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Comment by brianwawok | Hacker News Reader

Or just job history.

If you were in jail, you have a gap in your resume. Seems like you could just filter out anyone with a gap in their resume of more than say a year.

The intentions are good on this bill. I worry it is going to be a challenge to actually implement.

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There's other reasons you might have a gap on your resume.

Lots of women (and some men) take years off to have and raise kids. You might have an ailing parent who required care You might have worked several small, irrelevant 'odd jobs' to live off of while finding yourself on a journey of self-discovery You might have been a ski bum / surf bum.

Having a multi-year gap doesn't look good no matter what, but 'prison' isn't the only reason one might have such a gap :)

Sure, but if you wanted to exclude prisons, you could exclude anyone with a multi-year gap.

Would you hit some people that didn't go to prison? Sure. But it seems a close enough filter to discriminate on...

Where did you get the statistic that the majority of people who have been out of work for more than a year are criminals?

My statement does not say that. Perhaps you need to try reading it again.

One other thought - there are people who serve less than a year in prison.

One scenario is that they get out before serving their full sentence. (I'm not sure on the details of how that happens, but I've read news articles about so-and-so who served 9 months of their X year sentence, and then got out for good behavior, etc)

Are people in America legally bound to write the truth on their CVs? You could just say you worked for some made-up firm or for your friend's firm.

That's a good way to be fired later.

Of course. Lies on your CV are committing fraud.

Do you have an actual legal reference for this?

If you ask me what my favorite food is and I say Fish (when it is really Pizza), I did not commit fraud.

If I testify before a court and lie, I commit a specific offense (perjury).

It is not actually clear to me what lying on a CV is in the United States. It may actually depend if you are applying to a government agency vs McDonalds....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_fraud

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud

"Although elements may vary by jurisdiction and the specific allegations made by a plaintiff who files a lawsuit that alleged fraud, typical elements of a fraud case in the United States are that:

1.) somebody misrepresents a material fact in order to obtain action or forbearance by another person,

2.) the other person relies upon the misrepresentation, and

3.) the other person suffers injury as a result of the act or forbearance taken in reliance upon the misrepresentation."

Example lie:

I'm CCNA certified.

1.) Yes

2.) Yes (I'm hired)

3.) The company loses a government contract after finding out that I'm not actually CCNA certified, and the bid required all engineers on the project are CCNA certified (alternately, I completely screw up the routers and take the companies infrastructure out of the global routing tables)

Basically, if the company relies on the lie to hire you, and then later suffers an injury from that lie, then a fraud has been committed.

Note that it works both ways[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_fraud]

4) You were CCNA certified. The certification expired around that time.

5) Sue the company?

If you are hired based on your experience, and your experience is a lie, and you get the job based on that lie, I thought that's sort of the definition of fraud.

But I'm not a lawyer, so I could be wrong.

Legally bound? I don't think so. But most companies consider lying on your resume grounds for immediate termination.

There have been some prominent cases of people beefing up their resumes (both public and private sector) and getting fired after the employer was made aware.

Given that the alternative if they don't lie is probably unemployment anyway, it sounds like lying is a winner.

True enough, but often times these embellishments were completely unnecessary. (it might have helped bootstrap a prev job, but now is an unnecessary appendage in the resume which they should have cleaned up).

Every "good job" I've applied for has had an explicit warning that lying during the interview process will result in automatic dismissal. It's perfectly justifiable.

If only they applied their guidelines to their own interviewers.

Keep in mind that in the US, HR reps will sometimes forward the CV of an applicant to the prospective team that they'll be working with. So, while it may be possible to lie one's way past an HR rep with a non-STEM background, it may ultimately backfire on you. Your prospective coworkers have much more incentive to scrutinize your CV for accuracy.

One can have a criminal record, even a serious criminal record and never serve any time, or serve all the time under a work release program.

Plus all of the other non-criminal reasons for a gap that many have already stated

No this would not be a "good" way to eliminate criminals from your application pool

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