Don't leave gaps.
Add "consulting".
You may consult anyone for anything and as long as the reader could verify it (in case it gets to that) you're good.
Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?
181–190 of 248 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh gaps are usually pretty interesting. I once dug into a big gap (3 years) and went down quite a rabbit-hole with a candidate that was in every other respect excellent. But the gap: Let's just say it was the worst thing you can imagine.
Prison for almost killing their interviewer for asking about an employment gap.
Second gap for killing and escaping the prison.
Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?
#183As a person who's reviewed a lot of resumes, I don't actively look for job gaps, so I probably wouldn't notice. I'm more interested in what technologies you use (role), and what you've done in the past (experience). As long as you are sharp and know your stuff, you'll do fine. Even if it is a red flag to some, I strongly believe software interviewing is a numbers game, due to randomness and bad interview processes. A…
Can I bring up the converse question - who would actively look for job gaps? And why?
Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your version says “I’m a liability”. My versions says “this person has had some struggle and has their priorities in order”.
We know it sounds better - that’s not in question. The point is that it’s less honest.
It is a business, not a person. The situation this asymmetric deserves an asymmetric answer.
Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?
#185“I want to talk about something that some may say is a weakness. I took a Sab. But, I want to talk about my strengths and why I’m a good fit.. “
Always start with your weak points and finish strong. Setting the bar low early will make them think highly of you.
Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
this isn't "burden and cost".... it's providing a large set of requirements and giving clear expectations about what is realistic, and the flexibility of choosing which requirements you satisfy to demonstrate your skills. unless I'm misunderstanding why you're referring to?
The issue is the value the employer derives from this set up vastly outstrips the value the average application receives (which is severely negative for most candidates). The fact is, most applicants for such a job have practically zero chance at getting hired. Just that they don't know this. So they go above and beyond for the sake of making a good impression, and you get to throw them out after 30 seconds of scanni…
We're up-front about this test being part of our hiring process. The test is also not the first step, but follows an hour-long interview. We don't want to waste anyone's time either, so we only give it to people who really think have a good shot at passing it.
Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh gaps are usually pretty interesting. I once dug into a big gap (3 years) and went down quite a rabbit-hole with a candidate that was in every other respect excellent. But the gap: Let's just say it was the worst thing you can imagine.
Now I'm intrigued but I'm assuming something like jail/prison. :D
The worst thing I can imagine would hardly leave only a 3 year gap.
Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's illegal to ask further about medical, or any personal information like marriage status, etc. Medical is a good enough answer.
It is perfectly legal to ask, but that opens you up to accusations that you also discriminated. You no longer have the defense that you didn't know the information, and the court would want an explanation for why you were asking. It's hard to imagine an illegal question under US federal law, but I suppose there could be one where the question itself is sexual harassment or an attempt at stealing trade secrets.
So basically as soon as you ask it you are pretty much obligated to hire them.
Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
After dealing with a few of these things, I've resolved every time I get one of these applications in the future, I'll just decline. If you want me to spend like 1-2 hours doing some small exercise that proves I can program, fine, but I'm not wasting my spare time coding the moon for you with your mind numbing full stack crud app project for some ultimately middling opportunity.
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.
Re: Ask HN: How to explain job gaps on the resume?
#190I 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…
How much do you pay the candidates for this exercise? Or do you expect them to put in multiple hours without reimbursement?
How much should companies charge to review your resume when you send it in? Job interviewing is a time sink for everyone. Imo the ideal case is to read over the resume, have a phone call and be pretty sure that as long as they are what they say then they will be hired which the take home test can do.
I have had companies send out a test as the first step and then reject me after completing it because my resume didn't meet their needs even though they had that info to start with.