Quote:
Originally Posted by Our2Kids
Thanks guys.
I do have the fact that I'm an official listed on my resume as well as the conferences in which I work. I've been on some interviews where the hiring manager notices it and asks about it. Most have found it interesting. Others merely gloss over it. Nobody, though, really has asked if it takes time away from my 9 to 5 job.
I posted this to see if others have found it helpful to mention officiating during the interview or let the hiring manager bring it up.
I like the fact that mentioning officiating can show quick decision making and adaptability to different situations ... perhaps I may use that angle. I also agree that if it is brought up, it should be late in the interview. I definitely wouldn't lead off with it.
Like I said in my original post ... I clearly want to keep officiating, but not at the risk of my real job. Like 99.999% of us out there, this is not something that pays the bills, it merely makes the checking account a little fatter from November to March. I have to get out of the habit of looking at a job description and dismissing it if I feel it wouldn't let me referee... that's defintely not the strategy to have.
I appreciate the feedback and hope others will continue to weigh in as well.
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Many people who say "not at the risk of my real job" are saying that without meaning that.
For many of us, officiating is an important part of who we are. I left a job 8 years ago because my boss told me at the hiring time that there'd be no problem whatsoever with me working an earlier schedule during baseball season (we had flex time, after all) -- back then games started at 4:30PM and occasionally I'd have to leave as early as 3PM.
This was all fine at the hiring time until the next spring rolled around and I found that it was all hot air. I'd have meetings scheduled at 4PM when I'd already blocked out those hours on my calendar. Eventually, my boss told me to choose my job or my officiating. I reminded her what she had said, and she didn't think I really meant that I'd actually leave work "just to umpire a baseball game."
If I had been told this up front, I would've never transplanted my family to Wisconsin -- I would've found a different job. As it was, I bit my tongue and had my resume out the next day. It took me the rest of that year to find a new job, but I did. In my current job, I occasionally have to travel and have to find replacements for some games, but when I'm home, I can officiate as my hours really are flexible.
In my current gig, I had a boss who was miserable for other reasons and I went through an interview process at a local company and was offered a job. I did not take it because they were really put off by the idea of me "working outside of work" and they started quoting company policies on outside employment and made me really feel like they thought they'd own me -- at work and outside of work. Had I been unemployed, I would've figured out how to make it work, but since I already had a paying job, I simply turned down the offer.
My advice is this: Don't put your family and your livelihood at risk -- if you need the work, you gotta do what you gotta do. But if your officiating is a big part of who you are, I would figure out a way to do both, if possible. That means you have to bring it up late in the interview process unless you desparately need the work. I wouldn't put it on the resume, though -- it could scare people away and you want to frame that part of the discussion in your own terms at your own time.
And you have to remember that this is a vocation for a very small number of people. Many of us make more in an hour in our day jobs than we do working a game. Paying the bills really has to come first when you have a family, mortgage, etc.