I can't speak for every company out there, but for us, we've discovered that resumes and whiteboard challenges are bad predictors of great engineers. So, we simply come up with a small project that's related to what we would have you work on if you were hired and give you around a week to finish it. You can use other people's code snippets online as well as any libraries you see fit. As long as the end result is good…
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?
The sad truth is that they likely have enough candidates to not need to consider this.
1) Personally I don't think you need to explicitly address it on your resume. I personally know lots of tech people who have taken 6-24 month off to travel and had no problems getting interviews / jobs.
2) The main place I could imagine this gap coming into play is the sourcer stage (ie the recruiting person who reviews all of the incoming resumes), since most hiring managers doing resume reviews will mostly be looking for technologies / job experience. To avoid this you can lean on your network to see if you can get a referral to roles or look for head hunters who can skip you to the initial screen.
I personally don’t answer questions about this or salary. The discussion is about working together now into the future. Saying no and why is this question important to you (if it’s really of interest) seems the most ethical thing to do without more info. As I recall one State recently and finally made it illegal to ask about prior salary, and in Oakland about criminal record for housing. These one sided concerns are bad for the economy short and long term. Competition and focus drive innovation.
The things you do between roles define you as a person and make you interesting. Use them as such. Tell the truth: I was sick, had enough savings to heal up and take some time off, and now I'm fresh and ready for the fight. I also did X Y Z and A B C, had some fun. Play time's over, and I'm looking to work hard. If they can't appreciate that, then they wouldn't appreciate you in general. A self-solving problem.
If you live in SF, ill refer you to some places, you dont have to explain the gap to people, ill tell them its better that you dont know for legal reasons, but its a good valid reason and they should consider you.
I can't speak for every company out there, but for us, we've discovered that resumes and whiteboard challenges are bad predictors of great engineers. So, we simply come up with a small project that's related to what we would have you work on if you were hired and give you around a week to finish it. You can use other people's code snippets online as well as any libraries you see fit. As long as the end result is good…
So if you have a years worth of work todo, and 50 people apply, you get the work done for free?
That would be the worst consulting experience for the company and I think you can easily tell a different between a test and outsourced work.
Also that wouldn't likely save time. If the task will take someone 2h, I'd have to spend more than that: describing the task with all the relevant context, providing a mock of the environment it needs to be plugged into, reviewing the result, fixing any issues, changing it to match the internal style, and also waiting for the solution itself which may not even arrive any time soon. It's not like every (or even most) candidates will produce something you'd want to keep.
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.
Or they're selecting for people who don't have many options.
I'd just tell the truth, I've taken off plenty of time and I generally just put it on my resume to save them having to ask: "took of some time for health related reasons and then decided to use my savings to spend some time with my passions" or whatever it is in your case. If this is a problem for a hiring manager, that's probably a red flag for you as well. I hope it doesn't end up being a problem for you; it's neve…
Thanks! I'm still a bit hesitant to add a section describing the nature of the hiatus to a list of previous work experiences. Seems a bit unprofessional to me as if the work experience is sorted in descending order — the gap is gonna be at the top. So i'm at crossroads here: risk and add the medical section or prepare an answer if a follow up question even occurs. With former i'm blatantly throwing it to the face, wi…
Contrary to what most people are saying here, I would advise to not mention medical issues. People are weird: they will be understanding and have sympathy, but when it comes to who gets the job, there's a good chance this will work against you. Not openly (it's illegal, after all), but subconsciously. Don't see this as lying; remember that it is your right to not mention this. Of course, you shouldn't conjure up some fantasy story of what you did during that time either, but in my opinion, labeling this as a sabbatical is OK.
Thanks! I'm still a bit hesitant to add a section describing the nature of the hiatus to a list of previous work experiences. Seems a bit unprofessional to me as if the work experience is sorted in descending order — the gap is gonna be at the top. So i'm at crossroads here: risk and add the medical section or prepare an answer if a follow up question even occurs. With former i'm blatantly throwing it to the face, wi…
Contrary to what most people are saying here, I would advise to not mention medical issues. People are weird: they will be understanding and have sympathy, but when it comes to who gets the job, there's a good chance this will work against you. Not openly (it's illegal, after all), but subconsciously. Don't see this as lying; remember that it is your right to not mention this. Of course, you shouldn't conjure up some…
If they don't hire you because you decided to take a year off then they're not worth working for. It's easy to be in the corporate mindset when you interview someone that this person must be somehow not a "team-player" or "go-getter" because he actually values life above working like a slave robot. Work for someone who understands the human element of life and doesn't treat another human being like an object or projects the reliability and uptime of computers to the human element.
There is a huge lack of empathy in corporate environments today which is incredibly dangerous, I think that's why work satisfaction is at an all-time low.