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Ask HN: Listing unrelated work experience on the CV

4 points by Arisaka1 ↗ HN
I'm 40 years old and I worked lots of jobs before I turned into a software developer last year. I only have 1.5 years of software development experience.

However, whenever I try to mention my older work experience during the first interview screeners, 2 HR people got angry for omitting my experience. I told them that I'm not listing everything because that'll take 2 pages and not everything contributes to my profile. They ghosted me.

I'm seriously thinking that it's covert ageism, but part of me also wants to list it to dodge the bullet of ageism before the figurative gun is fired. Advice?

4 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 20.1 ms ] thread
jjgreen
In your CV, use "recent employment" rather than "employment"
Arisaka1
I used to use "relevant experience" instead. I'll try that, too!
etothepii
I'm not a fan of having more than a one page CV. Most people won't read more than one page and it's better that you choose which page they read.

Why not put a section, called "other experience", on page 2 and list it all there.

creer
You'll need more data than 2 grumpy HR persons. Perhaps time for A/B testing.

One issue used to be holes in employment - or rather having a good story for them. Maybe, maybe not. You can't satisfy everyone anyway. You could keep your resume hole-free without wasting much of people's time.

Another is, can you really not find anything relevant in these previous jobs? If only something in the direction of "solid work ethic"? Sometimes it takes a little creativity but it's still there. And it doesn't need to waste much space on the page.

There are a lot of options between "not mentioning anything" and "2 pages".