Hacker News Reader

Comment by lainga | Hacker News Reader

What if I was part of a university co-op program where I work for 4-8 months at a time between academic terms (which I am) ? I've left an interview where I could hear the CTO say "so why was he fired after 4 months?" as I walked out the door.

I understand you have 300 resumes, though -- should I put Co-op or Internship in big red letters before the item?

View on HN

Just make the heading on the section be “4 month internship at blah”. That should be fine.

You may have met a CTO that wasn’t paying attention but that’s not the problem here. Having short periods of work while you’re studying is fine.

Flipping more than a couple of full time jobs is a big red flag. You need a really good reason.

Agree with you. Caveat is that a "couple" can vary based on the length of your career. If you have been working for 20 years and in that time, you had 3 jobs that you only held for 6 months, I'd look at that very differently than someone with a shorter career span.

That’s fair. It’s the narrative that counts. If you look like you’re a good investment then you might be asked to explain but, at least, you’ll probably have the opportunity.

If your history says risk then you need something special to counteract it or you won’t get the chance.

Any reasonable or legitimate circumstance for short job periods can be explained with a well written resume, but yes it should be extremely clear one way or another that you aren't dropping into a series of short jobs and either getting fired or leaving for better job offers.

This runs counter to your initial statement: "I don't really care why your career has played like that."

Which is probably why he's had such a hard time explaining it in the first place. Lots of people aren't going to take the time to actually read and understand the situation.

This is my experience, yes. I suspect many hiring staff look over the job titles and snap onto company/dates employed -- and never see the word "co-op". Thus my idea.

Having attended a university that was coop-based, I've had this discussion (or did when it was more relevant) and the key truly is "a well written resume" (plenty of coop positions come and go so...)

Often I would have conversations with people about resumes where they had problems and those problems would be things like: * How long is your resume...? (way too long, often) * Can you drop/compress any positions? (keep recent/relevant) * Instead of "Employment", can you say "Coop Experience"? for the section? * etc.

(thought questions, not asking for responses). I do agree, you definitely have to make the "coop" part super obvious otherwise you won't make it past initial filters.

Make it clear. Seeing this on a resume is actually a bonus in my mind compared to someone without that experience.

Of course the farther into your career the less important this is, but for new developers I would say this is an important and positive detail to highlight.

Internships don't count to the general rules around job tenure.

You should probably be putting "Intern" after your job title on your previous roles, if you aren't already.

It might be worth it to also clear up your work history during the on-site interview too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com