Ask HN: How to say “I continued working for free” in your resume? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to say “I continued working for free” in your resume?

16 pointsfoggyToads18 comments

I was holding down 2 part-time jobs at the same location, one of which was a sysadmin position.

Once a full-time sysadmin was found, I handed over that position but continued to work (unpaid) to assist in the transition and, later on, to help with high workloads and major outages.

In total, I did paid work for about 8 months, and unpaid work on the side for 2.5 years.

How do you put that down in your resume? Do you change the from-to dates to the full period of paid + unpaid work? Or do you separate the two? Add an N.B.?

I'm sure others have been in this position before. I'd be very grateful if you could share your experiences.

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Since you generally don't mention your salary on your Resume, simply put it as a regular work experience. You may want to specify "full-time" versus "part-time" but it doesn't really help. This is only if someone asks you about this specific experience that you can give more details.

Remember, a Resume is a showcase of things you've done and would like to share with the world. We don't mention everything on a Resume. As long as everything is legit, you're good to go. Avoid going into too many details as it makes it confusing for a recruiter and you may get penalized for that. Show case what you've done during your part time experience under the same employer (when you were full time).

There's no need to mention it was unpaid, unless it was infrequent enough that you think the company would deny you worked there at all. If the other part-time job was at the same company, I think your CV would look like this (newest role first - so, reverse chronological order):

Other Job, CORP: Other job's responsibilities, and additional sysadmin work (specific technologies or routine tasks)

Sysadmin + Other Job, CORP: Job responsibilities

FWIW, the resume-friendly term is “pro bono”.

You can put whatever you want on your resume!

What do you think will look better to the person reviewing your resume? 8 months of work or 2.5 years? Or put it one way on one resume and another way on another and see which gets a better response.

It’s a resume not a deposition.

Can you explain what you mean by working for free?

It sounds like you got a new position at the same organization, but some of your duties were carried over. Were you specifically not paid for the sysadmin work you did after getting that new position? If not I would say that you were paid for that role. On your CV you can list those activities under your new role.

I would certainly never advertise that you did free work for a company(volunteer work is another story.) It makes the work you did seem like it was of low value.

You might get better feedback if you post a link to your resume. That way we could give more specific feedback, about your CV.

You consulted. There's no need to mention the pay or not for the work.

Why does it matter? Just put down what you did regardless of pay.

The same way you say, "At XYZ Corp, I earned $125,500 per year." --- namely, you don't.

You don't put these numbers into your resume when they are nonzero, so why put them in when they are zero.

You don't need to claim your income on your resume. Volunteer work should only be labeled as such to your advantage. Inform your work that you will be doing this, if you will be using them as reference.

Simply don't mention that it changed to unpaid. It sounds like you were doing real "job-like" work. It's not like you were doing unpaid contributions to a mate's hobby project.

Why did you work unpaid for 2.5 years?

Doesn't matter how much you got paid, just put it as normal work.

Work is work. Just write it as a normal job.

I don't know the details, but don't work for free -- this is called slavery and it is illegal.

You didn't work since you weren't paid. You volunteered your time to aid in a transition period, help reduce workloads, and keep your skills sharp. However I'd probably not mention that as that could throw up warning signs that would attract the DoL as there are strict rules on what constitutes volunteer work.

What? Work is work, regardless of whether paid or not.

I just spent 4 months, 2 full time, and 2 crunch-time working on an open-source project that I didn't get paid for - according to your definition I shouldn't be able to list it on a resume.

What matters more than the payment is the scope/amount of such work. If the remainder of 2.5 years (unpaid) was just ad-hoc, or "once in a while", I would mark it as such.

> What? Work is work, regardless of whether paid or not.

Most certainly not; within the context of providing services to a legal business entity within the United States, work is defined be receiving compensation for your time, skills, and knowledge. If you are doing something for a business entity and you are not receiving compensation, then it is defined as volunteer work, and there are strict limits on what can be done by a volunteer, chief of which is the volunteer's work must not be crucial to the operations of the business. Otherwise the DoL will classify it as work, and force the business to pay the social security and unemployment tax for your time.

The free software project is not run by a for-profit entity and as such is not bound by those laws.

> What matters more than the payment is the scope/amount of such work.

That's fairly idealistic. This tells me you value your time (and by extension, yourself) very low. Also, the Dept Of Labor would disagree with you.

While this might be a problem for the business, it has no bearing on what the employee can or should put on their resume.

Believe it or not, the Dept of Labor doesn’t oversee what you put on your resume.

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