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> I wasn't suggesting that people lie on their resume or cover letter. I know, and I did not intend to suggest that. I'm just pointing out that people do, and

> I wasn't suggesting that people lie on their resume or cover letter. I know, and I did not intend to suggest that. I'm just pointing out that people do, and it distorts resume pre-screening. > I was a defense contractor and experienced this first hand. I found that good communication skills both verbal and written were able to overcome this. Since the hypothetical non-technical recruiter in the OP isn't going to understand the technical things that you can't talk about anyways, being able to communicate how you added value is even more important. That depends on what you are working on. My first program, I could give you a pretty good description of what I did and how I contributed to the program in meaningful ways. My second program, I couldn't even say what it was when I first started. Even now I'm severely limited as the program has a very low public profile. What is actually in my resume now is pretty much the extent of what I can say.

iamthepieman 12y ago
I definitely have some things like that in my work history and I totally understand where you are coming from. In my experience, in this very specific instance of having done things you can't talk about, the aurora around having done classified work usually balances out the fact that you can't talk about it.
- jbrandmeyer 12y ago
  I have a similar situation in my work history. In my particular case I was consulting for a commercial firm with a duty of very strict confidentiality. Disclosing what I did for them would reveal their future consumer product plans. We discussed that I could freely disclose what I did as long as I didn't disclose who they were. So my resume has a line item marked "Client Confidential" and then I provide the technical details of what I did for them. That's a bit harder to do in the case of classified material, but maybe there is a similar balance you can strike?

iamthepieman 12y ago

I definitely have some things like that in my work history and I totally understand where you are coming from. In my experience, in this very specific instance of having done things you can't talk about, the aurora around having done classified work usually balances out the fact that you can't talk about it.

jbrandmeyer 12y ago
I have a similar situation in my work history. In my particular case I was consulting for a commercial firm with a duty of very strict confidentiality. Disclosing what I did for them would reveal their future consumer product plans. We discussed that I could freely disclose what I did as long as I didn't disclose who they were. So my resume has a line item marked "Client Confidential" and then I provide the technical details of what I did for them. That's a bit harder to do in the case of classified material, but maybe there is a similar balance you can strike?