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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.
How do you like pest control? I’m not looking for a career change right now (just got a new job recently that I actually don’t completely hate yet), but it’s something I’ve considered in the past. Seems interesting.
I love it. Lots of freedom in this job. On your own all day. Wake up, get in truck, do jobs, go home. Plus people seem to really appreciate it and that’s nice. Nowadays though I’m a manager so now I mostly sit at home or at the office doing stuff on a computer but being a tech was always a great job to me.
Sounds quite nice honestly. Thanks for sharing, I’ll look into it some more.
My answers to “Would you explain this gap in your resume?”:
- Relevancy: “I only included relevant experience on the copy of my resume that you received.” Hiking experience isn’t relevant. Couch experience isn’t relevant. Time spent as the forgotten pawn in the machinations of capitalism isn’t relevant.
- Privacy: “I am not required to disclose medical information, and will not be discussing this matter any further.”
- Fuck 'em: “No.”
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”
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.
Someone who isn’t willing to be taken advantage of.
It depends, I know people that would be glad to help on the work but will not tolerate out of work pondering. Gaps on the résumé are sort of more of the latter, imo
You know what I do when someone casually asks me a question I don’t want to answer? I keep it vague and give them a chance to pick up the hint. I don’t give them a stone cold “I’m not going to answer that.” like a defensive weirdo.
Feels like a lot of people in this thread don’t realize an interview is a conversation. Or they just don’t know how to have a conversation…
Seems like they think conversations involve certain spells and invocations to force it to go the way they want. Like if you have a legal right, you must aggressively invoke it so your opponent realizes you’re a legal mastermind and hands you the job to avoid lawsuits.
Feels kinda like that advice for interacting with cops that sounded more like “how to be legally right while escalating interactions with the police”. Or the sovereign citizen version that drops the “legally right” part entirely.
It ignores the reality that anyone can judge you for any reason and that it’s practically impossible to prove or even know why they reject you after an interview, so it doesn’t even matter if they did it for an illegal reason as long as they didn’t outright tell you (or each other in writing if you do try to sue, which btw if you sue someone over how a job interview goes, few will want to even interview you if they know about it, even if you’re completely in the right).
I think a more productive and empathetic approach would be to probe such a person on practical job-relevant hypotheticals of a similar nature, in order to actually get an idea of how they would handle those situations - if that’s really what you’re worried about. Why be so quick to label people negatively based solely on personal boundaries? Do you think it’s better to skirt one’s way around an issue than to address it?
Its a conversation that determines whether you can collect enough credits to have food and shelter. Defensiveness seems like a natural reaction, no?
Yeah it’s much better to begin with a more polite “It was medical in nature and I’d prefer not to discuss it.” And only pull out the “hey, legally you can’t ask about my medical issues” if they continue.
Thank you. You’re one of the only people in my replies who gets what I’m saying lol
Other people are acting like the interviewer is demanding answers.
An interview works both ways. If that’s how they consider humans, then you dodged a bullet.
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
How have these answers been working out so far?
Pretty good so far. I haven’t had a job that makes me wish for a workplace accident in years.
I am not required to disclose medical information, and will not be discussing this matter any further.
Why the combative/legalese tone though? Why not just say “It was for medical reasons, I don’t want to go into it” like a normal person? The interviewer would go “Oh ok fair enough” instead of thinking “What’s wrong with this guy, did he get out bed with his left foot today?”
I just tell them “personal commitments”, and they don’t pry any further, but maybe that only works for crappy minimum wage jobs.
“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 🤣
First rule of signing your own NDA is you don’t talk about signing your own NDA.
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.
Narrator: I didn’t.
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
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
No, this could work in a way that all companies just submit names to the same list, and if someone says NDA they check the list.
Problem with this is that small companies or companies from other countries won’t give a shit or won’t be allowed to even submit anything. Of course, you could say small companies don’t use NDA, but that is not true and defeats the purpose really
It’s not that they keep a list of who was employed under NDA, it’s that [the fact that you worked here] isn’t what’s actually under NDA, it’s the actual project you were a part of.
NDAs just aren’t the blanket defense people think they are.
The NDA can include the whole employment, otherwise, if you were employed for a specific time when a project happened to be run, you can be connected to the project
“I had to provide end of life care to a close relative” doesn’t get followed up by a lot of questions.
Something you can only say if you get to the point where you get an interview.
Employers like you to be desperate, so demonstrating that you can afford (whether through finances, friends, or foraging) to not work for a long stretch of time indicates that you won’t be negotiating with them from a position of dependency.
It also suggests you might be willing to walk away from an incompatible work situation, whether due to workplace toxicity or your own outside priorities, which can be scary to the person you’ll be reporting to.
I fully hear that, but I’d argue it depends on the position you’re interviewing for, as this can show competence. If the gig is management or involves handling the cash flow, taking a year to do you on savings should be an attribute. Whereas someone working check to check and dealing with stacks of cash would likely increase the risk a bigger business would associate with you vs someone who’s dialed in financially.
Yeah, that’s absolutely fair. Even though it’s still the correct terminology, I don’t really think of (upper) management as having an employer-employee relationship with their company, so it didn’t occur to me to draw that distinction. I also didn’t think of people handling the books, but that also makes sense.
On the other hand, I worked for a company at which I started in the call center and moved to adjusting litigated claims. They gave me a credit card with a $5k limit and no use alert while I was still technically earning $15/hour and within two months of that, I was authorized to sign off on checks for up to $100k. I didn’t want them to think I was sketchy, so I didn’t push back too much, but I was always astounded that they trusted me (and several new hires at the company) so much so quickly.
Of course, $5k was peanuts and $100k was still not a big deal for the company, I’m sure they had a much different selection process for people who were handling the seven and eight figure payments.
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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 just did one of these for 7 months over which I bought a ranch and went backpacking. Today I started new gig as a staff dev.
Sounds awesome, all the best for the new job!
A decade? Can I go on sabbatical after 2 years working?
You can go as much as you want almost, as long as you have money to sustain yourself…
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
I’ve interviewed enough to know that once the testable basic capabilities are covered, its just a speed date
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.
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Oh fuck, that’s an enjoyable response. Unless theres something they can check about that. I dont know enough about employment.
NDAs are almost never all-encompassing. It may not even be legal. Usually an NDA is something like “I worked for [defense contractor] for three years as a mechanical engineer. I can’t tell you about the projects I worked on, but I can elaborate on my responsibilities.”
Unless they want your fingerprints, they probably aren’t going to check your tax history and that is how they’d find out you lied. If you worked somewhere, you’d have been paid and that means taxes. Some US states protect your tax info from background checks, but not all.
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.
If anything, having enough cash saved up to live an entire year with no work, and buy that much weed, demonstrates strong financial management skills
I’ve done almost exactly that. Twas wonderful
Specifically only Judge Judy? Or other shows mixed about?
So much stupid tv. Many night walks getting stoned with audio books. Nursing beers at the pub occasionally. Had a nice garden that summer.
I learned I’d make an excellent trust fund baby! So if anyone wants to bequeath me a modest fortune, that’d be nice. Ty
Dear Abby,
I would like to be a House Cat.
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.
Oh yeah sir, that was my year as a porn star, you should have asked your wife about that
“oh, that’s why mom mentioned you look familiar”
If you have enough financial security to be able to not work for a year, then the company may not want to hire you. Ideally it needs you to depend on it for everything, because this ensures you’ll be a well-behaved slave for an extended period of time.
Yep. They want desperate people.
… but not too desperate; clients might be scared off if the parking lot is full of rusted out 90s econboxes…
“some of your other, lesser applicants needed to ‘work’ to ‘pay bills’. me, I’m a leader, I don’t work for anyone. I inspire, I drive those beneath me to further productivity, raise profit margins, and fire those I don’t like just shy of the one-year probation deadline. I don’t need this company, this company needs me.”
dramatic pause
“$250k, 6 months paid vacation, and a company car. Actually, you seem like a good guy, I’ll take just 5 months and 3 weeks instead, just for you.”
Real straight shooter. Upper management written all over ya.
Michael Bolton?
Do you wear flip flops by chance?
so far, most haven’t cared. there was one recruiter really caught up on it, but that call had at least 3 major red flags, so I wasn’t too worried. I think next time I’ll ask them why they haven’t taken one themselves?
