Aibu mat leave shouldn’t count as a year of work on cv?

[windygallows]

I’m currently Interviewing candidates including an internal colleague who claims to have 3 yrs experience In a particular skill/role. However over 1 yr of those 3yrs she was off on mat leave.

I think it’s okay for her to say she was employed in the role for 3 yrs but she can’t really say she has 3 yrs experience doing it, can she? Really she’s only been doing the tasks involved in her role for 2 years. This fact is important since the role requires significant experience and I think 2 years is not enough.

I’ve been on mat leave twice and not trying to discrimate, just trying to be logical about it. Would welcome thoughts on whether I’m BU or not I’m thinking 3 yrs employed does not equal 3 yrs experience.

I haven’t checked with HR but pretty sure they wouldn’t agree with me!

there IS a difference between 2 and 3 years experience

Possibly but as I am banging on about, it depends what you have been doing? 3 years sitting at a desk going through the motions while mumsnetting or 2 years actually doing some meaningful work?

This is why you should interview on competencies, not time spent doing something.

Being employed in a role for 3 years is different than gaining 3 years hands-on experience of a certain role surely? The fault lies in the job description in my opinion.

Well I think that's why so many people have made the argument on here to stop equating time spent in a role with competence and experience. Firstly it's discriminatory but secondly, time in role doesn't actually tell you much - as some people work the same job for 25 years and that is actually quite limited experience.

So rather than say i need a project manager with ten years experience, you'd be better saying I need a project manager with proven experience of delivery complex, agile change in xxx industry. Experience of handling project teams, projects budgets of £xxx and influencing senior and executive management.
Then interview would ask for specific examples to support the above ask. Then age/sex/time spent ill/mat leave is irrelevant ... you either have the experience to support the job description or you don't and the time period you've spent gaining said experience is irrelevant.

It's not rocket science, some people just can't get out of the rut of thinking years worked in a role = better experience.

Of course YANBU. But 'manipulating' your CV, or downright lying is so common these days, that I'm not really surprised.

As several people have said, it isn't the 'time-served' that matters, it's what they actually did and learned that matters. Ask them probing questions about what they know and don't rely on their CV.

Quite. People can be in a role for years and just coasting along, being a pain in the arse but not quite enough to get them sacked. 20 years experience can mean 20 years of not a lot.

So, if she had said that she had 2 years would you hire her? Is your problem with her as a candidate or is it with the fact that she put 3 instead of 2? Surely nobody is forcing you to hire her- just do the interviews and go with the most suitable candidate?
I really can't see the fuss here.

Competence and skill plus time spent in a role does equate to someone better able to do the job than someone employed for less time.
But this goes with the ageism in our society that majorly devalues older workers experience and skills.

There's nobody arguing that time in a role doesn't matter: but that you can't put an exact figure on it to say 3 years good, 2 years useless.

The same person with 2 years of experience, if they carry on learning and improving will perform even better after 10-15 years in many fields. But if you try to put exact figures in it it becomes a box ticking exercise: "we want a senior X, you have only 8 years, so even though you've a track record of success at all the things you'll need to do in post we'll give it to this person with 10 years even though they haven't half your breadth of experience".

So you would put considerable experience then?

It’s a blatant lie. YANBU

It's not a lie. What was she supposed to put, if she put 2 years she would have a career break and the only way she could honestly answer that career break would be to say she was on maternity leave.

The people saying she is lying on her cv are in a roundabout way whether they mean to or not, saying you should put maternity leave on your CV. Which is illegal.

The ignorance of the law and discrimination against women on a site that is presumably mostly used by women is astounding me

@clairemcnam
W/o quoting any of the job ads I write directly, which would be a bit outing, when I'm looking for a senior I will write stuff like:

Requires experience in apple polishing, and lily gilding - we'll expect you to review work from junior colleagues, and you should have experience of designing a full apple polishing plan for several orchards concurrently over a variety of seasonal conditions. Your lily gilding experience should cover multiple varieties and both dry and wet brush techniques.

Rather than:
Must have minimum 12.5 years apple polishing, 7 years lily gilding.

You are technically correct, but two things:

Shouldn't the interview process reveal whether someone has the right quality of experience that prepares them for the role applied for regardless of whether it was two years or three years actually worked continuously? I could understand if we were talking about three weeks vs three years, but there are lots of people in my department (which involves project management) with two to three years ' experience and their skills, attributes and particular quality of experience are what set them apart rather than whether they've done two years, two and a half years, or three years. Our HR department would generally advise against specifying x years of experience, unless there is a very robust rationale for it.

Very unfair as well to treat her differently to other applicants, whose long-term sickness / maternity leave etc you won't know about.

"Competence and skill plus time spent in a role does equate to someone better able to do the job than someone employed for less time."

The thing is that you're forgetting about the competence and skill part. Establish that first through proper questioning, and then if the only difference between two good candidates is a year difference in experience then that would be the deciding factor.

And the difference between 2 and 3 years isn't a matter of ageism for goodness sake. No one is disputing that someone with 20 years experience is very likely to be more skilled than someone with 2 years.

Competence and skill plus time spent in a role does equate to someone better able to do the job than someone employed for less time.
But this goes with the ageism in our society that majorly devalues older workers experience and skills.

I think you massively misunderstand the modern job market. Firms are interested in breath of experience and competence not time served. They are also interested in attitude, soft skills and cultural fit.

Someone who has 25 years of working doing the same thing over and over again does not have more experience than the person with 10 years split across different roles, companies and responsibilities.
Yes some older workers are probably struggling in the job market. That’s probably due to a number of factors like technology in the workplace and their skills falling behind. Solution is to keep up skilled and undertake training rather than shout ageism. Businesses are not a charity, they are going to hire the best person they can.

Essentially internal and external candidates must be treated the same. So if she says she has the relevant experience you are looking for then yes, she should be interviewed.

The interview process should then find the depth of the experience she has and you can design your questions to probe for depth of knowledge and experience.

Unless you are directly managing this person, you are unlikely to know whether they have been involved in projects during their mat leave as they can use KIT days to keep them in the loop and as such you can't simply assume that she has no experience for the duration of her mat leave. That is what the interview process is for.

Essentially, if her CV and cover letter were edited to remove personal details so you didn't know who had applied, and based on that cover letter and CV you would interview, then yes you should interview because you would be discriminating against the internal candidate based on your own bias rather than the skills and experience she has demonstrated.

Also, external candidates do not need to be forthcoming in their own previous absences. They may also omit that they have had long term absence, maternity leave, sabbaticals or otherwise and generally there isn't much you can do to prove otherwise.

Many companies respond to reference requests with basic information such as X was most recently employed in the role of X, they worked for the company from X to X.

Not many will provide any information on absence as this can provide an opportunity for complaints by previous employees for providing a negative reference, so many will simply not provide that information in the first place. So you could have someone who has been absent more often than not during their work history, and this should be clear at interview if they cannot demonstrate the skills and experience you are looking for as they will not have examples. A robust recruitment process makes such a difference such as asking for specific examples at the application stage will help you to understand if people have the kind of experience you are looking for regardless of how long they have been doing their job

Someone who has 25 years of working doing the same thing over and over again

But, I imagine in many fields, anyone working in the same position for 25 years will not actually be doing the same job or at least not in the same way. I have been doing my job for 20 years and it has evolved. I have not been doing the same thing over and over again.

That's the whole point! You can't tell from the length what the quality of the experience is. Some people may have spent 25 years doing pretty much the same things. You haven't. The way to establish that is to interview properly and find out people's competence. Not make assumptions.

Thx everyone for your thoughts and comments. I appreciate your help with recruitment but really I'm good there. I have lots of experience there (but to prove the points made in this thread, experience recruiting doesn't necessarily mean good skills in recruiting lol) l

Of course I will look at breadth and depth of experience and overall competency and I actually have a sound understanding of legal issues around recruitment.

I just felt in this instance that the language in the candidates cv suggested she had more years under her belt than she did and I was querying that as a matter of course. It might not matter to some but the candidate is really pushy about moving up and getting a promotion and also verbally has emphasised her years of experience which are inaccurate 'I have 3 years of experience in procurement and I should be a manager level now.'

Let's just go back to why the legislation is there protecting women from discrimination esp around pregnancy/maternity leave - because otherwise the gap betw men and women would be much wider. If she was not a woman she would have 3yrs of experience by now. Because she is a woman she had 1 year of mat leave. She is right to consider that she has 3 years 'under her belt' as it is how you should look at her too otherwise you are discriminating her. From a common sense point of you I get what you are saying but the law is there for a very good reason. When shared parental leave becomes the norm (if it ever does, quite hard with breastfeeding) then things will be totally different as the protection is to do with gender, not having children.

Good for her for being ‘pushy’.

Men normally are the ones pushing for promotions, getting the pay rises whilst the women hold back... Then the pay gap keeps widening. She sounds ambitious and keen to get on. Why don’t you interview her on her competency to do the role and stop focusing on years of experience:

For those who think "leave" should be taken into consideration WRT "years experience" - I've worked in my field for 12 years and now work 2 days a week due to having small children, have done for the last 2 years. Am I supposed to put 11 years experience down because I don't work 5 days? What about weekends? It's disingenuous to say you have X years experience when you actually take off 104 days a year PLUS 10 bank holidays PLUS 20 days annual leave, surely? So we can all reduce our years experience by approx 1/3?

Men normally are the ones pushing for promotions

But they don't always get them. I do find that young people today seem impatient to climb the ladder and don't see the value in staying in a role until,they actually do have the experience, knowledge and understanding if the role before moving on.

Don’t really know why I’m replying on this since I think you are already discriminating against this woman so the interview process is pretty much a waste of time for her at this point. The reason why in your Op you stated you haven’t asked HR about this is because you already know the answer and you don’t like it. Having been on the receiving end of this sort of discrimination I hope the candidate manages to move on to bigger and better things elsewhere for her sake...the law is there precisely for this sort of reason and attitude and you are merely demonstrating why it is so desperately needed. If you have any moral decency you would bow out of the interview process and let someone who doesn’t know the candidate step in to conduct the interview.

I agree with @Perpetuallytiredzzz I don't think it's fair you should interview this woman when you're so prejudiced