81–90 of 94 posts
edit: if you put any date at all, just include the year you received the degree. no need to put any further details.
And honestly, I question the predictive value to job performance of this data point in the first place. I would hope most people wouldn't get hung up on it. There are many more valuable data points to examine.
I wont detail specifics but I took longer than normal to attain my BS and I'm not shy about it on my resume. In all my interviews it came up once as an afterthought "Oh, why'd this take so long?" and a quick story was satisfactory. No one will make a big deal out of it like you do. As others have said, try listing only your graduation date. If you think it will come up anyway, have a one sentence blurb prepared that…
THIS. Speaking as a hiring manager, I will absolutely notice any delays or interruptions in your education (unless ancient); in the event you don't give the years, it often becomes obvious when you list high school degree or summer jobs. The key is to have a reasonable story about the situation. Finishing a liberal arts degree in five years after you spent the first four partying doesn't send a good message. Finishin…
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
To be fair, I was already well advanced in my career.
Business Management major. I work in Systems Engineering.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They really shouldn't be asking specifically. IANAL and I don't think most age discrimination protections kick in until you're 40, but that kind of question - or asking if you were a "non-traditional" student - seems like a roundabout way of asking someone's age, and is therefore quite unprofessional.
It depends. If someone discloses to me on their resume that it took 8 years to get a bachelors, meaning they put 2000-2008 next to that line item, it's fair for me to ask about it. Besides, professional or not, you want them to ask it if they're inclined to ask it. Not because it's information for them, but because it's information for you. A candidate interviews the company as much as the company interviews them, an…
This is a strange thought process. It's illegal to ask about kids/relationship status and you apparently know that. You just attempt to fish for that information because you want them to know that _you_ personally WFH and have non-work stuff in your life? Why not just describe that work culture? Seems like you are trying to find out if they have kids or a wife, otherwise I don't understand the reasoning.
Generally, no, employers don't care. When you list your degree just list the graduation date. Regardless of your work history, you should list internships and projects you accomplished while in school on your resume when you are starting out anyway (unless you were already employed in the field). And if anyone asks specifically, tell them, yea I took a little extra time to finish my degree. Never lie and don't deny i…
> When you list your degree just list the graduation date. This. I reviewed a ton of resumes, and even when I even noticed that total education time was "non-standard" (rarely), it didn't matter. It's easy as an employer to look at transcript and see if someone is slacking off or has other stuff going on. And the latter is probably a good think in terms of your commitment and drive.
I graduated in 2006, having started my Bachelor in 2000, beca8use it turns out that I have a pretty severe neurological disability. I've had much trouble finding a full-time job (one interview started screaming at me after I explained that I have a disability, but was most impressed with me up until that point) and one of my acquaintances explained that it was because I got a degree.
First, he told me that running mail/web/file servers at home show I can do it and haven't just followed an online tutorial but by doing my degree, anybody could have done my work. Then he explained that the length of time that I took to complete the degree was going to stop anybody hiring me. Later, I was told that it was fair to expect that no employer would hire me, there's no legal restriction preventing them from telling me to get lost because of my disability.
Obviously the first and last were wrong, but this is the first time I've heard an employer actually saying they don't really care how long it took to get the degree.
I'm french and swiss. In France, they put (unfortunately) a really strong focus on the degrees and the marks, in general, for everything.
It's truly hard to find a job, even if you're good, without a degree (except maybe in the startup scene), and you better indicate if you take longer than "normal". Most of the people do their first degree in 3 years, then their engineering or business graduate school in 2 years, and as such, it can be complicated if you're applying for a job at 29 if most of the people land the same job that you're applying for at 23 or 25. It sucks, but it's unfortunately how many people think in France.
It's quite different than in Germany, where I know a lot of people who have stop for 5 years there, then continue their studies, then land another job in a different work sector, ... It's not shocking for someone to be 30+ and begin to work in IT, for example (at least, not in my experience), when i think it would be a bit more in France.
Switzerland would be a bit in between France and Germany when it comes to "elitism", "focus on degrees rather than experience", because Switzerland has a very, very long history of apprenticeship and their whole education system is based on it, and so, even if degrees are important, experience is too, but sometimes, it feels like they are out of reality for some other work stuff.
And it's again very different from UK or USA, where indeed, I have been able to land a position in a new startup without even showing my resume, but just showing my skills and talking about what I experienced and learned and deduced in the past. So ... really, "it depends".
A final advise I would give to you is that I feel like it's really important to spend enough time to learn about the place you want to work at and its culture (moreover it will help you know if you should precise or not if you took longer than usual to complete your degree ;)), because too often, people send dozens and dozens of resume and eventually, it feels like it lacks "personal interest" and if an employer doesn't feel you're truly and personally interested in working at his place, he will prefer to give your seat to someone who "truly cares"
(edit : typos)
As a long-time employer the answer is "no" ... I don't necessarily care how long it took to earn a degree. But ... From my observations, earning a BS (or BA?) requires a far less rigorous schedule than working at a full-time job. If you couldn't manage a normal class load because there was "stuff going on", I'd expect that "stuff will continue to go on" and that would distract you from what I need in an employee. Wha…
> From my observations, earning a BS (or BA?) requires a far less rigorous schedule than working at a full-time job. Pfft. A 9 to 5 job sounds like a piece of cake compared to some of my semesters. At least provided you are not working when you get home. I guess that some universities just don't push students too hard then. Also, the "stuff going on" could well be a full time job, as it was in my case. What then?
In the first week of the first semester of second year (Bachelors are normally three years where I live), we lost 12 people from the core paper. By the end of the second week, 20 were gone. By the time the paper had finished, 13 weeks later, fewer than 50% of the people who signed up remained, and of those, just over half were in a position to complete the paper.
To complete one assignment, I had to sit in the same spot for 17 hours, with just half an hour off for some food. Went home at about 6am the next morning, slept for an hour, went back to the lab, and worked another six hours. That year, they seriously cocked up the expected workload for the entire second year and gave us what they acknowledged was a workload appropriate to third year.
There are laws intended to prevent that happening to employees, but no such protections for university students.
In fact, the only time I've had a job that even came close to comparing with this workload was a few years ago, when my employer refused to let me take breaks and working just my contracted hours was (in his deluded little mind) grounds for dismissal. No extra pay for the 15-30 extra hours I did every week, though...
I'm in a position to hire at a startup, and I definitely don't care. One of my smartest friends took 5 years to graduate from Caltech and has a 2.x GPA to boot. Also you should just write your graduation year for education anyways, not duration.
I wont detail specifics but I took longer than normal to attain my BS and I'm not shy about it on my resume. In all my interviews it came up once as an afterthought "Oh, why'd this take so long?" and a quick story was satisfactory. No one will make a big deal out of it like you do. As others have said, try listing only your graduation date. If you think it will come up anyway, have a one sentence blurb prepared that…
THIS. Speaking as a hiring manager, I will absolutely notice any delays or interruptions in your education (unless ancient); in the event you don't give the years, it often becomes obvious when you list high school degree or summer jobs. The key is to have a reasonable story about the situation. Finishing a liberal arts degree in five years after you spent the first four partying doesn't send a good message. Finishin…
I took 3.5 years for B.S. but I think my resume just has graduation year on it.