense. But Biden and Kamala (and to a lesser extent Obama) have been pushing the straight up facts that Democrats are better for the working class. And this potentially undermines it.
I think we are "fine" in that the republicans will just switch back to carrying jizz cups sooner than later. But this definitely has potential to be one of those "How the hell did THAT impact an election?" moments.
I don't put my fast food experience on my resume, it was 25 years ago, but I have brought it up in interviews to talk about team work and pressure, and to demonstrate that I've been learning and improving for 25 years.
Same here, a lot of the experience I got in customer service jobs is very relevant for talking with business users in my profession, so it's worth bringing up in interviews, even if it doesn't feel appropriate to list it on my resume as job experience.
I think this type of attempt at a gotcha just shows that right leaning websites/people are grasping at straws when it comes to trying to cut down Harris.
Exactly you never list irrelevant jobs on a resume. If they ask about the gaps you can tell them but list too many employers can make a resume too long and bore the hiring manager. Also too many employers listed can make it look like you can't hold a job or are unreliable.
Friendly reminder, when you submit your employment history to a future employer, please do exactly what Harris did if you can. Please tell me about your recent relevant experience, and do not list out every random ass summer job you’ve had.
I’m overworked, I’m reading applications between meetings and I need concise, relevant info - not a 5 page memoir.
It's reccomened to do 2 pages these days to hit all the automated resume screening points. 3 pages max if you're in STEM applying for senior+ positions. Most relevant information should be front and center on that first page though for when it gets into the hands of a real person instead of a bot.
I've been an independent contractor for a while (so I havent filled put a resume recently), but afaik it's strictly 1 page unless you have really really relevant experience. Yes keywords do matter now so it's entirely possible it's better to do 2 pages with more keywords. For my engineering degree though, we did a CV (curriculum vitae) which typically is longer than a resume but it's not really a resume, it's a CV. They are different.
I think the idea of listing every job you've ever had on a resume is very outdated and anyone who still holds this belief is showing their age and privilege. This might have been relevant when you could expect to work for the same company for 20 plus years and maybe only change jobs 2 or more times in your life but that ain't the case now (and hasn't been for decades now). Hell I've lost count of how many companies I've worked for. I even completely changed professions after turning 40. It would be absolutely ridiculous to list any job experience that isn't directly related to the skills needed for the job your applying for.
Yes, agree. If I saw a resume like that, I would assume the applicant at minimum will struggle with time management and summarizing and is likely out of touch.
There's some old gigs that I leave off just because the reputations of some of the companies I worked for is poor, they're seriously trying to attack her over leaving McDonald's off? Is the Rebuplican strategy to just appeal to boomers by being as out of touch as possible?
Resumes should be concise, not pages long. If information is irrelevant, you should cut it. When applying for a job as a line cook, I'd include that, applying for a job as a lawyer, it makes no sense for them to care if I know I worked at Cheddars
*Just adding to what you were saying, not saying you were saying something different
I've worked in software for years, and even jobs that are relevant, if they were some time ago, I chop it wayyyy down. One or two very short sentences giving a sense of duties/accomplishments. Enough to fit on 2 pages. I used to shoot for just 1 page, but it becomes too dense to look at if I still try to fit a summary of recent work, brief outlines of prior stuff, and a section of keywords for the people who are too lazy to screen it themselves first - which is nearly everyone.
I've been on the hiring side and when the 5 or 6 pager gets passed around, I groan. I don't know how the hell these are making it past our screening. Six pages? WTAF. I'm not reading all that! I think the worst case was someone with 10 pages, I kid you not.
I cannot think of any boomers I know that would think they should leave McD's as a job, even. In fact, it was boomers (and a few of their parent's generation) that taught me to mercilessly pare my resume down, and then pare it down again. You are not writing your memoir and no hiring manager could GAF about what you did even five years ago (well, at least in professional white collar jobs that I know about). People don't want to wade through all that.
I think they are just aiming this at very stupid and weird people, regardless of age. Or maybe people that don't work or have only worked food service jobs, maybe.
They’re not confused; they are saying she’s poor and black and belongs in fast food and Trump deserves to run the country instead. Asking the question is just a way of trying to be mean about it like a bunch of high school girls in the lunchroom.
I think you are onto something here. This is the way they talk about AOC being a bartender and Obama being "just" a community organizer.
So relatable, these weird Republicans. Relatable to the working class: mocking people for service industry jobs and trying to eke out a living, and mocking people for trying to be engaged in their community.
Such salt of the Earth. Vote for the totally not weird combover guy who was given $500 million by daddy and never worked a day in his life and his sidekick the couch-fucker venture capitalist. These are real men of the people, and not at all like those elitists in the Democratic Party, I tell you!
Completely ignoring the (better) point that most resumes only really include job history that would directly affect what you're applying for, I have been told countless times that if I so much as dared to include a resume that was more than 1 single page, it would immediately get tossed in the trash.
Or only require a job history for the last X number of years. I would be surprised if I applied for a job and they wanted to know where I worked 35 years ago at a fast food establishment.
I'm an interface programmer at a hospital. I was hired at a hospital straight out of college and worked there for over 15 years and only recently moved to another state. I'm shocked they hired me because I left out my employment history prior to graduation which included working th efront desk of a nurse staffing office when i was 14, a video store at 19 in a law office as an office assistance at 20, working construction when I was 21, a fry cook at 21.
Shit, I forgot to include on my resume that 1 week I worked at dominos where I received no training and spent the entire time either being following around by the driver while he rambled on about conspiracy theories, erasing the chalkboard nipples someone kept drawing on the dining room chalkboard, or both. Guess my employer should fire me from my IT job now. /s
Decades into my senior leadership IT career I've always harbored the dark secret that I didn't disclose on my resume I worked summers at a go-kart track in a tourist trap town in high school. /s
Wow fucking insane that she would list relevant work experience and omit irrelevant work experience on a job application. Glad these guys got the scoop, sounds like it took three people so it must have been significant effort.
Also, where was James O'Keefe at the time? Did getting this scoop involve dressing up as a pimp or a weird plot to get a woman on a boat and "seduce" her? Or maybe trespassing into a government building with plans on tampering with the phones?
Whenever I see "exposes" like this I tend to think of O'Keefe and his clownshoes outfit that was hilariously called "Project Veritas". Why that POS is not rotting in prison is a shining example of white right wing privilege if ever there is any.
I started to type out an argument that politicians should have to do x amount of time in fast food or retail before running for office, but then I realized that's a road to fascism. After months of customers yelling at you for the pink shirt not being pink enough and demanding to know why you're hiding the real pink shirts in the back, rounding people up in concentration camps is going to start to looking very reasonable.
My resume has 4 to 5 jobs on it, single page. I leave out tones of slop, and include only the most relevant jobs for the position to which I'm applying.
In high school, I worked a coffee kiosk in a Costco. In college, I worked at a Taco Time, a portable coffee cart, and (very briefly) a shitty telemarketing company.
None of those jobs ever appear on my resume. Ever. They're simply inapplicable. I'm a software developer. Why the fuck would a potential employer care that I know how to pull an espresso shot?
Maybe they need to hire somebody at the office that can show them how to work the espresso machine in the break room that hasn't been used since Bruno left 6 months ago.
You are entirely correct. That being said mentioning that you know how to pull an espresso shot under the skills section not gonna hurt, speaking as a fellow developer who does later stage interviews. :)
So I should include the 4 Saturdays I worked as a 6'2 tall Kid Vid (the short lived burger king mascot) in 1993 in Crawley Town centre (and scared a lot of kids because I was WAY TOO TALL - the costume was designed for a 5'4 girl), because it's relevant experience to my 30 year career in it consultancy. Gotcha
Your apartment neighbor on one side of you is a 20 something named Tim who you've seen go to great lengths help people out in need gets a little too deep into video games that his mate gets frustrated with him. He talks about how much he wants to be a teacher and help young people succeed. Your neighbor on the other side is another 20 something named Kamala who graduated recently and is working at McDonalds but tells you about her pending enrollment in law school.
You think to yourself "Why can't these people be the ones running the country?"
Not dipshits, assholes. They're not ignorant, they're not stupid. They're intentionally malicious assholes that know better but would rather be complete assholes.
Reminds me of the time in my late 30s while applying for a warehouse job that I left out the fast food job I did while in highschool. Nobody questioned it, but maybe it's because I'm a white guy that's not running for president against a mob of insane conservatives.
I've hired someone who'd worked at McDonalds. It was for a technical support position, and I knew that if he could handle five years of your average McD's customer then he would be amazing at dealing with our customers.
I did a stocktake hired casually for a few hours at a hardware store. I guess I should include that in the future to avoid getting attacked by right wingers
I worked 3 months in summer for a Subway. It was a learning experience. Harder than it seems. Lots of prep and cleaning. Left on good terms. If someone brought that up, it wasn’t to me a negative thing. It was just. A time of my life