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I’ve had gaps, and no employer has ever asked me anything about them.
They’ll use anything to reject you. But I don’t think they “care”.
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.
A decade? Can I go on sabbatical after 2 years working?
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!
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.
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.
Hope your day/night gets better mate. Cheers
Cheers. Appreciate that. It’ll be fine. Just the ebb and flow of life and whatnot.
Cheers, man. This, too, shall pass.
Like Ive never said, when life gets you down, be optimistic. Not sure what kind of jokes you call funny or dark, but when I’m down I just figure I’ll hang out near an elementary school. Odds it’ll be over goes way up for me.
~sorry for the dark joke, just hope it made you laugh
Oh man… I live in America so that joke is awful and makes me feel bad that I didn’t think of it sooner.
I actually laughed at that. I shouldn’t, but fortunately I graduated long before I wasn’t physically able to.
Thanks
I’m around 50 miles south of Nashville, lol. Spent 29? Years in Florida where I was born. If you want dark, wet, muddy or why can’t I breath, it’s what I know lol. But seriously do take care. If you want to vent, type me a dm and I’ll promise you to read it and respond or never respond if you say, but sometimes a blather about B’s is good. Rather you send it to me than if you actually get drunk and send it to your sibling, lol. I’ll respond, or just end or start with don’t respond, and I’ll read . *Promise
I’ll take you up on that. Much appreciated. I’m about to fall asleep but it won’t be my last shit day I’m sure! I grew up in Dallas and Oklahoma, so I know kinda how you feel lol. These days I’m in California, and despite the difficulty level of basic survival, I love it here. Lots of natural beauty and all that, but honestly anywhere you go it’s still the same bullshit mostly. I appreciate the empathy, I really do. Honestly, I’ll probably send you random messages occasionally just to get it out. Feel free to do the same, please. Seriously, thanks.
Thanks, please do. If I have to I’ll ramble about some shit about blowing up a bottle of homemade wine or something and making the kitchen ceiling peppered lol. I didn’t even do that in my really dark days of drinking, I just was making a few bottles for fun and the sugar apparently got around the rim snd “sealed it”. Which normally you let it breathe while covering it for no bacteria going in. Exploded worse than the videos of mentos in diet coke. Coated the ceiling walls everything I was wearing for about 8 feet in EVERY direction. I still haven’t figured out how to clean the ceiling other than painting it. Lol.
Seriously, just blather when you need. No judgement and I’ll either tell you something I’ve done or input if you want
People care. When on interview committees I’ve had to argue that gaps aren’t relevant. Maybe it’s someone with the ability to plan and save and they decided to take a year or ten off. Maybe their independently wealthy and is doing it for fun. They probably lost a job at a bad time, couldn’t get hired for 8 months and then got fucked by a gap in their resume for another 18. Some of these gaps are even old. Like what do we care about three months fifteen years ago. Even if that’s a job they got fired from right away it’s olllld.
It’s because they hear all of those excuses and realize “It can happen again”
We want someone desperate.
But they’ll use dog whistles like “Motivated” and “Hungry”
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.
Like totally
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.
If you’re applying to a job where there are a lot of applicants, they might be looking to filter out applicants quickly. The first pass might get rid of anybody with a gap in their resume, anybody who doesn’t have a degree, anybody who doesn’t live in the right city, etc.
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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.
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.
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.”
“you don’t seem desperate enough… that might mean you expect more than slave labor, which complicates things for our company.”
“Sabbatical.”
One must speak the language of the bourgeois to win his favor.
*taps sign*
They do. It could mean you were unable to find a job or hiding where you worked because you didn’t do a good job
Whether you did a good job or not, you can still list your work experience there. They cannot legally contact former employers about you without your permission.
Right, so leaving off what you did is a risk. And most people don’t know this, but the hiring process is all about making sure they’re not hiring a bad candidate, more than trying to find the best candidate.
You should put whatever you did right there on your resume so they don’t have to guess. Even if it’s “stay at home husband”
I love the “unable to find a job” one. Like, IT’S BECAUSE OF FUCKING GAP! HIRE ME, IDIOT!
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”
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.)
