Hi everyone,
I have been thinking about applying to JET for some time and had a question/looking for advice regarding a past job that I am concerned would look bad/damage my application severely. Back during college in the early 2010s I worked at an adult novelty and apperal store (18+ materials). The pay was good and hours were flexible so I had the job for a few years after graduating before moving into an office admin job in higher education.
I wasn’t sure what the best way to approach this in terms of resume/job history for JET. Obviously I could omit it and hope the gap between college/next job doesnt come up or possibly alter the business name to make it sound vauge (the official name makes it obvious what it is).
I have plenty else for my resume job history-wise (all professional and in education), including lots of volunteer experince (including tefl style volunteer work with japanese speakers), working with college age students, a couple of years of Japanese, etc. On my current resume this old job merits only 1 line since it was a generic retail job, so never have really thought about how to address it.
Any advice would be appreciated!
8 comments
You’re better off putting in just relevant job history, don’t worry so much about the gaps. If you got nothing from that adult store job that relates to teaching or language/culture exchange (well…I mean…not in any risque sort of way lol), then just don’t include it. As long as you don’t mention it, it’ll likely not come up.
Even if it does, they likely won’t be interested in the name, you can just mention it was a novelty retail store and leave it at that. As long as you didn’t do anything they’d frown upon, you should be fine.
In the application, it asks for your 3 most relevant/recent jobs. It sounds like you have a lot more experience now, so you likely won’t even need to mention a job from 10+ years ago.
Just omit it, no one will know or ask.
Just ommit it. They don’t really care about your previous work experience anyways, so gaps or shitty minimum wage jobs don’t matter.
As others have said, use only the relevant positions. Omit the rest.
JET doesn’t look that deeply. Omit it. They only care about things relevant to teaching or things that show off your positive attributes. There are tons of people who get in with zero work experience whatsoever so don’t worry so much. Just make sure your SOP and references are excellent. And for the love of all that is good, don’t restate your resume in essay format in the SOP.
Thanks everyone for your feedback! I’ll just omit the job from my resume when the time comes
Yeah, I had plenty of gaps in my application. Honestly, I’m not convinced they really looked.
Many people on JET have zero work experience. Omitting it won’t hurt your app. If you have anything at all, that is a plus.