Navigating Job Interviews After Recovery

Being employed is a crucial part of long-term recovery. Showing up for work each day will help you to learn new skills, gain self-confidence and self-sufficiency, have steady income and stability – all critical components for lasting sobriety. That said, job interviews are often stressful! Luckily, a little preparation can help. Start with these tips.

• Set your intentions ahead of time. Are you or are you not comfortable about talking about your past addiction and recovery? How and when would you share the information? What exactly would you say about your recovery? Are you able to emotionally handle any prejudice? Could your hard-won sobriety serve to demonstrate your ability to work hard and overcome adversity? Answering these questions ahead of time will put you in the driver’s seat so you’re better prepared on the day of the interview.
• Be consistent. If you decide to keep your recovery to yourself, make sure that your social media presence aligns with your decision for privacy. In other words, you might want to take a look at your privacy settings and/or edit any existing content. Also, you likely have gaps on your resume from when you were in active addiction or treatment and you may need to explain these to a potential employer. 
• Write down your strengths – and how they’ll help you do the prospective job. This is another pre-interview activity that can help ease nerves on the day of your interview. Especially if you tend to struggle with self-confidence, this exercise can help boost your feelings of self-worth so you go into your interview with your head held high. 
• Know your rights. The federal Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits employers from discriminating against people with substance use disorders who aren’t currently using drugs. 
• Remind yourself that perseverance pays. Look how far you’ve already come in your recovery, thanks to your commitment to rehab. Now it’s time to use that same grit to go out and get that job that will give you independence, accountability and purpose in your new sober life.

Employment Help at HAUS

Accountability and being self-supporting are vital steps to the reintegration process, so we encourage our clients to work. Our staff will assist with resume building and more. To learn more about our services, contact us today: 888-551-4715.

Spring Clean Your Resume

Spring is the perfect time to “clean up” your resume and significantly improve it so you can start seeing better results. After all, just like our closets, resumes need a good yearly cleaning and/or organizing to determine what to keep, what to toss and what to emphasize to put your best foot forward. 

Here are few questions to ask yourself as you freshen-up your resume so it’s current and appealing to prospective employers.  

• Is your experience still relevant? A good rule of thumb: You should only show the most recent 10 to 15 years of your career history. Take a look at your resume and determine what’s ancient history and what needs to be highlighted to meet the criteria of the positions to which you’re applying. For example, if you’re focused on a career in accounting, you no longer need to include your past job in a pet store.  
• Are you grabbing the reader’s attention? Take a look at the “career summary” section of your resume and make sure that you’ve highlighted your experiences, skills and contributions in a succinct manner. The goal is to showcase your skill sets with no more than five or six lines of text, say resume experts. 
• Are you using the right language? The best resumes often use strong action verbs — managed, launched, built, lead — at the beginning of each section. Read over your resume and edit any passive phrases like “responsible for” or “handled.” 
• Are you being specific? Do your best to quantify your experience — for instance, can you attach a measurement to a past job task or accomplishment like an increase in profit or level of customer satisfaction? 
• Are you being honest? Lying or “stretching the truth” on a resume is never okay. 
• Is anything missing? Take a look at the specific requirements of your target job — do you possess these skills and are they coming across clearly on your resume? And if you find that you're missing any of these skill sets, why not use this time to start a plan to learn them. 

Employment Help at HAUS 

Finding and keeping a job, and making a contribution to society, is a pillar of recovery. After all, accountability and being self-supporting are vital steps to the reintegration process. Our staff will assist you with resume building and more. To learn about our sober living services, call today: 888-551-4715.