this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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me_irl
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Got this question in an interview once. I just said I had taken time off for my health, and we moved on immediately.
Most people aren't dicks. They'll respect your privacy, because it's unprofessional to pry. Even as an employee if you have a health issue, they aren't obligated to know the specifics of it. You tell someone siloed off what the issue is, and they'll communicate to everyone else that you had a serious injury and that's it.
it's unprofessional to ask in the first place, in my opinion. you can assume any gap is for a good reason and ask me about my experience instead.
Yeah. I imagine at some point in my career I'm going to be asked to interview candidates as a kind of "hey you've been an engineer here for a while, what do you think of their technical background", and I don't plan to ask about any gaps. That really doesn't factor into their abilities or prowess.
As usual with interviews, they don't really care much about the answer but how you respond to it.
When I used to help clients hire I didn't care much about your experience itself, other then to work it into talking points. I cared about if you were interested in the work and would fit in with the rest of the team, your ability to troubleshoot, and ability to ask others for help.
In fact, this might be a good tactic to weed out bad employers - assuming one has the luxury of multiple interviews, of course.
Agreed. Depends a lot where it comes from too. Is a future colleague asking you? Or is it HR? A department manager?
Either way, a good piece of information to judge the company.