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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

I've been on both sides of this divide. I've interviewed people who have been unemployed for more than 6 months, and I've been without formal employment for longer than 6 months.

If all you've done is watch TV and send out resumes, nobody's going to hire you. You have to be able to say that you've done something. The easy answer is to go back to school. That costs money -- hopefully there's a government program you can take advantage of. But it gives you something you can put in that hole on your resume, and hopefully gives you relevant skills.

The other good answer is "I worked on X", where X could have been pretty much anything: a failed business, an open source project, volunteer work, or just making stuff to sell on Etsy. I didn't even care if it was remotely related to the position. I just wanted to see some initiative and passion. There's nothing wrong with a forced sabbatical as long as you do something with it.

The question is whether or not you should put your "forced sabbatical" projects on your resume or not. They'll plug the hole, but I imagine that it will also cause you to be filtered out by HR departments in big corporations if the work isn't "relevant".

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>>The other good answer is "I worked on X", where X could have been pretty much anything: a failed business, an open source project, volunteer work, or just making stuff to sell on Etsy. I didn't even care if it was remotely related to the position. I just wanted to see some initiative and passion. There's nothing wrong with a forced sabbatical as long as you do something with it.

Ideally, yes. In reality, it's easier said than done.

1. Most unemployed people need a way to pay their bills. This is not possible if you're dicking around with open source projects or volunteer work. Starting a business requires a certain amount of capital. And "making stuff to sell on Etsy" works only for a tiny minority of people who have the creative skills to make cool stuff.

2. When you're unemployed, finding work should become your full-time job. You should get up at 8am and look for jobs, make a list, take a lunch break, then spend the afternoon tailoring your resume for those jobs. Then you can get off at 5pm or whatever and do other things. What most people do however is that they do other things during the day, and then in the evenings they sit in front of their computers with Monster.com open and browse job openings, and maybe send out a few resumes. Which doesn't work of course.

Basically, the only people who can afford to work on something meaningful while unemployed are those who have a significant amount of money saved up. In today's economy, most people who are at risk of unemployment don't.

A better choice is to try to make something great... especially for HN followers.

If you've been looking for work full time for 6 months and not a single employer has wanted to hire you, being unemployed for 6 months is the least of your problems.

Absolutely correct. The proposed scenario suggesting that the long term unemployed consists of competent, skilled and psychologically capable people who have spent 8 hrs a day working hard preparing and customizing resumes and going on interviews, but have not had a single offer after more than six months of doing this on a daily basis is complete fiction. Perhaps there is a single person who falls into this category, a minute fraction of a single percent of the long term unemployed. Even that assumption that out there is one single competent person who did all this and had no offers is highly questionable. Portraying something that ranges from non-existent to exceptionally rare as the normal condition is just promoting nonsense. The reality is that the long term unemployed population is not comprised of competent and skilled people diligently working 8 hrs each day seriously seeking a job by contacting companies, sending out resumes, and going on interviews.

I'm sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about.

Usually, what happens is, they spend the time looking for jobs they are qualified for and want, and don't get. Then they spend some of their time looking for jobs they are overqualified for as well, and usually don't get.

That's 6 months.

I've done it. I was unemployed for about a year; during that time I went on about a dozen interviews, did volunteer work, took courses etc. so as to have something to explain what I did during this blank period on my resume.

I learned much better multi-tasking skills during this period, and how to organize dozens of contacts, because if job x calls you and you've applied to 28 jobs in the last 10 days, you have to know immediately who they are and what they do as well as what you said to them in your customized application.

Personally, I'd like to see better integration between linkedin and my smartphone to facilitate this. Anyone working on that?

Applying to jobs is hard, not getting them is hard, and there's about 10% unemployment in the US for a reason. It's not just because 10% of people are lazy or incompetent and 90% are hardworking and good.

Perhaps part of the problem is poor math, logic and research skills.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

> Nonfarm payroll employment edged up in March, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

> In March, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 4.6 million. These individuals accounted for 39.6 percent of the unemployed.

One must wonder if 39.6 percent of 7.6 percent is 10 percent, or is it 3 percent.

A three percent incompetence rate is lower than ten percent. It's also almost identical to the 3.1% of the population who are under correctional supervision: either in prison or on parole. (http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/aainjail.htm)

With a full 3% of the population actually in the correctional system, it is not hard to imagine that there is also 3% of the population incapable of contributing meaningfully to a job. Half of Detroit residents are functionally illiterate. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/07/detroit-illiteracy-...) 36% of Washington DC residents are functionally illiterate. (http://voices.yahoo.com/more-than-one-third-washington-dc-re...) Nationally, 21% of adults are functionally illiterate. To think that the vast numbers of illiterate adults who are also unemployed are ready and capable of holding down a job in a meaningful sense is a complete fantasy.

Yeah, you're focused on unemployment numbers after the redefinition of unemployment. That's not as accurate. Technically there were a lot of unemployed left out of the earlier evaluations as well, but this problem is worse now. It's to the point where the data isn't nearly as useful, or perhaps is useful in different ways. Either way it's a very poor tool for measuring long-term unemployed.

Your illiteracy studies? Not particularly rigorous science behind them. Not usually a good sign when what you cite sources no peer-reviewed studies at all. It's interesting that you chose those two places along with the correctional system to focus on, though.

But go ahead, blame my math, logic, and research skills.

The National Institute for Literacy is a federal agency that was established by the National Literacy Act in 1991 and reauthorized in 1998 by the Workforce Investment Act. There's nothing wrong with their methodology. Their measurements are consistent with other studies, but theirs are the most recent and are done nationally so are likely the most reliable. Feel free to cite other studies if you prefer, I notice that your post contained no references, just smug dismissals of data with citations.

Now you've moved from saying I'm bad at math to calling me smug, and saying that I'm dismissing your data. I'm not dismissing your data; you have cited NO DATA.

Your first link referenced what amounts to a policy paper by the Detroit Regional Literacy Fund. Which is actually interesting because it implies the link goes to a study by the National Institute for Literacy.

As an aside, I'm not doubting the reputation of the National Institute for Literacy. I just don't trust any study I can't see the data from. This is a personal thing, but it comes from working and being friends with people that routinely manipulate data for Federal Policy Think-Tanks.

So first you have the Huffington Post with two sources, one that doesn't have any references in it and makes statements without visible justification and another that is The Wall Street Journal. Second, you've got a Yahoo Voices article: Your second link listed these sources: www.proliteracy.org, The Washington Post, Wikipedia, BBC News and the Associated Press. So you've got publications sourcing other publications.

The reason I don't immediately trust everything on the Huffinton Post and periodicals that don't actually source any studies AT ALL, is because they often draw inaccurate conclusions from bad data, or use sources that have no scientific grounding.

This happens a lot with medical studies.

The other problem is you seem to be assuming that the unemployed population is the same as the illiterate population. I don't know why you assume this, as your sources don't have any causative inferences.

Detroit has high illiteracy. Detroit also has high unemployment. Without a study, though, there is no implied causation.

If all you want is a citation from a periodical, I can do that: how about this that says 53% of recent college graduates are un- or underemployed?

http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/one-in-two-new... , or

http://www.wjla.com/articles/2012/04/overqualified-college-g...

Well, you not saving money is nobody's fault but your own. And if you can't pay your bills, you can either take advantage of any of the many safety nets provided by the government, or you can use any of the natural safety nets that are available to everybody but the most antisocial people; friends and family. Jobs are not a right, they are a privilege.

There's an interesting amount of money you can make as a person living in the United States where you're not making enough money to both survive and save on your own; and, you're making too much money for the government to go out of its way to help you. I've had friends in those situations over the course of my life. I believe I've even heard of situations where people would turn down raises or even turn down jobs because making money at the new level earned them less money than the government help they were getting, and the government would stop giving them any help if they passed a certain threshold.

Maybe in your situations you've been lucky; but I've seen people on really hard times that cannot readily save. I'm grateful to know they're living stably now (as far as I know, little-to-know savings).

Yeah, we talk about "means testing" social security payments in this country, but little talk of "means testing" welfare recipients.

I worked with people 20 years ago (at a burger king) who would turn down shifts because that extra $15 for a 5 hour shift would put them over a limit and they'd lose all their food stamp money. We're very keen on progressive taxation, but apparently progressive welfare is too far out of our realm of possibilities.

Would like to point out that many years ago with respect to collecting unemployment that it was clear to me (after speaking to the former employees) that the ss office in the state that we were in was purposely coaching employees on how to stay on unemployment as a way of regulating the labor supply which could only absorb so many people otherwise wages would be depressed. My point is simply that there could be multiple masters being served here by these policies. Not saying that is why it is happening in your example but on the surface some things that don't make sense sometimes fulfill another purpose.

Another example might be looking the other way while employees cheat on expense reports. They get the money and everyone avoids additional payroll taxes.

Oh, I really do believe you're correct - there's too much of a system in place which needs to justify itself and the people who put it in to place. I think you're very right with the 'many masters', I just wish we didn't have to be so cynical to be able to spot these sorts of things.

It seems like we should just give everyone food stamps. Then this artificial benefit cliff doesn't occur.

How on earth then are so many illegal immigrants making enough money to both survive and also send money back to their families in their native countries?

Also, anecdotally, and since you brought it up, I was in a situation where I lived for many years at or below the poverty line, but I made due by living in inexpensive apartments I split with other people in the same situation. I think most young adults who aren't given a trust fund or financial help from their parents go through a period like this in their lives, usually while developing more marketable skills or working their way up a company's hierarchy.

The point is, you learn to make do, and you learn to survive, just like everyone else on this planet does. And if you want to increase your standard of living beyond sharing a dingy apartment with other people then you make yourself more valuable to employers somehow or accept your lot in life.

> How on earth then are so many illegal immigrants making enough money to both survive and also send money back to their families in their native countries?

no taxes? no health care? no social security?

People with salaries close to the poverty line don't really pay much in taxes.

But doesn't your point #2 conflict with #1?

This is obviously industry-specific but assuming you have the skills, doing contract programming requires only trivial up-front cost (a domain name and server, but most who work with the web would have that already) and it's certainly not a $15/hr job.

As one of my siblings comments says, it's your responsibility to have a safety net of your own (6 months of all your expenses is a pretty standard number). Not doing so is simply irresponsible unless you're struggling to keep food on the table as it is.

Yes, it is industry-specific. Not only do software engineers have the necessary skills to do contract programming or start something up by default, they also make enough money such that building up a nice amount of savings is a trivial issue.

Outside software however, things are quite bleak. Many people are stuck in that awful income range where they make too much to qualify for government aid, but too little actually save any meaningful amount of money[1]. And, unlike with a lot of software companies, their jobs don't really allow them to work remotely. So when they become long-term unemployed, they get hit hard.

[1]You know, software is kind of a unique field, in the sense that you have both ends of the income spectrum. On the one hand, you have homeless wanna-be founders who eat nothing but ramen all day. On the other hand, you have people who get paid six figure salaries in comfortable office environments. What you don't have however is people who are in the 20k-40k range. As a result, most software engineers cannot sympathize with those people.

"who are in the 20k-40k range" - Sounds like badly paying startup.

"When you're unemployed, finding work should become your full-time job."

This assumes there's enough of a job market "out there" that after more than 6 months you can still burn 40 hours per week on it.

"This is not possible if you're dicking around with ... volunteer work."

This doesn't even make sense. Most volunteer work doesn't require much money. You may be confusing setting up a charity or donating to a charity with volunteer work at a charity. Even something "time consuming" like serving soup at the church soup kitchen can't burn more than a couple hours.

I did volunteer work at a soup kitchen and through the connections I made there I worked with someone who kicked my butt and fixed my resume. If that hadn't happened i wouldn't be making the salary I am now.

The ancient wisdom: give and it will be given you is mysteriously powerful. Humans want to help those who help others, it's in our genetics.

I can not recommend this advice enough. Give and it will be given you.

It is the first step of forming an alliance and symbiotic relationship between adversarial systems.

When two humans want to acquire all the assets of the other and make the other one the slave, the first step in starting an alliance is doing a cost benefit analysis of how things would be easier for both if cooperation was done. Often times the one persuaded is reluctant until one human takes a leap of faith and gives, in expectation of receiving. It's all highly mathematical and I could create an algorithm to describe it. But you wouldn't recommend that either.

I guess this also proves the power of networking =)

Finding work should be your primary focus, yes. But employment counsellors will tell you that you cannot and should spend 8 hours a day doing it. That's just a recipe for burn out. After you've applied for a few thousand jobs and been rejected a few thousand times, applying for more jobs is an exercise in futility and a recipe for depression. You're obviously doing something wrong. Figure out what you're doing wrong, fix it, and then try again.

>If all you've done is watch TV and send out resumes, nobody's going to hire you. You have to be able to say that you've done something.

WHY??!?!? Seriously, WHY?!?!

So, I'm thinking that maybe there's some skew in these findings, and then you come in and say "Yea, I wouldn't hire you unless you show me you did more than just look for work".

Looking for work is time consuming. Furthermore, as the spouse who's currently jobless you may be pulling double duty taking care of the kids, or fixing up the house, or helping out the household in some other way (maybe working at McDonald's), things that you don't put on your resume. Little does such a person realize, that there are people like you, who look at his or her resume and dismiss them as lazy.

Looking for work isn't an idle task, it is sales and marketing. If you do not record that fact for potential employers, questions are going to be raised. No money exchanging hands is not relevant, you were still working in a legitimate profession doing legitimate work. It is a job and should go on your resume. Likewise for home care, if that was your primary profession during that period of time.

So you're saying this person or anyone should put on their resume, rather than

    [last position] [last company] [long time ago - 8 months ago]

they should put

    Personal Marketing Assistant    Me, Myself and I    8 months ago - Present
     * Analyzed potential job contracts with future employers
     * Bid for relevant contracts using specialized letters of qualifications
     * Proselytized Mr. John Do to applicable markets using word of mouth and print
       techniques

    [last position] [last company] [long time ago - 8 months ago]

Employers, how would you see this?

>If you do not record that fact for potential employers, questions are going to be raised.

Clearly, CLEARLY, employers in the US are finicky and capricious, I'm not disputing that. The study in the article proves this. I'm arguing they are irrationally so. Let's take the worst case scenario. What's really wrong with me leaving work, living off my savings while watching TV, and then rejoining the workforce 7 months later? Obviously, if I do that with every job it raises (legitimate) questions, but what if I just did it once, and I had a good employment history prior. What possible reason is there to punish such a person? He took a few months off (on his dime) one time in his life and now he's unhirable?

The insanity comes in that this scenario is not what happens. Generally, people lose their jobs, and it takes awhile to find another, and apparently if you cross the magic threshold of six months, you're now a lazy slob.

" What's really wrong with me leaving work, living off my savings while watching TV, and then rejoining the workforce 7 months later?"

Nothing. The big question is what you do in month 8 when you decide to re-enter the work force. You've made it harder to find a job, but if you had enough savings to voluntarily take 7 months off, then presumably you have sufficient savings to plug the hole.

If you want to spend seven months watching TV, then document it. Explain your motivation, what you gained from the experience, etc. My earlier point was that the "we shall not speak of this time" gap in the resume is the problem, not that you were not making money during a period of time.

Everything in life is a job, including watching TV. You just need to account for that time if you want people to not think you are sketchy and trying to hide something. At least that is how I take the whole thing.

>You just need to account for that time if you want people to not think you are sketchy and trying to hide something.

In context of this article, most people aren't even given a chance to account for that time. Their application gets filtered out and they are never called in for an interview. That's one problem. Another problem is that it may not be relevant at all. Worse, it can be something that is highly personal. What if you had health problems and you had to take time off, should you really need to disclose something like this?

I am referring to accounting on the resume, not in an interview setting. Even getting sick and caring for yourself is a job, which could easily be accounted for, without going into too much detail.

Whether you should have to is another matter, but it seems clear that you do have to if you want equal chances with others. That doesn't make it right, but you have to work with the constraints you are given.

The reality is that you are competing against people who have been increasing their skill at relevant tasks and you have not. It's no more complicated than that. Fairness has nothing to do with it.

That makes no sense, for so many reasons. Here's one: 10 years of experience with a 6 month break is worse than 5 years of experience and a 2 month break? Here's another: skill increase is not linear. Here's another: People are different.

Unfortunately, HR departments do not have the time or resources to take into account differences in individuals. When looking at two resumes, they have to evaluate them based on certain criteria, and they have to assume that all other things are equal. (They rarely are, but life is unfair like that.)

Yeah, that was the point of the article. They chose irrational criteria.

I didn't do the resume filtering, I was doing interviewing. As I said, I didn't really mind what the answer was, just that you had an answer. I would have accepted looking after pre-school kids or major house renovations or working at McDonald's. Basically anything that shows you are the sort of person that makes lemon-aid when life gives you lemons.

>As I said, I didn't really mind what the answer was, just that you had an answer.

Let's take that. A person with a good employment history, leaves (or loses) their job and takes a few months off to do nothing. What exactly makes them unhireable when they rejoin the workforce?

Furthermore, how do you know the person you're interviewing will tell you that they were looking after kids, or working at McDonald's. Maybe they don't consider it relevant work experience, or maybe they were embarrassed, or better yet maybe it was something personal that's none of your business (e.g. a health issue, a messy divorce etc.), whatever it is, they decide to not go into details. Why punish them?

" takes a few months off to do nothing"

Isn't that an answer? If I was the interviewer in this situation, that would be a completely acceptable response to me.

I'm sure to other people perhaps taking time off is seen as some sort of weakness, but you don't want to work for those people anyways.

>I'm sure to other people perhaps taking time off is seen as some sort of weakness, but you don't want to work for those people anyways.

Ideally. But for anyone outside of tech and possibly financial, it's a buyers market. If you have bills to pay, and a family to support, you may not afford to be so picky.

And in the UK you are expected to spend 30 hours a week looking for work in order to claim SS - They have a section of the uk.gov site just for that

I can absolutely vouch for this.

After a 6 month contract gig, the employer told me they were going to bring me on full-time. I stopped interviewing thinking I had a full-time spot. They told me two weeks before the end of the contract they didn't have anything else for me and I was cut at the beginning of January after our project ended.

I did find a job with a small company, but after three days, realized they were looking for a Javascript developer, not a front-end developer. From then on, I was out of work for almost four months. Luckily, I picked up a freelance project which filled the gap during the time I wasn't technically "working".

On my resume, I put it was a private freelance project that lasted the time I was unemployed (four months). Since it was relevant to my work history, nobody asks about it, or just wants me to go over what we did and the technologies we used.

The interesting thing is when recruiters see "freelance" projects they instantly equate it with being unemployed. While the actual HR people at the companies I interviewed with never made the same connection. To them, work is work as long as its relevant to your career.

What if you simply got a business name for yourself? A DBA license isn't too hard to get, and would probably look a little more professional (even if unjust) than freelance.

You don't put "freelance" on your resume. Being "freelance" means you're operating your own company, with its own presence, branding, etc. The least you can do is to name your consulting company and declare yourself as the owner. Even with something as simple as <last name> Consulting. Because, at least according to the IRS, you are. Take advantage of it.

I think you will find is that a lot companies don't like hiring small business owners either. Even successful ones. Companies might expect them to be 'arrogant' or "want do things their own way".

Then perhaps that isn't the company you want to work for.

Realistically, I have not met any hiring managers who had a problem with my consulting. I have not met any recruiters that had a problem with this. I focused on describing the project/product in all of employment history rather than who employed me, or what my job description.

To be fair, software developers are generally in much greater demand. If you're a software dev looking for work, the best way is a combination of:

(1) Going to technical meetups that have a strong cross section of "developeneurs". There are generally recruiters there in addition to startup founders looking for technical founders. They usually flock to places rich with developer contacts. The recruiters at this kind of meeting are voraciously hungry for leads, with the regular members trying not to roll their eyes and ignoring the recruiters. Anyone new gets pounced upon. Just by showing up, you're pre-qualified, pre-screened. And you get free food.

(2) Participate in open source projects. Yes. You want to eat. Set aside some time while waiting for people to call back. Even things as simple as maintaining the docs. You can hear about the most active open-source projects by going to the meetups in (1).

Both of these methods builds up your network, something far more valuable than a mere job. Jobs come and go, but your contacts tend to persist over the lifetime of your career. If you're only sending out resumes, then you're not using everything that is available to you.

>Then perhaps that isn't the company you want to work for.

If you've been out of work for six months you no longer get to choose which companies you want to work for.

I've been out of work for more than six months and got back into the thick of things. I chose the area of specialization I got back into. I did it by focusing on the project, rather than the company. I think, your chances of employment is actually lower, if you do not focus your search. If you're going to make an effort to focus on your search, you might as well choose, not just simply sending things out and seeing what sticks on the wall.

That you have focus, a drive, a goal, all bleeds through your body language. People want to go where you're going. If you're lost and desperate, people avoid you; it's sad, but people in general avoid needy people like the plague. This "knowing where you are going" is what people are really looking for when they screen out someone who has been unemployed for six months.

I have a friend whose favorite mantra is, "adapt, improvise, overcome." Ok, so recruiters have software that screens out anyone who has been unemployed for more than six months. Adapt. Improvise. Overcome. Don't send out resumes to recruiters; go to where the employers are. Or better yet, stop looking for a "job" (and all the things that go with it, such as social status, peer acceptance, etc.) and look for a project.

Definitely agree on the "do something in the gap" aspect. In a lot of technical fields, 6 non-practicing months can be very close to "no experience".

My job responsibilities tend to come in waves of 3 different functions, where I'll focus almost exclusively on one aspect for 4 months, then move to another for 8 months, then hop again. Each time I switch it can take a lot of time to "shake off the cobwebs" - either the software changes, there is new functionality, or just rediscovering some best practices.

I can completely understand reluctance to hire someone in that situation.

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