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Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?

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Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?

#241

Post by mlyle »

DavidSJ wrote: post #238
mlyle wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you discount "personal catastrophe" appropriately, though? Surely the volatility in outcomes is very important, and not some simple expected value. A 5% chance of my house burning down is much more costly to me than 5% of the economic cost of my house burning down. Indeed, there's not really a (reasonable) discounted price I will take for a chance of my house burning down. Of course, this kind of aggressive av…

You normally wouldn’t discount linearly. But that doesn’t mean you can’t put a price on it. There’s a limit to how much you’d pay for insurance, for example. Some risk is part of life.

I didn't say one can't put some price on it. I said "maybe a huge amount" in comparison to someone saying that perhaps one would value it at $5k.

$5k this year is small compared to future potential career earnings; not much of a difference in probability of losing those is required to far exceed $5k. Just strict linear expected value could be bad, let alone when one weights the risk and volatility.

Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?

#242

Post by ttttodayjunior »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #216
lainga wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I bring up the converse question - who would actively look for job gaps? And why?

I usually look for time patterns in CVs. Gaps could be part of that. If someone turns over many jobs quickly I don't want to pay to bring someone up to speed only to see them leave when they should hit their stride. Or a month or 2 gap after every job can indicate they are getting the boot as most people swap one job for another. But one gap for a year, not many would really care I suspect as long as there is a reaso…

> Or a month or 2 gap after every job can indicate they are getting the boot as most people swap one job for another.

That's a bad metric. I have never been fired but have a few months gap between each job. That's how long it takes to get a work visa.

Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?

#243

Post by ExtraServings »

mellosouls wrote: post #97
ExtraServings wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're sufficiently motivated to want the job, they will jump through the hoops. If the job's not worth it to the candidate, they won't complete the task. Easy.

Good luck finding remotely decent candidates without an extraordinary offer at the end of significant unpaid work. Remember, it's a two way process; any candidate worth their salt is interviewing the company. If the candidate is worth it to the company, they won't expect them to jump through absurd hoops, and will treat them with at least a professional minimum of respect.

That just exposes our different view of where the bottlenecks are - you believe there are a limited number of coders who are up to the task - I believe there are less opportunities than 'adequate to the task' coders.

Which is true? Nobody really knows.

Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?

#244

Post by mellosouls »

ExtraServings wrote: post #243
mellosouls wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck finding remotely decent candidates without an extraordinary offer at the end of significant unpaid work. Remember, it's a two way process; any candidate worth their salt is interviewing the company. If the candidate is worth it to the company, they won't expect them to jump through absurd hoops, and will treat them with at least a professional minimum of respect.

That just exposes our different view of where the bottlenecks are - you believe there are a limited number of coders who are up to the task - I believe there are less opportunities than 'adequate to the task' coders. Which is true? Nobody really knows.

That's a fair point regarding balance wrt jobs/devs though the general market would seem to indicate good devs have no problems getting jobs.

But I don't see how it carries over to companies expecting a huge investment from a developer up front (a week's work, unpaid!), without some major positive differentiator from the other companies requiring decent devs.

That isn't going to appeal to any developer with options.

What's the upside, why would they invest that time - just go to the non-presumptive company next door.

Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?

#245

Post by jfoster »

This sounds to me like the type of thing an employer would look for to have a reason not to hire. If potential employers are looking for this, something is already wrong. It could be market-driven (eg. too many people to choose from) or they already don't want to hire you, or something else.

Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?

#246

Post by kabdib »

ken wrote: post #217
Ididntdothis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If they don't like it, you probably don't want to work there anyway." That's always important to remember.

What does it mean, though? Is it just "sour grapes is a powerful force"? I don't know about gaps in particular but there are lots of places I thought I'd love working that wouldn't take me.

Not complicated. It means, "you probably wouldn't want to work there."

Interviewing is a two-way street. If your potential employer is intensely interested in your leisure time then that's an interesting signal, because it's unusual (I've never had a single follow-up question to why I took nearly a year off) and could point to a bad culture (lots of possibilities here, including the company being a modern sweatshop or doing very close monitoring and metricization).

Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?

#247

Post by huebomont »

ExtraServings wrote: post #78
huebomont wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes. Hopefully paid? What if the candidate is currently employed? Where do you expect them to find the time, knowing that they are not likely to be only applying to your company, but to others as well?

If they're sufficiently motivated to want the job, they will jump through the hoops. If the job's not worth it to the candidate, they won't complete the task. Easy.

Thinking like this loses you candidates who are applying to multiple places. It's so hubristic to think that your job couldn't possibly be equally desirable to others.

Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?

#248

Post by m_fayer »

bastardson wrote: post #189
m_fayer wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do basically what OP said, but we ask the candidate to spend more or less 4 hours on the exercise, in one sitting or two. We also give them a fairly large project to do and say "We know you can't remotely complete this in 4 hours. Pick a nice subset that you find compelling and that demonstrates your strengths, and code that. Explain your choices." It's worked well for us - it demonstrates not just coding ability…

Do you explain why, to those who don’t make it to the next round? I did one of these, and the response I got was essentially “You didn’t make it”, i.e I had no idea of what was wrong with my code or why I didn’t make it through.

Yeah we do, but it's usually just a sentence or two, something like "we wanted to see a deeper use of language features" or "we're looking for a deeper understanding of framework x". We used to write more, but too many people would try to argue.
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