A reader writes:
I organized adult weekends (aka, orgies) for several years. The part I enjoyed the most turned out to be the project and event coordination: sourcing locations, keeping the books on payments, communicating with vendors, tracking the budget, managing food, etc.
I’d like to do more of that professionally, but I’m not sure how to talk about it in interviews or put it on a resume. For example, I’m applying for a job that asks to see sample curriculums I’ve developed. My examples have to do with adult topics (think consent education, not like graphic how-tos) that I think would color their perception of my candidacy.
What are your suggestions?
Ooooh. Yeah, that’s tough.
The subject matter is likely to make people uncomfortable, and for a lot of people it’ll raise questions about your judgment in using the experience at all. In a perfect world, it wouldn’t — it’s legitimate experience — but in this one, it will.
You might be able to look at jobs that intersect with the adult industry or are adjacent to it, where the subject matter is less likely to cause those issues.
Another option is to sanitize the material so that it’s not as explicitly sexual, if that’s possible with the materials you have. You’d just need to keep in mind that once you submit it, it’s fair game for questions and you may get asked about the context you were using it in.
But also, if you’re looking for jobs doing project and event coordination, curriculum design probably isn’t going to come up a ton. And it sounds like you have lots of examples of sourcing locations, managing finances, working with vendors, and managing food — all things you can discuss in G-rated terms.
So I’m wondering if you can describe the events simply as social events (for a local “social club”?) — there was food, after all! — without specifying that clothes came off and sex was had. You’d need to think carefully about how to do that so that if you are asked questions about what sort of group it was or the purpose of the events, you’re prepared with language that finesses that … but I think “social group” could plausibly cover it, as long as the group’s name doesn’t make it really, really obvious.
