Being a Latter-day Saint lawyer in a major urban area has its ups and downs. I have too many church and family responsibilities to hustle business and parties and socialize with my partners.

I’ve got 15 years of post-mission experience in senior-level IT positions and in academic research (oh, but I only finished my BS 10 years ago). When applying for most positions, if I list the positions chronologically, the mission is on page 8, if I give them my full CV.

If I give them the one-pager, I include some of the mission experiences I’ve had in my experiences section under the “Leadership” column, and I make reference to my language skills, but other than that, including stuff from 15 years ago is a distraction. To each his own.

I believe in the theory of “experiential half-life” — that the worth of any past experience diminishes at a constant rate over time. I used to work for IBM, but it’s been so long now, that bringing it up has a tendency to overshadow the past 8 years.

They said: “Every top notch business school is very well aware of what missions do for students. They consider it a very positive factor in admissions.

Personally I cannot think of anything which inhibited my career, because of being LDS. Everything was positive. There were occasional snide remarks, but I dismissed them because they were they were by people I was passing on the career ladder. And many others that I passed indicated their resepct for my beliefs.

Elisabeth, I get the “outcast struggling to free yourself from oppressive religion” vibe. I was in a job interview once, and someone saw “Harvard Women’s Law Journal–articles editor” on my resume, and said “I didn’t think your church leaders would allow you to work on that journal.” I was sort of shocked that someone just came out and said that in an interview…but he seemed sort of impressed. It was a fairly awkward moment…

I’ve played around in the past with putting my mission on my resume, but I found it a little awkward to explain. That round of unemployment (2002) I usually didn’t bother since I’d been home about eight years and I’d done plenty since.

On the other hand, during that same round I sometimes listed my high school diploma on my resume. If I didn’t, people would often ask why someone who went to college in Utah and had mostly worked since in North Carolina would dare apply for a job in Delaware. The diploma was evidence that I’d grown up locally.

That is, I’ve had a few very awkward job interviews, and even a few where I was told that I couldn’t be hired because of religion. (2 of these were overseas and 1 was as an SAT tutor where the classes were being held at a Chinese Church in LA).

I found things particularly difficult when I was recently off the mission and looking for part-time work during college. I had almost no work experience, except the mission, and thus every interview that experience (or the reason I’d taken two years off school) were all people wanted to talk about.

it’s now been years since then. I’ve had one experience where being Mormon probably got me my job. but I no longer list my mission on the resume. People probably just assume I spent 5 years in college, and I’m okay with that.