[nabs-l] Dealing With Gaps In Resumes and Having Little to No Work Experience

[Misty Dawn Bradley]

Hi all, 
I am wondering how people deal with having gaps in their resumes? I have heard that many employers judge by whether the applicant has had a steady work history. Due to the fact that I had to stay home with my daughter as a single mother, I have a gap of about 4 or 5 years in my resume, although I have some volunteer work that I did toward the end of it with AmeriCorps which I did put on my resume. I am also now in school and have been since 2012 working toward my associates in elementary education in order to transfer to a university to complete my bachelor degree in education. I am trying to apply for jobs to make ends meet while in school, and I am trying to figure out how to deal with and account for the gaps in my resume since graduating from high school in 2006. 
I am also running into the problem that most of the jobs advertised for and geared toward college students are highly visual jobs that require you to either drive or do a lot of visual things, such as dealing with inventory, organizing it by product number and size/color, and inputting data on shipments, etc. Otherwise, all other jobs require a lot of experience that I don’t have. How did you list members get around all of this, and what types of work did you do to make a living and support yourself while attending college? How did you obtain jobs if you had little or no experience in low-level jobs such as customer service, office administration, retail, and other jobs of this nature? My classes are all online, so potentially, I could do part-time or full-time work. I have heard of people doing volunteer work to get experience, which I have done in the fields of education/tutoring with AmeriCorps, but right now I need a job to pay rent, bills, food, and other monthly expenses, so, although volunteer work is good, I need something that I can live on as well as support my daughter. 
Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 
Thank you in advance, 
Misty