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Comment by LargeWu | Hacker News Reader

Just tell the truth. Medical is a perfectly valid reason.

Tangent: What does it say about hiring culture that a gap of 3 months is a potential deal breaker? Like anybody who would ever deign to not be employed by choice is unhirable. God forbid that people are defined by anything other than having a career working for others. A person's worth is not defined by how much economic value they create.

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I would go further and say your 'tangent' is the actual issue we should discuss here.

They want to know you weren't in jail. That's it.

That's what background check is for.

AFAIK misdemeanors have to be checked at the county level, and a lot of background checks skip them unless asked specifically (hence checking about the gaps).

Funny you mentioned that, i've seen a FB job posting mentioning they are ok with misdemeanor on the record. I wonder if there's a time they will okay a felony on file.

I believe the city of SF doesn't allow employment discirmination based on that in 2020, so FB would harmonize their hiring rules because they have an office in SF.

Oh for sure - it's weird to be judging based on most misdemeanors. I was commenting on how it's done by those who do it.

A lot of startups (especially really young ones with no hiring process) don't know how to do those.

And I assure you that some startups intentionally choose not to!

Isn't that illegal in California (and many other places) before you've made an offer?

Fear of jobs gaps is also about avoiding bad candidates. If someone has a longer gap, there's a chance that he was interviewing the whole time and, during that time, got dozens/hundreds of rejections. So, the lazy heuristic is to assume everyone else was correct and reject him as well.

I'm not sure it is a potential dealbreaker. People just think it is.

It's certainly not an issue in a hot job market.

I've certainly been asked about literally 3 months of gap. Exactly 3 months.

And unless its a second job (or you don't have any savings) taking several months to get the right job is the best thing to do.

Last time I took 5 months to get the right job and ended up with a job locally and not having to commute and a big pay rise.

I was also recuperating from a major operation about 4 months before I left me previous job

Do you think the vague `medical` needs further elaboration?

I sure do know my medical is not related to mental health. Is it reasonable to somehow indicate that or it should be better left for an interviewer to inquire?

Really they should accept that as it is and move on. You may want to reassure them that the medical issue is resolved, assuming it is, and you too, move on. If you're in the US, then they aren't even allowed to ask more questions. You're not obligated to even mention it was medical, for that matter.

It's illegal to ask further about medical, or any personal information like marriage status, etc. Medical is a good enough answer.

It is perfectly legal to ask, but that opens you up to accusations that you also discriminated. You no longer have the defense that you didn't know the information, and the court would want an explanation for why you were asking.

It's hard to imagine an illegal question under US federal law, but I suppose there could be one where the question itself is sexual harassment or an attempt at stealing trade secrets.

So basically as soon as you ask it you are pretty much obligated to hire them.

In the USA I am pretty sure it is actually illegal for a company to discriminate based on health issues, so a smart recruiter will NOT push this issue further than Medical. It would violate a few things and not be great if you sued and used that in court.

Legally, they can't, but the fact that you were out for months for an unspecified medical issue suggests you're likely to have more medical issues and thus would be a reason to be less likely to hire you.

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