Ask HN: How do I explain a long activity gap due to depression to interviewers?
When I finished high school I didn't pass the admission test for the university I was aiming for. I signed up to community college for another course, but after a few weeks I stopped showing up and I've been staying at my parents' home ever since.
I was dealing with depression since I was in HS, and dropping out only made it worse. For a while I wasn't able to do much except getting out of bed and waste my whole day online, watching movies or playing videogames.
Eventually I became interested in programming (I had started to learn it by myself in HS), and I started spending lots of time reading and writing code. Now I have quite a few projects on github, some contributions to other github projects to my name, some blog posts, and have some experience with a lot of different languages, libraries, frameworks, and various other tools.
I've been trying on and off to get a job as a programmer, but after some rejections and a really bad internship experience (which is in my best interest to keep off my CV) I've become discouraged with the whole process and I keep putting it off, but due to some circumstances I'll have to find a job soon.
I'm out of depression now. I've been feeling good about myself and life in general, and I'm sleeping and eating well, exercising regularly, and I've been spending time with friends. I'm 100% confident I could hold a job and perform well now.
I don't think the interviewers were convinced with the stuff about part-time jobs and abroad gap years/months I made up about what I did during all this time since I graduated from HS, and I don't know if being honest is a good idea in this situation. I wouldn't even know where to begin.
So: do you have any advice for explaining this mess to a potential employer?