Another question about employment history... (new guy - pls help)

[ProspectiveHire]

Hi everyone. I'm new to the site and joined primarily in the hopes of getting some insight to the hiring process as I'm attempting to gain entry to a local academy here in Orlando.

I've never been in any kind of trouble, even as a juvenile, with the law or anyone else. Always been a pretty straight shooter. I did smoke some marijuana the summer after highschool, before college, but I've spoken to some LEO's I work with and they said that alot of their peers have had things like that in their past and it hasen't hurt their careers that bad.

The main thing I'm concerned about is my employment history. I've had myriad different jobs since I began working at the age of 15 and not all of them were good experiences. I've done everything from fast food and food service to sales and manual labor. A lot of my jobs didn't work out because of school (college) schedules and I've had a lot of jobs... about 7 since I was 15- I'm currently 23. When working for Blockbuster Video in 2006 I was actually fired from a job after a year and a half for supposed violation of return policy. What happend was a regular customer had a problem with a movie and wanted a return, but my manager was busy restocking items from the back. She had given me her login password in the past to do returns under her supervision so I remembered it and processed the return. This was fine by her but when corporate found out about the violation of policy both I and the manager were terminated- along with the entire rest of the hourly employees for other seemingly minor infractions. Most of us agreed this was because our anual wage increases were due shortly and it was an effort to cut costs by hiring lower paid replacements... this opinion probably wouldn't make much difference to agency interviewers, I'm sure.

In the past year and a half I've gotten my security license and joined that field as a Public Safety Officer. My first job was with Universal Studios where I joined during their busy season and they offered me full time hours. I explained I was a student and would only be able to work these increased hours during the semester break (which I did do without incident). However, upon the beginning of the next school semester, I continued to receive full time hours. I brought this to the attention of my supervisor who advised me that schedule change requests cannot be made until new hires have reached their 90 day anniversary. Given the choice between school and work, I chose school and began calling in regularly while looking for a new job. After a few weeks of this I was advised my attendance was poor and that I may be suspended if it continued. At this point I tendered my resignation.

Within a week I was hired by another security company and have done extremely well with them. After recieving my degree I was offered a full time position, and I have had perfect attendance in my 9 months as an employee.

I plan on disclosing this all on my academy application. However, I'm wondering how my employment history, with my wandering from job to job for a while and a resignation and termination within the past two years will look to reviewers. Any insight or advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

~DP

[DeltaV]

I don't see the number of jobs being much of a negative because you had reasons for leaving most of them (school). The firing will hurt, and depending on agency hiring policies you might not be eligible for employment with certain departments with a firing within the past two to three years.

As to the marijuana, it probably won't hurt you if it was just on an experimental basis. That said, if you were a pothead for the entire summer and were a regular smoker, you're going to be disqualified at most agencies.