How to discuss unrelated religious service on resume

Question

Background:

I was fortunate enough to obtain an internship in software development when I was 16, and I've been working in a software development related role ever since (through summer jobs/internships as well as full-time salaried work). At the time of writing (2018), I am 22.

Where I come from, it is very common for young men and women aged 18 or older to enter into voluntary religious service for 1.5-2 years. I chose to do so when I was 18, came home, and landed a nice job at a local software company which I left after a year and a half of employment.

When I returned home I didn't initially discuss my religious service in my resume. However, this lead to questions about the two-year gap. I was able to participate in a little programming while involved in this, so I've taken to including it, and attempted to make it as relevant as possible:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints / Full Time Volunteer

January 2015 - January 2017,

• Created script to translate Delorme Street Atlas+ files into KML for use in google maps
• Volunteered weekly in community service such as soup kitchens and food pantries
• Participated in daily and weekly planning sessions
• Cold contacted, presented curriculum
• Mentored junior colleagues

Question:

How I can I discuss this professionally in my resume? Should I include it at all? If no, how can I best talk about the 2 year gap/avoid a binned resume?

TLDR; As it stands my resume consists of a few software development jobs, followed by a 2 year gap for religious service, and then another software related job. What is the most professional way to discuss this in my resume?

Answer 1

That quoted part seems okay to put in a resume; you could perhaps leave out the LDS part and just mention "full time volunteer" if you're worried that religious service looks unprofessional on your resume, but I wouldn't worry about it; especially not if this is common in the area you live in.

I was able to participate in a little programming while involved in this, so I've taken to including it, and attempted to make it as relevant as possible

As a bit of an aside, I think that being a good employee in any position (including software development) is more than just about "technical skills". The so-called "soft skills" of being a pleasant person to work with, patience, ability to disagree constructively, being able to take responsibility, and so forth matter. A lot. Highlighting those kind of aspects in your two year service would be just as useful – if not more useful – than highlighting various technical things you've done in that time.

All other things being equal, I would personally sooner hire someone with some experience outside of software development – such as LDS missionary service – than someone who hasn't, even though I am an atheist who is not especially fond of organized religion (as an institution) in general.

Don't be afraid of it, and use it to your advantage.

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Are there some who might go ewwww, a Mormon! and discriminate based on that? Probably. But consider, would you really want to work for this company? Will you have a good time at a company where people have this kind of attitude? Unless you're really desperate to find a job as soon as possible for e.g. financial reasons, then I'd consider filtering out these kind of companies an advantage rather than a problem. Remember, interviewing isn't just about a company choosing you, it's also about you choosing a company.

Answer 2

Definitely include it in your resume!

It's great, it shows you're not just motivated by money and have interests outside of work. Many people your age have big gaps for traveling etc. and most employers don't mind.

To fill the gap in your resume list your freelance work as an ongoing position that spread over this time. That way your future employers can see that you were still coding while you did voluntary service.

i.e.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints / Full Time Volunteer January 2015 - January 2017

• Volunteered weekly in community service such as soup kitchens and food pantries

Freelance Software Developer January 2015 - Present

• Created script to translate Delorme Street Atlas+ files into KML for use in google maps

Answer 3

Especially since you did computer-related work as a volunteer, making it more technically relevant – but, even if you hadn't – you definitely should include that entry, proudly.

Whether you "felt called" to do it, or felt that it was expected of you and/or that it is a social norm where you live, "this is what I did, and did it faithfully and well, during this period of my life." (And if you still do it, mention that also.)

I sometimes volunteer at soup kitchens – slugging 40-pound containers of hot food to the front line and washing a helluva (heaven-va?) lot of dishes – but this, too, "is part of my life and of my life's service to others," and I mention it in a section on resumes. (In this case, I do it simply because I want to – hard work has never felt more fulfilling.) It is beneficial to let an employer know "what else you are, besides work."

Answer 4

Seeing as you did some programming in the middle of this service, I think it's still reasonable to put it in your resume. However, you might want to trim the entries under that to include the programming bit and then just summarize what you do there. You can then simply elaborate further should they ask about it during an interview.

So it would just probably appear like this:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints / Full Time Volunteer
January 2015 - January 2017,

• Created script to translate Delorme Street Atlas+ files into KML for use in google maps
• Volunteered weekly in community service such as soup kitchens and food pantries

Answer 5

I did technical screening and candidate selection for 2 years, many hundred resumes and about 75 hires. I need to offer a different view.

You should not put anything that tells loudly about your ethnicity, gender, age, sexuality, or politic views. Anything that touches on those, in the resume, makes people job tough.

When I read resume I try to set aside biases. Most of the time it's easy. But, here and then, someone puts a very attractive picture on the first page (and even mention their marital status). Or mention at length their military service or religion.

That makes your selection job harder because you have to make exactly the same decision as if they didn't include that irrelevant characteristic of themselves or their lives. And you get to double-check yourself: Was I easier on candidate because of the picture? Was I tougher on this candidate because of the ethnicity. And then you start wondering if the rest of the hiring team might have been affected.

Bottom-line: it adds complexity, stress and weight to the hiring company. Just go for:

• Volunteering

or

• Volunteering, religious organization

Then it makes it clear that you volunteer and conveys inclusion. You treat yourselves and others equally, regardless or their religion, gender, etc... You're not trying to pander, you're not trying to exclude and you can be plainly factual.

Personally, that's how I'd have like to see your resume. I'm pretty sure I'd interview you nonetheless if you listed LDS, but I would have wondered if I was fighting any conscious or unconscious biases.

Answer 6

It depends. Is your goal to account for the gap, or to show continuous technical experience? How you answer that depends on how much work you did that is related to the jobs you're applying for now. If it was 90% irrelevant and 10% relevant, that's going to be very different from if it's 50-50 or better.

The purposes of a resume include:

• Demonstrate qualifications and, ideally, growth over time, without padding or exaggerating.

• Account for all the time.

If you had been out for two years for military service, to care for an ill relative, or to travel the world, you would be focusing on the second point, accounting for the time. I would normally expect missionary work to fall into the same category, but I've no experience with it directly (and also none with LDS) so maybe I'm wrong about that. Unless you're applying for jobs within the LDS community, your resume screeners won't know much about the "baseline" of missionary work either.

If you are prepared to talk about substantial, work-related impact of your volunteer time, then go ahead and include that experience with the work-related duties you listed, treating it like any other past employment. Filter out duties that don't apply to the jobs you're seeking, or consolidate them into a single bullet point at the end along the lines of "other duties related to the organization's mission".

I've seen resumes that have entries like "travel, date to date" or "medical leave, date to date" that have no further information. That's enough to account for the time without bringing in irrelevant details. That's your baseline; add to it the items that will help you get the job you're seeking now, and leave out the ones that don't.

Answer 7

There is no special way to discuss this, any relevant experience should be listed. You should be prepared to discuss it as you would any other relevant work experience, I would suggest you focus on what you did and how it is relevant to the job you are applying for.

If you simply need to account for the gap in what may be a sparse resume, and do not feel there is enough relevant experience, you may simply include it to account for time without going into details.

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Over time as you have more work experience, this CV line will likely be relegated to employers who would put weight in the volunteering or religious aspect (perhaps other religious institutions looking for your skills). Typically folsk with plenty of work experience would put this in the Personal Activities/Achievements/Community Service section if they choose to have one.

It sounds like your resume is still new and you would like to hold on to the most amount of content possible, this is understandable.

1. If the experience is relevant to your job position, focus the resume entry on those, volunteering in a soup kitchen, mentoring, etc. is not necessarily relevant and should be minimized to one bullet or mentioned in another section on personal activities or community service.

2. If the experience is not directly relevant to your job position, mention it but provide minimal detail (what you have may be enough)

3. If it causes more grief than help remove it all together

4. As you have more work experience this line will naturally seem unnecessary as you would have much more experience to cite, and maybe would remain a mention in your personal activities section.

Answer 8

I would very-simply state it, exactly as you have stated it here, in order to explain "the gap." If you are actually being questioned about "the gap."

If anything that you did during that time might be "professionally relevant," then of course mention it to your advantage. But, if not, "don't force it." If your explanation for what you did with two years of your life – meant only to account for it – is that you spent those two years "growing tulips," then that is absolutely your business. You might even choose to offer no details at all, "if it's nobody's business." Your call.

You're a Mormon. I'm not. No one has any reason to apologize. Follow your calling, whatever it may be. And "with your head held high." You don't need to explain it to me, nor to sell it.

Answer 9

Nobody cares what you did during any volunteer service unless it is relevant to the job. What people care about is a gap in your resume because they want to understand if you went on a trip around the world or were in prison.

So list your volunteer service including the time period and where, in the same way you would list a job. Leave out any details about what you did. Don't overthink it, people simply want to understand what you did and to ensure you weren't in trouble or some other stuff that they ought to know about.

Answer 10

Being a Mormon is who you are, and you should be proud of that, and definitely include it on your resume! It shows:

1. You believe in things/causes. Believing in something, and spending your time towards your belief, is a valuable asset to a team. It shows you can be passionate about something, and most employers look for that.

2. You have been actively working the whole time and didn't just take a 2-year break. Many people do take long breaks from employment (there's nothing wrong with that), but the question is going to come up and you are going to have to answer it, so may as well frontload the issue rather than dealing with it on the fly (or worse, having your application declined due to "red flags" which aren't really there).

Also, there's nothing wrong with providing service to any charitable organization, religious or not, and you shouldn't be embarrassed to be a Mormon; any company who is going to hold it against you that you're a Mormon is probably a company that you're going to have other problems working for anyway. They're not rejecting you, you're rejecting them.

EDIT: Upon rereading the OP, one thing I might leave out is "presented curriculum". Most people who receive calls from religious evangelists treat "presented curriculum" as "had an annoying fanatic push their ideology on me" (not to say that's what you did, but that's how some prospective employers might read it). Saying that you engaged in cold-calling is fine, that's part of the job and it's something you did. I would leave out the "presented curriculum" part though.

Answer 11

It is, by the way, entirely understood that the Mormons ask for a period of "religious service" from young people. That is a perfectly reasonable thing to decide to do.

Meanwhile – "a resume" is a "job focused document." It isn't asking about your surrounding life. It isn't overly concerned with your private life, nor with "gaps." Nor does it specifically concern your religion – no matter what religion (if any) that may be.

"A resume" is a purposeful document. It's only concerned with (recent ...) job related experience which might help a hiring manager to determine if you might be a suitable candidate for the job that this person is now trying to fill.

But also: Many of the things that you appear to have done during your volunteer religious service ... "are quite technically interesting!" While you have no good reason to apologize for spending a portion of your life in "volunteer religious service," you can certainly highlight the way that you worked with KML!

Answer 12

If you want to turn this into an asset rather than a potential issue, then target your religious network and group for opportunities, in which case this experience is both valuable and totally valid.

Lots of LDS I know have done this. It's one of the biggest secular benefits of having a religious support group. You have done your bit as a missionary and should have made some pretty connected contacts while doing so. In fact it would immediately start you of on a good social footing if you landed such a position.

I'm not LDS, nor would I hire someone who must mention they are an ex-missionary. I avoid anyone who thinks it appropriate to make a point of being religious in an application regardless of the religion including my own.