Put your archaeology experience right under your education with a title of "relevant experience". Then under that have a separate heading for "other experience" and put your retail there. Only put enough "other experience" to fill out one page. Don't go into a lot of detail for items in this category.

Honesty and openness is always a good policy - especially if this is what you want in return from your employer.

I can't see why 'archaeology' or CRM are any different from any other profession in respect of writing resumes or CV's - there's plenty of good (and bad) advice out there.

Try http://www.businessballs.com/resume.htm

I agree with each of the previous contributors to the discussion and think they offer good advice. Thinking in terms of relevant experience is good advice and might be a way to tweak things. For example, any inventory work for retail is not much different than maintaining provenience of artifacts during transfer from field to lab to photography to illustrator back to lab and to curation. I'd like to add that you seem to be estimating the impression a potential CRM/archaeology employer might get from your experience. Sell you, not your experience. Here's why I say this.

If I was looking for someone with a pile of field or lab experience then no job for you. If I was looking for someone cheap then you might be just the right person since you have a little besides fieldschool. Probably know enough to put your boots on and aren't threatening to me.

As someone who has needed to staff projects of various sizes I find one thing is common. The persons applying to be part of my team will still need to be taught what I want/need them to know. Not just how my company forms should be filled out, or how I want the bags labelled, but important stuff they didn't learn yet. Things like how to use their compass, read a map, make a map, understand more than the metric system, measure and draw to scale a milling feature, describe soil, be on time and ready to go, critically examine finds to be sure they are cultural, etc.

Find a way to let a candidate to be your employer know your attitude toward the work. You could tell them you are eager to learn new skills, but I've found most employers and field team leaders are not willing or interested in teaching others what they need to know. They hire "experienced people" who usually need to get more experience on the job. I think this is a good thing, but it should be recognized at the outset. Staff the project and encourage people to work together to reach the goal and contrinnute to the project and eachother in the process.

Getting jobs by promoting yourself rather than your extensive archaeological project experience won't be easy, but it probably will be necessary. At least until your experience starts to take up more of the page. Then they'll ignore you because you're a threat and you'll be back to promoting yourself instead of your experience.

[quote:="ROC"]
As someone who has needed to staff projects of various sizes I find one thing is common. The persons applying to be part of my team will still need to be taught what I want/need them to know. Not just how my company forms should be filled out, or how I want the bags labelled, but important stuff they didn't learn yet. Things like how to use their compass, read a map, make a map, understand more than the metric system, measure and draw to scale a milling feature, describe soil, be on time and ready to go, critically examine finds to be sure they are cultural, etc.

...

That is probably some of the most helpful advice I've heard. Thats a great check list for gauging ones skills on their own, and a checklist of what they may want to include as skills in a resume, cover letter or during an interview to show that they are competent despite a lack of previous experience. I'm holding on to that list!

An interesting choice of words Histarch; ROC is famous for his checklists. I'm sure he has a checklist for his checklists...lol.

Hopefully he will impart more of his wisdom and experience often.

Richard

Thank you Histarcher711 and FireArch. I appreciate the kind thoughts.

Oh, I checked. Nope. Not on the list. Guess I better put that on the list of things to do. Lets' see, check list of checklists......

Hey, I hope this wasn't my chance to impart some wisdumb.