"I'm sorry, I can't talk about that. I signed an NDA."
You can even create your own NDA to sign so it won't be a lie, if you care about that sort of thing.
Signing an NDA with oneself sounds like fay trickery 🤣
This is the best answer by far.
Second best is "independent researcher." Make up the metrics. You produced numerous 20,000 word reports for a small group of peers? Great, I have also barfed up a wall of text at reddit.
First rule of signing your own NDA is you don't talk about signing your own NDA.
The NDA trick no longer works, employers caught onto this, and now they have a secret "We employed these people under NDA" list to verify it, and the worst ones don't upload it there to punish those who dare to leave
Any source for that claim?
They signed an NDA so they can’t elaborate
It's more like people have suggested it to me to avoid the NDA trick in the future.
I signed a non disclosure agreement about that period of time and am not at liberty to discuss it.
Well ZILtoid1991 said you have to tell us with who and we can ask them to use the secret non disclosure disclosure mechanism, who was the NDA with.
The counter party is covered under the terms of the NDA, I can’t disclose who they were either.
Checkmate
My answers to "Would you explain this gap in your resume?":
No2 will make any interviewer exclude you as they don't want to hire a "lemon"
Lemon is right...but not because they have medical problems. I'm left as hell but I'd get so annoyed if an interview candidate snapped back like that. I'd think "this person is going to escalate any minor inconvenience"
I would hate to be interviewed by you, asking for respect of medical privacy is "snapping back"? No wonder it sucks so fucking much to find a new job.
It's so weird to draw weapons in response to that. Do you really always assume the absolute worst intent when someone asks open-ended questions? If so, it's hard to feel bad for you. You are one of the worst kinds of coworkers to have.
"Hey tocopherol, do anything fun this weekend?"
"How I spend my weekends is none of your business and I'm offended that you even though asking was appropriate!"
"Ok dude have fun sitting in your car at lunch"
Legalese style “I will not be discussing this matter any further” in an interview does give off future lawsuit vibes.
Yeah, a much more normal way to say that is “I was dealing with a medical condition. It’s no longer an issue, but it’s a bit personal, so I’d prefer if we didn’t get into more than that.”
I wouldn't even say that much. Any interviewer asking about a 'gap in my resume' is already coming off to me as a micromanaging cunt.
Lemon is right…but not because they have medical problems.
It's because they have boundaries.
No, it's because of how they choose to respond to a tiny bit of friction.
They're the type of person who wouldn't take 2 minutes to help you with something that's not explicitly outlined in their job description.
They’re the type of person who wouldn’t take 2 minutes to help you with something that’s not explicitly outlined in their job description.
Yeah.
Boundaries.
A completely inflexible person.
Acting their wage.
Helping out your coworkers on a one-off thing is just a thing normal people do. People like you are insufferable
Someone who isn't willing to be taken advantage of.
Another good one is to mention there being health issues in the family that necessitated you take time to help them with.
Only a very nosy employer will question that further. If they give you grief for helping your loved ones in such a situation, they probably aren't worth working for
I have a "mental health break" line in my resume for a 4 month hiatus. I don't know if it's a flex or not, but it's honest about what it is. At some point, a potential employer asked about it with some stern reservation, which allowed me to avoid a toxic workplace culture. Win win.
I'd guess that filling the gap with pretty much anything is better then leaving an actual gap. Maybe add a proof from police that you weren't in jail or something.
My response: "I'm a software developer. Middle manager douchebags told me they don't need my services because they think they can code their apps themselves. Ain't my first rodeo. They'll beg us come back to maintain this shit."
(Happened last time with VBA.)
I hire people where I work. Nothing fancy, just pest control, but I don't give a fuck. If you're licensed and seem decent as a human I'll give it a go. Worst case scenario is you suck, in which case you're fired pretty quickly on your own merit and I hire someone else. There are so many smaller companies out there in nearly every industry and they're ran by normal people with normal fucked up lives like most of us.
I've been fortunate to end up where I am and what I do but all my employees have fierce loyalty to me simply for being normal and treating them like maybe they're normal too and I hate seeing things like this because even these big corporate jobs are still being ran by people going home and having normal human problems. I don't understand why so many jobs have entry barriers that exclude shit like, "shit happens, sorry for being poor?"
Hope that makes sense. I'm rambling but I also had a shitty day with work and came home and drank. So fuck judgement.
I have had to do a decent amount of hiring over the years for my own corner the corporate meat grinder. I personally don't care about a gap unless the gap is too big. A big gap allows for a lot of rust to build, so it becomes a bit of a calculation of how much rust needs to get knocked off and if it's fine for this position if it takes longer to get productive. If they're still pretty sharp then the gap is no issue, and if they're really rusty then that can be a problem depending.
I interviewed a guy not long ago with a 3-year gap. No fault of his own, the economy sucks, so I didn't hold it against him. But despite knowing there was a technical interview coming up and knowing what skills we were looking for, the dude didn't put any effort into studying before my interview and he bombed pretty darn hard. Which is a shame because on paper he would've been an amazing candidate otherwise.
Anyways all of that is to say that sometimes a gap brings other stuff too, so a gap to me is a sign to look for that other stuff.
I’ve successfully labeled a period of “being laid off and playing a lot of video games until my bank account got to the area I didn’t like it to be” as a sabbatical.
ymmv though
Sounds like a sabbatical to me.
I have a small consultancy with several staff.
Couldn't care less about a gap on someone's resume.
I wouldn't ask but if someone told me they'd taken a year off to get stoned every day and watch judge judy that's not a deal breaker.
Oh yeah sir, that was my year as a porn star, you should have asked your wife about that
You see a lot of people who hire want individuals who live to work: workaholics. Those are the kinds of people you can get the most value from.
They don't care that these people exploit themselves and hurt their families in the process. These are the ones they want; therefore, those are the kinds of people we have to masquerade as.
That was my "On the lam" year. It worked, and here I am. When do I start?
If you do call it a "sabbatical"
Works for people in academia
And industry. I work in IT and like 20% of people go on sabbatical after a decade working, sometimes to ponder a career change.
"I had to provide end of life care to a close relative" doesn't get followed up by a lot of questions.
Some recruiters are not so great at judging people. Instead they come up with rules and red flags to justify their choice, or worse, get inspiration from other recruiters on LinkedIn.
What's more, job interviews are poor predictors of job performance, so even those who are experienced with judging people in higher context settings are not so great at judging people.
I've been working in transportation and logistics first as a forklift operator, and now work as a local truck driver for nearly 15 years.
As much as I can find the job a little overwhelming at times, I appreciate that every interview I've had I just show up not looking like I fell out of a dumpster and let my actual skill determine whether I'm hired or not. The time spent on a forklift showing them my skills, or a drive test behind the wheel is my interview.
In 15 years, I've never been fired, left every job for something better, and never been turned down a position once in this current career path.
This wouldn't work for some jobs, but where it does a skill test does sound like a perfect interview. Glad you're doing well
Every interview should come with a skill test.
You're being hired to do a job. Why are so many ignorant and inept interviewers hiring someone who may or may not know how to do the job, or do it well?
If I'm hiring a bartender, I'm asking them to make me a couple drinks. If I'm hiring a custodian, show me how well you mop. I'm hiring a programmer, write me something. Every job is doing something. More interviews should involve the actual 'doing' part, not asking benign questions all the time.
Some jobs require things that are hard to do on the spot, like product manager who should be in the loop and take care of where development moves, or project manager who should make said development actually happen.
The skills can be sort of checked by presenting a problem and asking how they would solve it, but the more abstract the skill required is, the more can the difference between reality and interview be, in my opinion
Mostly they just want to know you weren't in prison during the gap. Be prepared with an explanation
I interviewed for one place where they asked about a “gap” (and yeah my resume is just full of gaps due to mostly working contracts, so oh well I’m used to those conversations). The one they were asking about was literally while I was in school, getting my degree. So I told her as much, thinking that would be the end of it per usual.
But no, she followed up with “right, but didn’t you have a job while you were in college? Didn’t you DO anything?”
Bitch, college WAS my fucking job, I took it seriously so I could graduate my STEM program with honors (as an unmedicated AuDHD). I was attending classes year-round, lived very frugally, and had GI Bill to cover it, so why would I work?
She continued to press it after I gave her the interview-appropriate version of the paragraph above, I have no idea why. I concluded the interview with something like “I don’t want to work for a company that cares this much that I didn’t have a job when I was going to school full time, didn’t need one, and wanted to focus on furthering my career. Good luck finding someone with no self-respect, since that’s what you seem to be looking for.”
Damn. I would not work for a company like that. Fuck that. HR failed the interview.
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