Slashdot Mirror
Working Around Bad Luck on the Resume?
Dodger asks: "A year ago I was laid off from my job after 2 1/2 years, shortly after the product I was working on shipped. Later that year, a company moved me 1500 miles from Texas to California, to start working on a promising project, just to have the plug pulled by the corporation that funded it five weeks later, which resulted in another layoff. Now, there's a period of job seeking followed by a five week period of employment, followed by the current job seeking period on my resume. When the companies I interview with ask about that situation I simply explain, while trying not to whine or complain. What do other Slashdot readers do to make 'bad luck' (or bad employer choices) look less bad on their resume, and sound less bad in interviews?"
And during interview tell the truth that you were laid off. People understand the situation
I believe every employer appreciates a bit of honesty.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Lie.
No, really, just be honest like you already have been. The people interviewing you are human too, and they can understand bad luck like anyone else. Just put your best qualities far enough out there and layoffs like this shouldn't even be a factor to the interviewer.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Shrug and laugh about it. Attitude counts for a lot.
Besides, so what if a project fell flat because someone else pulled the plug? You took a chance on being part of it; sounds like a good resume item to me.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
You won't sound like whining, and trust me, a lot of people here will tell a lot worse horror stories. Probably the people interviewing you have worse horror stories than that. Even I do, and mine aren't nearly that bad.
;)
So, don't sweat it. If they ask tell the truth. It helps if the truth is "well, during my periods of unemployment I have been keeping my skills up to date, and have been working on X projects to keep me busy".
That's it dude, trust me.
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
It'll be worth it in the end. Just doin't hesitate to tell the truth and when/if you get the job, you'll be far better off. Lying will only make them question you and give them a good reason not to employ you.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
I'd be frank about it. It's a fact of life in today's market place that employment comes and goes quickly. While brief stints of employment may have counted against you three or more years ago, a reasonable hiring manager will recognize that you're a victim of the current economic situation. Just don't present yourself as a victim; being positive about it is the best course.
I've had literally three companies go out of business on me, and one company I ethically could not work for (owner was trying to bilk millionaires out of investment cash) in the last 3.5 years. So 3.5 years, 4 companies.
One recruiter I talked to started the conversation saying "I know the job market recently is what's to blame for your spotty employment" and then only ten minutes later said "My client is looking for someone who doesn't jump from job to job so much," so even someone who acknowledges the reason for your problems can very quickly forget it and start thinking you're a job jumper.
So how did I solve this problem? I simply grouped all the jobs I worked for in the past 3.5 years as bullet items under a single 3.5-year job of Database Architect Consultant.
This helps a lot, because consultants are supposed to have multiple employers (it doesn't hurt that I've also done some consulting work during this time).
The problem then is that when you talk to companies, they assume you want to continue consulting. So begin the interview with "I've been doing W-2 consulting, and I really want the stability and long-term relationships I can get with a full-time job."
It's really an interesting perception that people get when they look at a resume with many short-term jobs on it. They just can't get over the fact that it may be completely not your fault and they still somehow blame you.
You need to understand this psychology and then mask that fact from them (for their own good!). Otherwise they will end up hiring some lamer who happened to work for a company that lasted a lot longer than your companies even though said lamer isn't as qualified as you.
fifth sigma, inc.
It sounds like you're doing the right thing.
As a hiring manager in a software company let me tell you, you're situation doesn't look bad, assuming it's exactly as you tell it. If I bring someone in for an interview, and they tell me what you've been through, I'd be more likely to empathize with their situatition rather than hold it against them. So, just tell the truth.
The one thing that might be a problem is getting to the interview. You may need to do a bit of work on your cover letter to make it plain that the funding was cut rather than you losing the job because of cause.
One other thing - you may not want to include a 5 week job on your resume. Unless you gained a lot of important job experience in 5 weeks, I'd be likely to write the entire thing off. Since resume space is limited, you may want to include a former job that is more relevant to the position you are applying to.
... by getting interviews in the first place.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Lying can also give them grounds to fire you at a later date.
One technique that can be applied to many job interviews is to turn the situation around and make them try to sell the job to you. If you have a history of being let go by former employers stress that it's important that your next job be with a stable, successful company and ask pointed questions about the new company. Let them try to convince you that the new company is respectable and trustworthy. Then they'll feel like they've invested something in you by convincing you.
Don't lie, period. Just tell the truth. Employers are looking for hard working, intelligient, and honest people.
Bryan
If the layoffs are not your fault then the employer won't care as long as you are honest regarding the reasons. Don't sound bitter, and above all, DON'T make it sound as though the layoffs were a result of poor management. If pressed for details be very discreet and non-judgemental in the response - a "The company decided that they could no longer provide work for me" sounds MUCH better than "they canned me as soon as they finished using me". I as a manager don't mind seeing a period of unemployment if it is not a result of the person's actions and with the collapse of IT jobs that's unfortunately become common.
***Blackholes are where the gods divided by zero.***
I'd suggest you list the dates as... "10/2003-11/2003 (project cancelled)" to prevent the quick discard. After that, just be honest about your history and show no bitterness.
I've hired over 100 engineers. One short hop (less than 2 or 3 years) requires explaining. Two short hops get the resume tossed.
The fact that you were able to get hired twice in your proffession during the down economy is an asset not a burdon.
The fact that you were moved to CA either means you are desperate or worth a big investment. Make sure it spins good (even if it was desperation).
If the out of work periods are short enough I would take it as a good sign that you are being snapped up, not bad that you were layed off.
Don't lie. If you do anyone that has a personal reason for not liking you could possibly get HR to look into it and you could be fired for lieing on your resume.
Just remember that your against people who were likly under-employed or out of work with no short projects inbetween.
None of this is expierience (except the lieing thing) but it is what maked personal sense to me. So if someoen with actual expierence in your shoes disagrees they may be more correct then me.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Yep I lived in the US for 1 year. I'm just amazed that they've managed to convince 250 million people that working your whole life and resfusing to take your one week off a year vacation for fear thet it might cause you to be passed over for a promotion is a good thing.
It seems to me in the US the priorities between corporate life and "lifestyle" or personal development are all out of whack and that's why even small gaps in your resume are an issue in the US but no big deal in other western countries.
When I interview people, I couldn't give a fuck about their employment history, it's all about what they know and how well they know it. Their employment history really is not an issue unless they make it one, in which case they've probably lost the job.
So keep your skills sharp, and keep your attitude positive, because that's what really counts when you interview for your next job.
Not true. Here's what you do:
Say that the period of unemployment was actually you being a freelance IT consultant, then add that those brief jobs you got were consulting projects meant to be temporary.
When they ask why you don't want to be a consultant anymore, tell them that the economy is getting better and you feel like it's a good time to get back on the job market.
This will also make you look like you don't HAVE to get the job (although if you did you would certainly commit to it 100%), which rises their perception of you.
Sounds like a sleazy thing to do? well, that's real life for you...
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
In the current economy, it's not uncommon to have held jobs for short stints of time, and for longer stretches to occur between gainful employment. As long as you sparkle in your interview, prove that you are knowledgeable and dependable, your previous employment becomes less important in the interviewer's eyes.
I, too, have been a victim of bad luck in employment. I took a job as a game designer, and little did I know that they were trying to play super-catch up and make up for months of slacking. The publisher dropped support and massive waves of lay-offs ensued. I had only been working there three months when my employment was terminated. I've been interviewing for other positions, and the question always comes up. I consulted a friend who used to work in HR (for ten years, no less!) and he's told me on numerous occasions that without a doubt, honesty is the best policy. "It is VERY difficult to talk about a bad situation with the result being your termination. I think I would say I was laid off and leave it at that. You never want to make your former employer look bad."
So there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth. I hope this helped!
And understand that even thought your job didn't have a scheduled end date when you were hired. You did have one, you were lied to. If your boss has no idea what you're going to be working on after the project is finished, likely you're not going to be. You were a consultant, even though your income was filed on a W-2 instead of a 1099.
I'm ready to tell any interviewer exactly what I've done. There is NOTHING lazy about taking advantage of state benifits. It shows you knew where to look, took some of your tax money back the way it was supposed to be used and cared about your career. In fact, it's lazy and counterproductive to just take anyjob without first looking. It takes worlds of industry to fill out job applications, and cold call. By the time you are finished, everyone in the world should have seen your resume too. Many people will think I'm a pest, but no one can accuse me of being lazy.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I believe the following will sum up why people feel this way.
Amazon
Furthermore, I have been on few long vacations that I truly enjoyed. People in the U.S. also take advantage of 3 day weekends. With flying as cheap as it is, you fly somewhere Thursday night, and return late Sunday night. Great way to spend a weekend partying and getting some sun on the beach.
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
No matter how unfairly you believe you were treated, don't bitch and moan about it.
We had to interview one job applicant who was recently laid off. He went into this long rant about how the management were incompetent, his coworkers were retards, it was all everyone else's fault, he was the second coming of Jesus Christ and everyone was just too stupid to see it, and so on. There was also a mini-version of that same rant in his resume!
This frightening outburst was prompted by a fairly unprovocative question about what he did at his previous job.
We were left in absolutely no doubt as to why he was sacked. Why would you want someone like that around, who casts blame on everyone else at the first opportunity and behind their back when under pressure?
I hire developers and I'd guess about half of the people I interview are out of work. Being laid off is often a matter of luck so that actually doesn't interest me very much. How the candidate has responded to being out of work interests me a lot. It's a chance for me to see how they have responded to a real life problem. What are they doing with their time? Do they still programme for fun? Are they keeping their existing skills honed? What are they learning to give themselves an edge?
An out of work developer who hasn't written any code for nine months is completely different from one who's putting together their own Linux distribution.
L.
Another option is to simply leave off the super-short term stints. In these times, it's not unusual for someone to go several months between positions...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I'm not claming to speak on behalf of everyone, but I interview a fair number of people whenever we have an opening at my help desk. I'll ask about gaps in resumes just like I'd ask about anything else. Honesty really works (well unless you have something really nasty :) ) If you were looking for work for a year - say that you are looking for a year. Assuming you have the skills to work where you are interviewing , employers are looking for personality more then anything else. How do you handle adversity? Tell it to them as a story without too much bitterness, and you've just humanized yourself to a recruiter that might see hundreds of resumes and interview a fair amount of people a day.
Don't put anything negative or apologetic anywhere in your paperwork - resume or cover letter or follow-up note.
Just tailor your resume, etc. to indicate that you are positive about a long-term commitment. (Even if your definition of long-term and theirs differ.)
Never forget: the purpose of a resume is to get you an interview. If you got the interview, then you know that there were no fatal flaws on your resume. If there were fatal flaws on the resume, you won't get the interview and, hense, won't be able to explain them away.
P.S. The above was, of couse, in jest... as I too consider myself one of those "whiney, tree-hugging liberals".
P.P.S. I'd sure like to figure out a way to make the word liberal lose its negative connotation...
> Why mourn "a job" when you want the "right job"?
At some point, you start to seriously consider alternatives that would be unthinkable. Like working in a factory with a machine that is known to pull people's thumbs off. Or maybe even *those* jobs are not available. Unemployment runs out. You've already lost the roof over your head, and then you lost all your stuff when you couldn't get it out of the storage place. Even welfare has run out. You're looking at living on the street.
How long could you really go without ANY income? How long would it be before you seriously had to choose between eating today or waiting till tomorrow?
Say that the period of unemployment was actually you being a freelance IT consultant, then add that those brief jobs you got were consulting projects meant to be temporary.
I wouldn't recommend this unless you have quite a poker face. Job interviewers tend to smell bullshit like shit on a shoe (to paraphrase yet another movie) and often will not press the issue, they'll simply not hire you.
Now, telling the truth haven't quite worked out, I guess, so if you do decide to go with it, make sure you polish your story, iron out details ("Sorry I can't give you names, I had an NDA with my clients") and if possible, ask a friend to "proof" you.
No sig
In America, businesspeople are assholes.
It's true, because they have to be to get ahead. In many companies they usually get promoted through backstabbing, conformity, and poor ethics. The powerful ones only want to work with their lackeys, and nobody cares for anything except money-if they think you care about "quality of life" rather than being a mercenary slave who will do their bidding, that's a reason not to hire you.
The solution is to work for a small company that doesn't have enough layers of bureaucracy to be taken over by corporate politics. Then your boss might be an actual human being.
Forget about dwelling on your interview skills - because you have obviously thought long and hard about how to approach the interview - and the advice simply is; "be honest - but not TOO honest!".
The tricky part is ensuring your application lies in the list of interviews.
Remember, an HR department might see 500+ (or even 5000+ applications!) for some positions and in some locations.
Now - picture yourself as the HR person receiving this applications. 500 cover letters with resumes attached - each one with 8 pages of information. That makes about 4500 pages to read.
Sorry - if your resume/CV is longer than a SINGLE SIDE OF A4 PAPER you most likely will NOT get an interview.
I don't care how many jobs you've had or how freaking successful you are - you need to condense ALL relevant information down to a single page!
You will (of course!) in your covering letter, say something along the lines of:
Four years ago, I was looking for work, and had professional help to get my CV down to a single side of A4 paper - and since that time, I have got interviews for every single position I have applied for. I even got to play three employers off against each other to land my current position. :)
Hope this helps.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Us IT guys ARE treated like construction workers. I mean, lets face it programmers and sys-admins are a dime a dozen now. So while we may be skilled, we are also very common. I know...it sucks.
I'll be looking elsewhere for work. I'm tired of the ups and downs of IT. Also, I hate having to worry about my next paycheck.
Maybe I'll just become a taxi driver. At least I can get work everyday...hopefully.
Life is not for the lazy.
How about just being honest about your experience so I can get the job instead? I've been an out of work techie for several years. My tendency is to be honest, but that route wasn't paying the rent. I talked to some tech friends and they all told me that I had to "stretch" things on my resume if I was ever going to pay the rent again. When you are getting your food from the food pantry because your benefits have run out, being creative on your resume is a fair response to employers who are obsessed with every minute of your past work life. The stuff I've added to my resume does not turn me into some wundertechie that I am not, but it does eliminate employer questions about recent gaps on my resume. It ain't my fault that I got laid off at the start of the IT depression. I'm capable of doing all of the work associated with the positions that I apply for.
It's probable that I could still get interviews if I left the unemployment gap on my resume. My experience and previous employment are solid. But when it comes to *surviving* you have to do what you have to do to make the situation more fair for yourself. If American employers wouldn't be so uptight about employment history and focused more on the actual skills that we have, this thread would be unnecessary.
Good luck finding that job! The employers will treat you like shit during the interview process, so do what you have to do to get the job.
That might not be your best move, really. Taking a job that doesn't really push your marketable skills can have the unfortunate side-effect of locking you into that kind of job in the future, especially in tech (I assume you're in tech, as this is /. and all). Consider what happened right out of school. Some of your techie classmates got lucky and landed that sweet job at the big software company. Most took that job in tech support or QA or even (shudder) doing Perl, just to pay the bills. Now, there wasn't much of a gap in talent or employability at that point, but there was after a few years. The first group got to keep up on industry trends and new tech, and the second group eventually resigned themselves to their lot in life.
My point is, don't take that stopgap job unless you really need to. The gap between the good job opportunities and the not-so-good only gets wider as you move further along in your career, and you want to be on the happy side of that curve, even if it means eating ramen-noodle dinners for a while.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
"Almost every unemployed techie these days got that way not because it was our own fault, but just like the examples above, projects get canceled or things or we were on a project that look good on the drawing board but didn't work in practice. "
But the problem is, the economic situation has been ENORMOUSLY exaggerated. For everybody who's out of work after the "bubble burst" there's a couple of thousand who didn't get laid off. For every "dotcom" stock that collapsed, there's a thousand that stayed in the black.
Don't mislead yourself into thinking that *everybody* has these gaps in their employment history, or even that a majority of people have been laid off recently. Because it isn't so -- it's a case of observer bias. It's somehow comforting to imagine that every job in every part of the industry has "gone to India", or that there is no new venture capital being invested in anything anywhere, or that the economy has somehow collapsed and we're really going into the depression years now, but it's not true, and going into the job market looking for a new gig with those assumptions is going to get you NOWHERE.
Um. No one debates that construction crews are skilled labor.
But there's a reason they're called "construction contractors". They know what the terms of their contract are. It is possible for them to plan on other jobs to minimize downtime.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
That's a joke. Sort of. All three of the places I was laid off are pretty much gone.
Since I left my first job after grad school, I was laid off three times: Once after 7 months, once after 5 months, and once after 18 months.
I just tell them the truth: The first company had to reduce headcount to get their next round of VC funding, and I was junior. The second lost its funding due to 9/11 worries. The third had its funding cut after failing to produce a single product in over six years.
I then talk about how the changes have made me stronger. How it has forced me to learn more in less time than those who have held steady jobs. I show them how, while I worked for those companies, I consistently produced more value than I cost -- in dollars, whenever possible.
But mostly, remember that times have been tough for everyone in the tech industry. An employer who doesn't know that or doesn't take it into account is probably not worth working for.
This is bullshit. You're advising someone to lie about a previous job to a potential employer who, if they hire him|her, may do a background check and discover the lies anyway.
I have interviewed job candidates before, and if someone were laid off from a previous job, they aren't fucking alone. It happens, and if an interviewer doesn't understand this they are not living in the real world and perhaps you're better working for someone else. Much better than getting into the habit of telling elaborate lies that will harm you later.
Just go with the truth. Anyone that has been around IT longer than a year knows that there is an artificial amount of turnaround due to the dot-com bubble blow up. It is incredibly rare to find IT people that have averaged more than 3 years per job.
The truth shall set you free. Polish up that resume and don't be embarrassed of your bad luck.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
I think it's drawing a long bow to say that long work hours "led to America becoming a global economic, military, and political uberpower in, what, a couple mere centuries." How about:
1. Abundant natural resources.
2. Slavery, followed by cheap immigrant labour.
3. A large population.
4. Good education.
5. Capitalism.
6. A government willing to use its muscle (military and economic) to get its way.
Working your butt off is less important than any of these.
Defenders of the constitution?
Hmmmmm.... free speech - gone if it sounds hateful. Freedom of religion - gone if it is done in public. Right to bear arms - gone.
Liberals tend to want to reinterpret the wording of the constitution to match modern ideas. However, that is circumventing the actual process for changing the constitution, which is the amendment process.
Look at the liberal judges on the supreme court - they are wanting to do a "dynamic interpretation" of the constitution - meaning that they don't like the way that it is written, so rather than wait for someone to go through the amendment process, they will just interpret it to match modern morals.
I don't call that defending the constitution, I call that corrupting the constitution. I think it was George Washington who said that anyone who tries to modify the constitution by any means other than the defined process is guilty of the greatest treason.
Engineering and the Ultimate
I have used a number of these principles since beying laid off in 2002 for both finding a position with a new company and once there an internal move up the chain.
One intangible that beyond this (or maybe reading between the parent poster's lines): do whatever it takes to prepare yourself for a conversation with your interviewer. Yes, this can be hard in a question-answer-question-answer type format, but figure out how you're going to weave things into a conversation. When you engage your interviewer in a conversation they can better connect with and relate to you. It also helps them visualize what you would be like on the job - most people will want to work with others they can successfully interact and collaborate with.
aking advantage of state benefits ... it does show a lack of moral character.... Admittedly, you've been brainwashed along with everyone else into thinking that taxes aren't theft, but in reality, that's what they are
I'll let you know when the benefits reach an apreciable fraction of the taxes I actually paid the year before I was canned. Don't hold your breath, though, I exhausted them about six months ago. It slowed the rate of exhuastion of my savings but not much. It helped keep me from losing my house, but the drain goes on as I've yet to land a job that pays half of what my last one did.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Don't whine. Don't Whine. DON"T WHINE!
Great advice. Look at it this way -- one of the main things interviewers want to know is how you will react to adversity.
If you whine about the successive layoffs (or lie about them, or rapidly change the subject), they're going to have a pretty clear picture of what you'll do when your project hits a big snag, or the customer comes back with last minute requirements: you're going to whine to everyone (even people you don't know, apparently) and drag down the morale of your team instead of doing anything useful. I guarantee this will leave a bad taste in their mouths after the interview.
Don't get tripped up because it's not an on-the-job problem. This is just as much an opportunity to prove yourself and how you respond to serious problems (the worse the better, to some extent). Take a second to discuss what happened, and what you've been doing to get back into the game. If you were creative, or if you used your downtime to learn something new, all the better. Maybe you got dropped because you were too much of a one-trick pony... so you learned a new language, and wrote a mini webserver to practice. Tell them your plan (and make sure you've put a lot of thought into it). Be frank, crisp, logical, and upbeat.
If you had to take some strange jobs to keep food on the table, that's okay. If you're uncomfortable about it, they will be too... but if you aren't, they'll probably just like you better for being pragmatic.
[And of course, if you've been sitting there in a funk for 6 months, leeching off your girlfriend and watching TV, now's the time to move your ass, kiddo.]
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
If they decide to look for grounds, they'll find them, regardless of what you did or didn't do in the job interview. At a past job, people used to worry about personal files on computers, personal telephone calls, blah, blah. I ALWAYS SAID that if the company needed to resort to those tactics to effect a purge, I'd volunteer to leave before anyone else, and I MEAN'T IT!!
Simple.
:p
Lie.
I know, I know, everyone will tell you that that's not a good idea.
You know what?
Screw'em.
My grandpappy told me the most important thing you can remember in an interview:
You can slide furthur on bullshit, than you can on concrete
Come up with something, and sell it. Simple, Direct, to the point.
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
I started my own company. Some colleagues and I registered a business in my state and use it as something to keep us up to date during the down time. It shows the interviewer that even though I wasn't so much gainfully employed the whole time, I still kept my skills up to date tweaking my own company. Just make sure it's a real business, though, even if you're loosing money on it. Oh, and remember to file the right tax forms to keep out of trouble.
Sound a lot like double entendre to me. Logic tells us that interpretation implies an enherant dynamic nature and since the job of The Court is to interpret the Consitution as it applies to the cases before it... I see no other way for them to perform their duties.
In other words... if there were no "dynamic" interpretation (as you call it) then there would be no need for The Court whatsoever.
It sounds more like you're merely bitter over a handful of decisions that you didn't agree with. Trust me, there are plenty of cases that went the other way as well.
Noone else who worked with me still works there so I can't use them for reference either
Who says you can't use them? My last 3 companies don't even exist. That doesn't mean I don't have any references. Give out the names of those you worked with regardless of whether they still work there. If the prospective employer wants to verify that you actually worked there, they will call HR, not your old boss.
Not take your unemployment benefits when you're laid off? Not take the public highway? And not a buy a house unless you have 100% of the cash for it?
Remember, those last two items are heavily subsidized by the State. You may not have bought a house lately, but I'll assume you're using the public road infrastructure? Right? Doesn't that make you a parasite as well?
Pretty much nothing in my place comes from the US. It is all from Japan (NB:I live in Japan.)
Secondly, the original poster was speaking about becoming a power in a mere couple of centuries. Well a good part of that was fueled by slavery. Now it is being fueled by what has replaced slavery, the idea that you have to sacrifice your quality of life to satisfy the "Work Ethic." It makes me wonder...who are you actually working for if you sacrifice your life to the point you cannot enjoy the fruits of your labour?
(this is very diluted; inaccuracies are for clarity)
In "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," Weber noted that the idea of a "calling" in many Protestant churches when coupled with an ingrained frugality almost inevitably led to the accumulation of wealth. So by dutifully serving one's calling, he couldn't help but amass a respectable fortune. Wealth became an indicator for- or at least coreqisite to- piety; "work" in America retains this character so dogmatically adopted by its puritan heritage.
(this is one of the reasons Europeans simultaneously dislike Americans for their materialism and religious zeal, a dichotomy Americans dismiss as a contradiction)
Social institutions in Europe were largely Catholic for centuries; what Nietzsche called a "philosophy of death" (for promoting behavior contrary to the interests of the organism) ironically provides some mitigating forces on the "pursuit of interest." Taking a year for yourself is more than laziness or sloth; to Americans, it borders on blasphemy.
There's an old saying, largely out of fashion: "The Protestant eats well; the Catholic sleeps well." Replace the former with "American" and the latter with "European," and we might modernize it.
Look, there's no need to apologize for what you've done if you haven't done anything wrong. Projects get cancelled... it's what happens in this line of work. Put down your relevant work experience, including that cancelled project if it's relevant. If/when it comes up in an interview, simply explain that the project was cancelled due to circumstances well beyond your control (assuming that's true) and that you're looking for an employer with somewhat more solid prospects. Tell them flat out that you're looking for an employer with more solid prospects than your last one, and ask them a question or two about the outlook for their business (in a completely interested, polite, and professional way, of course).
To any company that has a full time HR department, it looks like you got hired after a long time of being a bum then didn't work out. And you didn't work out very quickly. HR people that read it that way will never even let the tech people see your name on a list.
HR departments aren't there to hire new people, they are there to filter. Can you trust your HR dept to filter? Thats why most good fortune 500 jobs are through contacts. Joe in IT tells the HR guy "we have a new position that going to open up and we want to hire Bob because we know he can do it".
Nothing on your resume is bad until you make it sound bad. Simply explaining the situation is the best thing you can do, even better if you can show how you learned/benefitted from it, or how it gave you an opportunity to adapt to change.
Whining or assigning blame is the worst.
Most folks seem to have commented on the resume, but not on the interview, so I'll mention that.
Cutting through all the crap, interviews come down to just three things.
1. Do you want it?
2. Can you do it?
3. Will you fit in?
To re-introduce some of the crap...
1. Do you want it?
An employer wants to be sure you're actually interested and willing to commit to the company.
2. Can you do it?
They need to know that you are capable of doing the job they have in mind. Note that the job spec and the real job are two different things, so part of the interview process is where you help them by explaining what they're looking for (i.e. describe the job in terms of your skills and experience).
3. Will you fit in?
This is THE important one... bear in mind that assuming they've gone to the expense of getting you in for an interview you've pretty much convinced them of 1 and 2 already.
In the long term, your integration will affect your motivation to stay, your capability to do the work, and you'll also affect these factors in the other employees.
So, if the interviewer doesn't like who you appear to be, you can pretty much forget it.
However, if you've had some bum luck with employers, it just doesn't matter. If you're pissed offdisappointed because of your redundancy, it's OK to show it: it illustrates that you'd committed to a job but the management, or the board, or the economy, or an infinite number of factors outside of your control screwed things up for you; and yet, you're still fighting, covered in crap and smelling terrible, but you've not given up.
Now *that*, for an employer is a jigsaw-completing quality - determination and spirit are invaluable. Show this at an interview and your redundancy just got you your next job.
boakes.org
I can telly you from sitting on the employer side of the interview table that 99% of candidates have had bad luck. If they had good luck, they would not be looking for a job at age 45! Most interviewers know this and so they are trying to sort out the good people from the people that have bad luck for a reason. As you seek your job:
* Remember that everyone else has had bad luck!
* Figure out how to stand out from the other hard luck cases. Highlight your involvement in the community or using your time to help your family.
* Practice your story and make sure you accentuate the positive - what you got to do, etc. Be good an answering the hard questions.
* GET REFERENCES FROM THOSE SHORT TERM EMPLOYERS!
In the end, getting a job is easy:
* Have passable resume
* Get interview
* BE ON TIME AND LOOK GOOD!
* Sell yourself and don't game people by lying or embellishing the truth
* ASK FOR THE JOB!
* FOLLOW UP!
* Did I mention, FOLLOW UP!
-- $G
My resume is functional rather than chronological. I don't have gaps to cover up, I just have a lot of similar experience across years and jobs. It makes no sense to restate it repeatedly. Granted, I didn't think of this myself. My wife is a professional resume writer, so I had just a bit of help.
Your "logic" has massive holes in it. For starters, a gap in employment tells you nothing at all about the person, the circumstances of their leaving the position, their suitability to work where you work...
"... a month based approach that's honest about gaps".. pardon me for noticing, but you sound exactly like the sorts of HR weenies that are making a mess of companies large and small. You're finding information that simply isn't there in this silly pattern analysis game. Bad for your company, and good for nobody.
You will have equal odds of sorting out the "bad candidates" by only talking to those who were ties with stripes, not dots, or everyone above 5'7, or people with brown and red hair, but not blond.
Good luck!
I am an American, I hear all the crap all the time about how people might have been disloyal or otherwise screwed up a job. I hear from employers this stuff about cost of employment etc
The problem with me believing any of it is just this. I have been an employer and I know what the game is. Employers are being horses asses. Rather than actually being loyal and team players they are trying to run slaves. They view anybody who does anything other than work all the time as trouble. In actuality they have no loyalty to workers what so ever. What they are seeking is a position of Extortion over them.
The sad fact is that it has nothing what so ever to do with earning a living or profit etc. It is in fact very counter productive. But then it is just like their obsession over holidays and vacations
Europeans and Auzies love their holidays etc. They produce just as much and have fun doing it. The Americans are in a death race. (I from and in the USA) Our productivity is rising dramatically 12.5% this year. Our wages are dropping and our employment is dropping. If we continue this much farther nobody here will have a job. We have to go to higher Vacations and Holidays etc just to keep our economy from collapsing from OVER SUPPLY OF GOODS.
For those economic types who don't get it. Production can grow about 3% per year (against population) and be absorbed into the economy without displacements. If it grows faster than that the whole process then locks into a ratio of the Productivity Wages &population. In 2004 with 12.5% productivity growth and 3.5% population growth with a 3% slack the system got over pushed by 6.5% and the wages per person in the USA dropped by about 5.5% (See the US IRS Tax data if you doubt this.) The remaining slack of 3 years of this charged up over supply of goods came out in the near 50% slide in the value of the dollar and rising unemployment.
The solution here is to either print enough money for the goods to be taken up (Which will go into the unearned income of the CEO's) or to raise the wages of the working people or to increase their benefits such as holidays.
Raising wages or giving benefits actually ups company earnings because the market gets better. The problem here is that companies don't want employees to actually be free to enjoy their life. Sorry but Americans need to wake up to the reality here. (Look at CEO Pay if you doubt the ability to finance this exists)
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
Your "logic" has massive holes in it. For starters, a gap in employment tells you nothing at all about the person, the circumstances of their leaving the position, their suitability to work where you work...
I will be excited to see you tell me where I said that.
you sound exactly like the sorts of HR weenies that are making a mess of companies large and small
Bzzzzt! Wrong. But thanks for playing.
I'm a programmer, hiring other programmers. Like most, I have gaps in my resume; some are vacations, some aren't. When I see gaps, I may ask people about them. I'm hiring in an area that was strongly affected by the boom, so it's no black mark to say, "Yeah, my startup went bust and it's been ugly out there."
What I object to is people trying to hide things from me, either in an interview or a resume. I've certainly interview people with the year-only resumes, but I've quizzed them much more closely on both dates and on the rest of their stuff. I like it better when they're honest up front, both on gaps and on everything else.
Say that the period of unemployment was actually you being a freelance IT consultant, then add that those brief jobs you got were consulting projects meant to be temporary.
What the hell is this? Are you trying to ruin the reputation of others who accually do this? Frag off.
If you have some spotty marks on your resume don't hide them change the styling of the resume to downplay the job hopping! If you were acually doing some part time jobs write them down too. Experience counts. I keep a small company on the books just in case I need to do some freelance work or a short term contract comes up that I know I can do. It costs me nothing for the company ($80 CAN) for a year plus banking fees. No lying to the potential employer. It hurts more than just you if you are caught, it ruins the trust of my potential employer too!!
- my $.02? - you can't have it...it's all I have!!
After being in the workforce for almost 10 years, I found a lot of position with wrong job requirements. One job that I actually applied for stated flat out that you need to be a certified Novel engineer. I was pretty surprised that I got a call back since I had zero experience with Novel. I was even more surprised that I was hired for the position and that the company didn't even have a single Novel box in the building. It turns out that some clueless HR Drone padded up the wanted add with industry buzzwords. So don't be afraid to apply for a position even if you don't qualify for every listed req.
Easy answer... cater your resume to make it past screeners. Resume submissions are usually at least preliminarily sorted by HR people, then passed onto the hiring managers. Occasionally, if the manager is too busy they might pass a few off to their staff (team leads, etc.) to at least filter out yes or nor.
So, the question is then... at each step along the way, will they care about gaps? Two tricks I use: Just provide years but not months (ok for multi-year jobs), or provide a line item like January 2001-November 2002: Assorted consulting engagements. Then list a few of companies and positions as bullet points under that.
Now, for the interview, be prepared to answer questions about how you've spent your time. Make sure to cater the positions you are going to talk about to what is most important for the job, or most interesting to the interviewer. By this point, you will hopefully be impressive enough with your skills, experience, and manner that a spotty employment history with legitimate explanations (but not too much, definitely don't harp on it or point it out if not asked) will still get you hired.
I'm generally in favor of lying (at least exageration) on resumes... [joke: What does resume mean in French? Big Lies!] but companies now doing background checks will be able to find major lies. If filling out a job application (usually accompanied by a background check approval form), make sure you fill it out as acurately as possible. And make sure that can at least be compared to your resume. A lot of times applications will only ask for the 3 most recent employments. As long as those match your tax forms then you should be good to go.
Hope that helps!
--D
A bit cynical, but there's quite a bit of truth here. Another thing I've noticed is that if the software you write doesn't have enough bugs, managers will think you weren't working, or that the work you did was trivial. The guy who has lots of bugs, and makes a big show of fixing them, will end up being much more highly-rated.
That said, my usually successful strategy is to churn out features extremely quickly, and to make sure people know about them. I'm liable to leave holes in the code, but I try to do good design. So when people find problems, I can usually impress them by fixing them almost immediately.
Frankly, after about ten years experience very few companies want to hire you. Reasons:
1. They think you're too expensive
2. They think you will be a hard-ass
3. They think they can't control you, because you have been around the block and know the corporate bullshit. Which is true.
4. You are no longer idealistic and won't work OT much
5. You are smarter than the hiring manager, and he knows it
6. Your name is to easy to pronounce
7. If you were laid off and couldn't find a job in this crappy economy, then you must be really bad person.
8. Old people (over 40 maybe 35 these days) are lucky they are allowed to breathe.
9. You'll be bored.
10. Corporate medical insurance premiums raise drasticly with more older workers. (VERY TRUE AND COMPANIES HIRE BASED ON IT)
"So," you say, "that only makes my point more clearly because now the employed number is even greater!" True, a larger number of employed people makes the unemployment rate smaller. This leads to my second point: how to compute a ratio. Clearly you calculated 5.8% using 160000/2772620. This is wrong. The unemployment rate is unemployed/total_employable. Using the proper numbers, calculating properly, we get 4.9%; which, in fact, is the rate shown by Table 25. So, make sure you do your math properly.
"Well," you say, "yet again that only proves my point since you have lowered the rate further to 4.9%!" Not so fast. Yes, all of us who have taken basic EC 101 and 102 know that for a labor market to function properly there must be *some* level of unemployment, otherwise the employers get snookered. There is, however, a great deal of argument about exactly what is a healthy number. Sure, this is less than the average, 5.8%, but that's not relevant. So I'll just cede the point for a moment and accept your 3-4% as "generally good," although I have no idea where it came from. By your own measure, then, the unemployment rate of this class of workers is 0.9% outside the upper bound of good. You may suggest that 0.9% is a small number, but don't forget that it's more than a 25% diversion from the median of the acceptable 3-4%. That *is* serious, even by the proper computation. By yours, it's worse--a 43% deviation! So, when you're making a point, try to be consistent with your own arguments.
Fourth, these guys are not immigrants as you suggest, but *guest workers*, invited here through industry lobbying for more workers during the bubble years because it was desperate for more programmers, and the government caved to their threats that the country couldn't compete in the global marketplace with then current staffing levels. Well, the bubble's burst, and citizens are losing jobs they needn't lose. Why? Because they're cheap. According to the Immigration Bureau again, these guys in computer-related occupations in FY 2002 made a median income of $60,000. According to your BLS source, the mean annual wage for this sector in general was $61,630 in 2002. So, they're here becuase the IT industry can get them cheaper than citizens. Even for those of us *with* jobs, that pressure depresses our wage. So, try to have a handle on the basic facts when you're making a point.
In conclusion, you seem to have constructed an argument based upon slipshod research, erroneous sixth-grade arithmetic, a lack of rhetorical consistency, and little understanding of the basic facts. "Elite Hacker" indeed! I should have your job.
I'm an employer. Honesty matters. You've done nothing to be ashamed of. Tell the truth. If you get caught in anything less than the total truth, then you probably won't be trusted ever again - despite any *good* explanation you have for your previous prevarication.
I did several recruitments "gigs" for several companies. I don't like lies. Trust is important. If you lie, I could imagine if you work in my company. You'll do bigger lies.
It's not your fault that you had bad luck. or, was it your fault that made the previous companies went under? If it was not your fault, then you shouldn't worry. Just relax.
Cheers.
-- b