Curious what you would consider an illegitimate career break?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31548548 was great too. You should turn these into TikToks or do standup or something.
If a criminal record is an insurmountable hurdle for a specific role, then it would come up in a background check (which would almost certainly be a requirement for such a job), and the job posting should be explicit about the required clean criminal history. A gap in someone's resume is a pretty worthless signal for whether they've ever been incarcerated.
Overall, for me hiring, I never considered a resume gap to be a problem, and think that employers who do are literally stupid (sadly, nothing prevents such stupidity). At most, it is a potentially interesting interlude for a person's life and career - what did they do with it?
For OP, I'd definitely recommend rearranging your work situation so you are not so exploited and pressured. Either get your employer to hire more people so you can work on something other than a constant firefighting basis, or leave. It very much looks like the main reason you have not yet "come up with a solution from scratch of my own and provide any value" is because you aren't given a moment to breathe (and your assessment of not adding value is wrong - you are obviously adding value, it's just that you can see some left on the table).
Seems what you need, at almost any cost, is to get perspective.
Good that you see it and here's to your future success!
Agree. Things were different in the 90s, think peak crime and crime bill. Also, everything wasn't categorized as a felony back then, it seems like felony was limited to much more severe crimes (except drugs crimes), unlike today.
>it would come up in a background check (which would almost certainly be a requirement for such a job)
It would, but background checks cost money and I'm guessing it was a pre-screen method to save. I'm not defending it, I'm just repeating what I was told back then.
>A gap in someone's resume is a pretty worthless signal for whether they've ever been incarcerated.
Unfortunately, people have been doing stupid filters on hiring for decades. It's not a new phenomenon.
Every hire is full of risks. Nobody knows whether they'll get into a car crash, get cancer, or get shot, or become a substance abuser. Whether they admit their medical history or not. That's because they are human beings. Humans are inherently risky. If you want to eliminate risk, then hiring humans is not for you.
All you do by punishing people who are honest about their history, is to encourage even more people to lie in interviews. Those people are only the tip of the iceberg, and a significant number of people companies hire already have such history but they just keep their mouths shut.
This comment makes me sad. It seems illegal biases in hiring and management practices are rampant. Worker protections seem to be a joke when they're blatantly ignored.
That's skirting uncomfortably close to discriminating based on medical history or a disability, which may be illegal depending on where the employer is located. Cancer survivors have a much higher chance of recurrence than others do of developing cancer for the first time, but most would probably balk at denying a job to someone whose cancer was in remission because there's a higher chance they'd need extended medical leave in the future.
This question applies to all employees. You don't, because it's none of your business if it doesn't affect their work performance. It is entirely possible, and probably likely that some your current employees use drugs. And almost 100% sure that some of them use alcohol, which is stronger and more problematic than many illicit substances. Many companies even throw parties where they give out free booze to the employees! How's that for a double standard?
People have always used drugs, and always will. Pretending to care about substance abuse only when you come across someone who openly admits their history is insane. You are treating the honest people worse than the people who hide their problems from you.
Like the sibling comment, I find this very sad.
Perform drug tests if you're worried.
Otherwise it's none of your business.
(Silence... )
-- won't that seem suspicious, even if the interviewer can't ask:
"Oh so you had a drugs and substances career break?"
Yale
That's very impressive, you're hired.
Thanks! I really need this yob!
This heuristic would miss people who lie about "consulting" during the time they were in jail and would incorrectly catch someone who was falsely accused and then exonerated.