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!

Yes but what can you do about that OP? Employ men only?

You could just discount or mark down any women of childbearing age, that would be a good way to catch out these women hiding their lack of experience.

Or maybe develop a better interview process...

YANBU if the role requires 3 years experience. However, some people are very quick and talented at a particular role or set of skills, in which case 2 years would be ample.
Just make sure you ask questions relating to the harder parts of the role and see how she answers.

I agree with everyone else who thinks that you are discriminating because you wouldn't know that about an external candidate. I try not to mention DS at all in interviews

My CV says that I worked at X from 2014-17. I'm hardly going to put I was on ML for most of 2016.

If you need someone with a specific amount of experience are there any questions you could ask all candidates to find that out?

How many projects or had they dealt with certain specified situations.

I agree that the person in question doesn't have 3 years experience

You are right I guess but I do think it would be discrimination to not give her the job on that basis 🤷🏻‍♀️

If it’s hard to find out their level of experience at interview, you should consider setting up a practical task for them to do.

I hate the way most recruitment processes are designed to give the job to the person who can best talk the talk, but not necessarily walk the walk.

You could just discount or mark down any women of childbearing age
But with the new fangled parental leave, men can now take a lot more time off. Best exclude any man who might have a family. Maybe instigate a test so only those with slow swimmers need apply?

OP, frankly if someone isn’t experienced enough after 2 years, an extra year isn’t going to make a difference.

But you’ve already decided she isn’t good enough so just make sure you declare the bias when you tell HR why she hasn’t got the job. They’ll surely be pleased to know your “logic” I’m sure.

Sex discrimination as it would have a detrimental impact on women

Think really really hard about why you need X years of experience

There may be a good reason (some professions / projects / types of work have cycles, and you might need someone who has been through the whole cycle twice, for example)

But I expect you have fallen into the trap of thinking that if someone has been doing a role for a while they are automatically better at it than someone who is newer

Which leads you down the path of age discrimination as well as sex discrimination - which is why HR will probably advise that you are on shaky ground unless you can provide a robust defence for your requirements

No, I think you can discount maternity leave imbut you can take the work produced into account - and someone else may have more.

I am in a job where PQE is important to people, but actually a lot is about maturity and time spent thinking in a certain way.

Very shaky ground and potentially discriminatory. You sound biased. Think about who is best for the job and why 3 years experience is vital versus two years from someone competent and can do the job.

Well, surely you can find a reason not to employ her then, if you don't think she is up to the job? There's no point in blaming her for not putting it on her CV if she doesn't have to do it. When you say she is 'insisting', do you just mean that she has put it on her CV, or is she pestering you to give her the job?
Find a reason to hire someone else for the role.

Very, very surprised at the number of women on this thread who appear to be ok with maternity leave being used as a factor in not giving someone a job.

I think you're wrong OP.

Oh and I also agree with those who say that there is little difference between 2 and 3 years in reality. 2 years is normally more than enough to gain the necessary skills. I don't know why you are being so rigid about it. I suspect that you don't want her for the job for other reasons, which is fine because presumably you don't need to hire her.

Although logically makes sense I agree it could be discriminatory. It is not legal to discriminate on the basis of pregnancy or maternity.

As pp say you wouldn’t be able to ask an external candidate about maternity leave so wouldn’t know if they had been on maternity.

m.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=5271

You can't discriminate against her as an internal candidate, although I agree that she has 2 years actual experience.
And I agree that good candidates who have more experience, are stronger employees.

But while on mat leave you still have to ensure you're up to speed so should still be experienced to a point. I see what you're saying but it's only part of an interview anyway. Taking credit for work not done is however an issue, not including mat leave on a cv is standard.

And no, 2 years is not the same as 3 years experience if the person is good at their job and conscientious.

My cv states x employer from 2015 to date. I’ve been on mat leave once for 7 months and will be going again in July. But my cv shows continuous employment.

I wouldn’t mention mat leave in an interview.

You're still employed!

Do you / would you mention your maternity leave OP?

Not interested in employing people with short bursts of work who only dipped into projects half way though.

For all sorts of reasons (none of them down to me) the last 6 years of my work has been like this. It doesn’t make me any poorer at my job that I have dipped in and out of projects. In many ways it makes me better because having a steep learning curve and getting to grips with a project whilst working on it is actually much harder than running a project from start to finish. You have to be way more organised far quicker and usually have fresh eyes on any issues that are causing problems. I long for a start to finish project, they are a piece of piss.

I agree you need to focus on competency not time. Someone else could have had 3 spells of long term absence. Or spells of parental leave. Also she cannot possibly have 'over a year of mat leaves'. Mat leave is up to a year. The rest is possibly holiday accrued, which everyone gets...