Early experiences can be notable to new employers

When you were a kid, did you sell Girl Scout cookies, or perhaps run a neighborhood lawn-raking service? How about later, when you were in high school — any paper routes or camp counseling jobs in your background? Maybe you were one of those farm kids who grew up milking cows, or a “PK” (pastor’s kid) who ran Vacation Bible School every summer.

If your younger years involved work in any form, it’s almost certain that your current career carries the imprint of those experiences. I, for example, cannot welcome someone into my office without offering a beverage before “seating” them — as a former waitress and restaurant hostess, I’m helpless to break this habit.

Which brings me to today’s question: If you have early work experiences in your background, are you using them to advantage in more recent job searches?

I’m inspired to ask because of a press release I recently received touting the attributes of former camp counselors and the value they bring to the workplace. As noted by the publicist for the Camping and Education Foundation (www.campingedu.org), businesses want standout qualities in their candidates. According to this foundation, former camp counselors have those qualities, including problem solving, leadership, resilience and a team mentality.

Of course, anyone can claim to have those attributes and naturally, any employer would like to have them. To turn this into a distinctive job search strategy, there’s one more step: As the candidate, you need to highlight how your earlier experiences have prepared you for whatever position you’re currently pursuing.

The starting point for the overall strategy is remembering to include these experiences in your resume or application. If you don’t, you might find it more difficult to refer to them later in an interview. Worse, omitting these experiences means you also erase the potential for a chance lightning strike — as in, “Oh, this candidate was a counselor at the same camp I attended — put her on the interview list.”

That said, unless your current work goal includes camp counseling or whatever the earlier work was, you don’t need to allocate more than a line near the end of your resume for the information, perhaps under a heading of “Earlier Work Experiences.”

Your letter, however, is another story.

If you’re writing a cover letter, or a letter of introduction in which you’re listing your background and strengths for a particular job, consider adding a line or two that touches on the character-forming work from your early years.

For example, “I’d like to mention another asset I’d be bringing to the position of Territory Manager: My personal work ethic. I first learned to work from sunrise to sunset (literally) on the family farm where I was raised with my two siblings. Now, as a sales and management professional, I embrace working smarter, delegating wisely and making good use of technology to get more done each day. Even so, I’ve never lost the ability and willingness to put in the hours needed to be successful.”

There’s a risk in going on too long about a loosely-related aspect of your work history, so you’ll want to calibrate the level of detail you use against the impression you’re hoping to make.

And speaking of farm kids, here’s something a sales manager once told me: “Whenever I see farm experience on a candidate’s resume, I automatically assume that this is a hard worker, and someone who’s down-to-earth, easy to manage.”

I’m paraphrasing, but the conversation stuck with me. In the years since, I’ve noticed that there’s a surprising power in the history shared between candidates and interviewers.

The reason is simple: People hire people they like, and people are more apt to like you if they share an experience or history with you. So next time you’re editing your resume or cutting off the entries that seem too old, consider a different strategy. Just remove the dates instead, but leave the entry. You never know who might make an interview decision on that basis alone.