Editing Resumes

Once we realized that the day labor agency was not going to materialize overnight, we wanted to find ways to help our clients, the guys we live with, in the meantime. Resume editing was an obvious service that we could provide immediately.

It was an unexpectedly eerie experience editing that first resume. I used my resume as a template, so the client’s experiences, one by one, slipped over mine. His identity gradually obscured mine. My name became his name. My internships disappeared and were replaced by his work. My time spent researching, analyzing, advocating became his time assembling, stacking, cleaning. The two lines that didn’t have to change were the address. We both lived at the Mission.

As I deleted and typed and tabbed, I thought of all the facets of my life and my personality that could never fit on a resume and wondered what silent successes, missed opportunities, and deeper meanings weren’t making it onto his. I had a sudden distaste for resumes. Technically, they aren’t intended to be statements of personal worth, just the bare bones facts, the necessary evil of eliding the complexities of a life to grease the gears of the human resources machine. But when we get picked up or passed up for a job, it’s hard to leave it at that, to not feel like it says something about us, about whether or not we are good enough.

Working with our clients’ resumes requires some thought and creativity. Without selling short their wide range of skills and positive attributes, many of them have barriers to employment. If you listen closely, you can hear their resumes tell the stories of their struggles. Steady employment gives way to a year-long gap – an unrecorded battle with addiction. No reference available for a good job – an abrupt departure brought on by a quick temper, a broken-down car, a sickness in the family, or any of the thousand other things that can and do go wrong in the real world. That’s what we’re doing when we edit resumes. We’re dealing with reality in eleven point font. And in this economy with six and a half people vying for every open position, we better do a good job of dealing with reality.

One of our clients recently asked us to work on his resume. For some reason, it took a few days and a lot of pestering on our part to actually get a hard copy of his current resume and the changes he wanted made. It took a few hours to reformat and reorient the content. When we showed him the final product, you would’ve thought that we had baked him a cake. Or actually found him a job. He was grateful that someone had taken the time to do something especially for him. And the new resume gave him new confidence. The next day he was out scouring the town for jobs. It was great.

In return, he treated us to a bit of interview wisdom, which we now share with you. Establish eye contact with your interviewer the moment you enter the room, and do not break it under any circumstances. He illustrated the iron-clad quality of this rule by leaving the back porch and re-entering, as if coming into our office. Before his first leg was even through the door, his head had swiveled, locking onto Derek’s eyes. He had to sidle and grope his way to his chair, but one didn’t notice so much because his intent, unblinking gaze held us spellbound.

Now if only you could fit that type of knowledge into a resume.

Nuts and Bolts: The Purpose.

The Margin.

At the end of August and beginning of September I spent three weeks working for a day labor agency which contracted my labor to various employers in the Charleston area, paying me minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, while employers paid the day labor agency about $13 an hour for my labor.

The day labor market thrives on fixed prices and margins of profit. The margin between what’s paid, at $7.25 an hour, and what’s collected, at $13 an hour, becomes profit and covers costs. The largest costs are worker's compensation and liability. For construction cleanup, a common construction task, the worker’s compensation rate is 12.06% for every dollar. Yet as the largest cost, worker‘s compensation, along with minimum wage paid to laborers, is still just over $8 an hour. In spite of which the day labor industry grosses billions of dollars per year nationwide.

The Issue.

Many of the men and women who work for day labor agencies are homeless and near homeless. Here at the Star Gospel Mission, of the men who work, nearly all of them work for a day labor agency. Day labor agencies attract homeless and near homeless laborers; they are located in low income urban areas, they provide daily transportation, and they pay you the same day you work.

It almost seems day labor agencies target homeless and near homeless laborers. But in doing so their business model creates a web that benefits from their labor, and in turn from keeping them homeless and near homeless: That’s the issue.

The employment provided is anything but the kind of employment that might help the homeless and near homeless escape their situations. It’s a web. And it isn’t moral.

An Idea.

What if a day labor agency eliminated the profit and reinvented The Margin so that instead of creating and benefiting from The Issue, it addressed it? What if they themselves attempted to bridge that Margin, creating it from the homeless and near homeless perspective? Could the quicksand be reversed into steps on a ladder?

What if they addressed their laborers as clients, and treated them with respect, compassion, and the love of Christ?

This is The Purpose of In Every Story, to address an issue that nobody in Charleston is addressing. To set up a sustainable model that could be adopted and spread. To allow God to make a difference in the life of someone else, even if only our own.

These are the nuts and bolts, of which we’ll be tightening, loosening, and showing you more. Hope you had a blessed Thanksgiving.

A Grill or Something Else

Before we tell you what we're doing, we first need to tell you why we're doing it. This essay, "A Grill or Something Else," starts to explain the why. It's a story of meat and the heart and judgment and money. Let us know what you think about it.

We'll periodically post links to the longer reflections that we put together. You'll see them collecting on the right side of the blog under "Our Stories." Clicking on those links will take you right to the page with the essay. You can display the essay on a full page, zoom, and scroll as you will.

The First Post

“It feels like begging for work.”

That’s how David, In Every Story’s first client, described day labor.

Day labor agencies sell “unskilled” labor to contractors in the Charleston area for about $13/hr. These unskilled laborers, many of them homeless, almost always earn minimum wage. That’s minimum wage before transportation and equipment fees are subtracted. What type of work does minimum wage buy these days? Physically grueling and often dangerous, these are jobs which require a considerable amount of skill on the part of these supposedly unskilled laborers.

If day labor’s so bad, why not just get another job?

Put aside the fact that South Carolina’s unemployment rate is fourth worst in the nation. Put aside the fact that some of the guys working day labor have significant barriers to employment. The day labor system itself makes it hard to find a permanent job. When you’re living day to day, you can’t readily afford to miss a day of work even if it’s to interview for a better one. You not only lose a day’s wages; you also lose your spot on your work ticket – a spot you might not be able to reclaim.

The men who work day labor are among society’s most vulnerable, and the system exploits them. Day labor is quicksand for the working homeless.

In Every Story is a different kind of temporary employment agency. We are, living at the Star Gospel Mission ourselves, creating it from the perspective of homeless and near homeless workers: to serve them.

We’re going to use this space to share with you stories of homelessness and day labor. In every story, there’s conflict. And you’ll see it in our clients, in our business, and in ourselves. But in every story, there’s hope, too. And that hope emerges when you start treating people as people and with the love of Christ.

Keep checking in. We’ll be posting.