I kind of think I already know the answer to this, but I wanted to get some opinions before I decided it on my own.
I'm about to graduate on July 9th, move home to the Cincinnati area, and start looking for jobs in the middle/end of July. I have a job now, but it's a position with my family business. I love it there, but I've been working there since I was 12 and it's really time to bust out and see what the rest of the world is like.
A couple months ago, I started a side job as a freelance writer on www.the-lingerie-post.com. It's not a huge job, just a few short articles a week, but I'm proud of it just because it's a start in the writing/freelancing world, which I've always wanted to dabble in. Now I'm trying to figure out whether or not to put it on my resume. I strive to keep all of my articles classy and not get into the trashy stuff, but I am fully aware that any mention of lingerie can be seen as scandelous. I'm interested in a few companies - one is an investment group, which I would think would be pretty conservative and I definitely won't put it on the resume I send to them. But the other two are a hospital and a casino management company - not the wildest and craziest of companies, but not super-stuffy either. And of course, if none of those lead anywhere I'll be looking at other companies, but my degrees aren't anywhere near the financial realm so I won't be at the most conservative places ever.
I'm afraid that a mention of lingerie will immediately make me look skanky, especially since I'm not applying for jobs anywhere near the fashion realm. At the same time, I don't want to sell myself short by not including a writing job that I do have under my belt. If I was writing about something fairly mundane, like flowers or dogs or whatever, I would definitely include it because I want to seem well-rounded and give credit to the experience that I do have. But this is a trickier subject. Without this, I've only had three jobs to list. They're all credible enough - I've been a secretary, website designer, and last summer I had a marketing internship for a gambling magazine. At the magazine, I had minimal writing responsibilities (I did the book reviews and this page that would give information about new products). So I will still be able to claim a bit of writing experience there, which has me leaning towards not mentioning The Lingerie Post at all for fear of sounding skanky. But I'd still like to hear everyone's thoughts on it. Help! I have to start sending these things out pretty soon.
-- Edited by ttara123 at 20:38, 2007-06-19
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Fashion is art you live your life in. - Devil Wears Prada | formerly ttara123
If you were applying for a journalism or communications related job (which it sounds like you aren't) then I would say that you should go for including it. But the freelance writing doesn't really sound that related to the jobs you're applying for, and since it might strike some more conservative staff members as a negative, then I don't think it's worth including it. Since you're just graduating, I'm sure that they don't expect you to have that many jobs under your belt and besides you can fill up the resume if you've still got space left by leadership/community activities types of things if you have them.
I agree with littlebean, unless you are applying for writing jobs I wouldn't mention it. Maybe you could bring it up in the interview if you think the person could handle it. Even then, I might just mention it in passing as a skill or say that you write bi-weekly articles for a website and leave it at that without mentioning what you write about.
I agree with previous posts. I don't know if you could mask it, by calling it something else, like a "clothing website." I dunno. Maybe it's best to leave it off.
I agree with the other girls, if you do deciede to include maybe refer to the fact that you "freelance articles for an foundations & undergarments website" Sounds a bit less skanky.
Thanks guys,I just needed reaffirming that I wasn't making the wrong decision. I think I'll leave it off and bring it up only if it's relevant. I won't be applying for any jobs that will be solely dependent on my writing ability or experience, so I'd probably hurt myself more by putting it on there
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Fashion is art you live your life in. - Devil Wears Prada | formerly ttara123