Comment by maratc
4 years ago
> Force people
My god.
Even on LinkedIn it is optional.
I was out of work for a year and a half for personal reasons, and I conceal that fact from clueless tech recruiters by having my previous place "2013-2016" and my next as "2017-now". As soon as service "forces people" to fill their form as "tech recruiters" designed, they can just go south.
At an interview in 2020 I was asked:
"Can you explain the gap in your work history from May 1997 to March 1998?"
My answer:
"You're asking about a gap more than 20 years ago? I just didn't work for a bit, that's all."
If I were a recruiter, I would find the fact that you were trying to hide a year and a half much more sketchy than just seeing that you were "out of work" for that period...
I understand your sentiment but you are missing the point. When recruiters of any sort are going through thousands of CV's, they will filter on anything that helps them find candidates more likely to match a job. Regularly out of work because they are bad at a job, regularly out of work because of a one time issue (family death, illness) look exactly the same when filtering for work gaps, but only one of those is a meaningful signal. But its sufficiently uncommon that you may not lose many quality candidates by doing it. This is what bias looks like, and how it is propagated as well. Desigining a system that may be used by thousands of recruiters has to make decisions on these tricky points, and thoughtfully design around them.
Recruiters don't seem to get to the conclusion that I'm "trying to hide a year and a half" because fwiw it can be a month, or just a change of jobs on Jan 01.
Some recruiters look for red flags in order to dismiss a CV. Year out of work could be such a flag. My job is to hide that red flag. Once being interviewed, I will provide the details if asked.
I just checked: On Linkedin it is indeed optional but they made it look like they force you (https://imgur.com/a/0wdI3Wy)
I almost always see the dates with a month.
CVs are primarily consumed by people who hire people, why wouldn't you listen to what they say?
If you had to be out of work for a year and a half for personal reasons, just put it there. Trying to conceal stuff can work, but might not; hence, isn't the most conservative idea. All the best.
As a person who "hires people", would it be a good idea for a 50-year old guy to openly state in their CV that e.g. between Mar 2016 and Sep 2017 they were fighting testicular cancer? This wasn't my reason; I'm just asking for a friend.