What does a homeless person’s resume look like?

I’m learning that there are different lifestyles of homelessness.

While we all have unique circumstances that put us here, there are also circumstances that keep us here.

For some, who are not receiving the care and concern necessary by case managers, they may not know what they need to escape the cycle of poverty and unemployment or under-employment.

I had the privilege to review someone’s resume over the past weekend and it looked like a child wrote it. Worse, it looked as if a sixteen year old who was looking for their first job’s resume.

I asked the person who did their resume, and they said that the case manager (that is also my case manager) had done it for him.

His military experience was one bullet point under leadership and the last thing mentioned under skills and abilities. No descriptions of his long history of leading people from ROTC to Army soldiers. No emphasis on anything worth talking about in an interview and from talking to him, his confidence or lack their of in the employment process showed when we communicated. The case manager had done nothing to uplift him.

It seems that he’s still in a homeless shelter because he’s waiting on the right help, and the right opportunity. Within fifteen minutes I had him a brand new look for his resume and the words about him that focused on what he actually had skills in began to bring him a since of confidence that puffed his chest out a bit. Once he started talking about what he’s good at on the job and how he’s meticulous with certain things, I was excited to see such transformation.

In my other posts, I mentioned the heart of the people working at homeless shelters. It is necessary that we began to hire people who have been in a shelter but have overcome the trial, and offer them free education programs to learn social work.

In this case the homeless man is still here because he hasn’t been helped. Let’s pray that with his stylish new resume and extra confidence he’ll go land a management job, or at least something that will gain him financial independence.

-Ressurrection Graves
http://www.facebook.com/ressurrectiongraves