5 ms·

Also, if you had good reason to take time off, but the future employer still has a problem with it, you probably don't want to work for them anyway.

repsilat 7y ago
I think this sort of statement is thrown around too lightly. It's a bad sign, but there's a limited amount of signal in it. It may not correlate strongly with employee experience, and lots of other positive factors might outweigh it. Maybe it's just one recruiter's resume filter. Maybe the company actually has a great medical leave policy, or pays really well, or works on something the OP is super excited by. Or maybe the company is just really, irrationally weird about applicants having gaps on their resume, but is otherwise perfectly normal, and it doesn't matter ever again after OP signs an offer. Sure, given two offers from otherwise identical companies OP should count this as a mark against, and sign an offer from someone who doesn't care. Given offers that aren't otherwise identical, though, what's it worth? $5k in salary? More? Less?
- mlyle 7y ago
  > though, what's it worth? $5k in salary? More? Less? Maybe a huge amount. If an employer has a negative predisposition towards you, and you already have a small negative signal on your own resume (gap)-- they have the potential to really screw things up for you. The amount of suck you might endure is unbounded, and the probability of your recent experience on your resume becoming worse is too high.
  - DavidSJ 7y ago
    I think this answer misses the point, which is that this information is only a weak predictor of the problems you describe, thus must be discounted accordingly.
    - mlyle 7y ago
      How do you discount "personal catastrophe" appropriately, though? Surely the volatility in outcomes is very important, and not some simple expected value. A 5% chance of my house burning down is much more costly to me than 5% of the economic cost of my house burning down. Indeed, there's not really a (reasonable) discounted price I will take for a chance of my house burning down. Of course, this kind of aggressive avoidance of risk is exactly the thing we are annoyed with the employer for... But most employers do not have their eggs in one basket to the extent that someone returning to their career from a gap does.
      - DavidSJ 7y ago
        You normally wouldn’t discount linearly. But that doesn’t mean you can’t put a price on it. There’s a limit to how much you’d pay for insurance, for example. Some risk is part of life.
        mlyle 7y ago
        I didn't say one can't put some price on it. I said "maybe a huge amount" in comparison to someone saying that perhaps one would value it at $5k. $5k this year is small compared to future potential career earnings; not much of a difference in probability of losing those is required to far exceed $5k. Just strict linear expected value could be bad, let alone when one weights the risk and volatility.

repsilat 7y ago

I think this sort of statement is thrown around too lightly. It's a bad sign, but there's a limited amount of signal in it. It may not correlate strongly with employee experience, and lots of other positive factors might outweigh it. Maybe it's just one recruiter's resume filter. Maybe the company actually has a great medical leave policy, or pays really well, or works on something the OP is super excited by. Or maybe the company is just really, irrationally weird about applicants having gaps on their resume, but is otherwise perfectly normal, and it doesn't matter ever again after OP signs an offer. Sure, given two offers from otherwise identical companies OP should count this as a mark against, and sign an offer from someone who doesn't care. Given offers that aren't otherwise identical, though, what's it worth? $5k in salary? More? Less?

mlyle 7y ago
> though, what's it worth? $5k in salary? More? Less? Maybe a huge amount. If an employer has a negative predisposition towards you, and you already have a small negative signal on your own resume (gap)-- they have the potential to really screw things up for you. The amount of suck you might endure is unbounded, and the probability of your recent experience on your resume becoming worse is too high.
- DavidSJ 7y ago
  I think this answer misses the point, which is that this information is only a weak predictor of the problems you describe, thus must be discounted accordingly.
  - mlyle 7y ago
    How do you discount "personal catastrophe" appropriately, though? Surely the volatility in outcomes is very important, and not some simple expected value. A 5% chance of my house burning down is much more costly to me than 5% of the economic cost of my house burning down. Indeed, there's not really a (reasonable) discounted price I will take for a chance of my house burning down. Of course, this kind of aggressive avoidance of risk is exactly the thing we are annoyed with the employer for... But most employers do not have their eggs in one basket to the extent that someone returning to their career from a gap does.
    - DavidSJ 7y ago
      You normally wouldn’t discount linearly. But that doesn’t mean you can’t put a price on it. There’s a limit to how much you’d pay for insurance, for example. Some risk is part of life.
      - mlyle 7y ago
        I didn't say one can't put some price on it. I said "maybe a huge amount" in comparison to someone saying that perhaps one would value it at $5k. $5k this year is small compared to future potential career earnings; not much of a difference in probability of losing those is required to far exceed $5k. Just strict linear expected value could be bad, let alone when one weights the risk and volatility.