Ask HN: Do I put a work experience into my resume I’ve left distressed? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do I put a work experience into my resume I’ve left distressed?

8 pointsexitoxic15 comments

I‘ve left a startup after 6 months of internship although I’ve already signed a full time contract (cancelled that too). It was just too toxic for me and I got gas lighted a lot. Then I got a bad behaviour mark. I’ve heard that there is an unspoken rule that you have to work for at least a year before leaving. Now I’m hesitating putting that specific work experience into my resume (new employer might do a background check and call). I’m about to finish my bachelors degrees and I don’t have a lot of work experience to offer aside from team projects. How should I go about this? It’s been a year now.

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6 months of startup work before you have graduated sounds impressive to me. Definitely mention it. Don't be afraid to say it didn't work out, but as others have said, don't bad mouth them. Your interviewers will read between the lines and they'll appreciate the fact that you showed discretion.

I'm almost 27 tho.

The rules have changed.

You decided to look for a better opportunity. One with a brighter future for you. And be able to elaborate a bit on that.

That's all you need to say.

Thank you for your quick response! I was thinking about working for big tech. Should I go about culture and tech stack? I was doing frontend (vue) and backend (node) and a little bit of flutter.

Given the demand for tech of all types you'd have to try hard to pick the wrong thing. Regardless, you'll probably move on to some other stack in 3 to 5 years.

1) Give it your best guess / shot now.

2) Embrace the fact that you'll always need to be learning :)

You're allowed one short stint, especially early in your career. People are only going to be concerned if they see a pattern of short tenures.

Definitely put it on your resume. Don't overexplain it in interviews. Just say that you were trying to figure out what kind of opportunity was right for you, and that this company turned out not to be what you were looking for.

Don't say that the work environment was toxic or anything like that. You should never say anything really bad about previous employers in job interviews. There's nothing to gain from that.

Thank you very much :)

If it's billed as an internship, they come in all sorts of lengths, 6 months sounds like a nice internship.

I would say that 6 months of experience is good for someone starting his career. You don't need to provide more details that needed. Just say, you are looking for new challenges or any other standard answer. Don't stress too much about it.

Would you mention the two team projects (one semester each) as well?

Since a resume is NOT a confessional, you can leave it off. If the application asks you to list all jobs ... that's different. I would make sure you can talk about why you left, i.e. 'it was a toxic environment, and for my safety I had to leave', 'no I do not care to go into details, a bit painful still'

the vast majority of companies only tell a reference check what your dates of employment were and what your title was. you can put it on your resume for sure. i wouldn’t go into too much detail about why you left in your interviews —badmouthing prior employers isn’t usually a great look. just say that it wasn’ta gray fit and your interests lie in other directions than the opportunities that were available to you there. or something to that effect.

I really hope that they don't hold any grudges.

The people interviewing don’t have to know how toxic it was. Just call it a short term internship.

I believe it is still frowned upon to badmouth old employers during an interview.

I wouldn't badmouth either it doesn't give any information they should get me anyways.

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