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!

So you think she’s lying about her involvement? That should be easily checked out at interview by asking probing questions.

The alternative is effectively forcing people to declare (by omission) that they were on mat leave -or potentially on long term sickness. If someone's CV shows 3 years in procurement but their covering letter says 2 years procurement experience then either:
a) they don't check their letters or
b) they were somewhere else for a year.

For a woman of childbearing age the assumption will be maternity leave. And plenty of employers will discriminate for that.

When I was on Mat Leave my team called me every Friday for a check in - how was I, how were they? I kept involved in key decisions and target setting and made the most of KIT days, I scanned emails to keep my finger on the pulse and still read industry relevant press, this may not be the same as your scenario but I just wanted to point out I didn't turn into a jelly brain with no valuable contribution for the 9 months of my mat leave - I say give her a chance.

Well, ask her about it then. Ask her questions about her precise role on the project. What is she like otherwise? Is she a good candidate or do you have reservations for other reasons?

OP, you sound as though you are not a competent interviewer and do not have a well-developed set of interview questions that dig into competence for the role.

You are trying to compensate for this in a really wierd way by picking at something that is a poor proxy and that you can only know about for a subset of your candidates. This is not going to work well.

There is a difference between how long you are employed and how long you have done the job.

The only difference between her and other atm is that you know SHE has been on maternity leave. The same could be for the others,you just wouldn't know about it. You might end up hiring someone who has more "experience " aka been in the job for 3/4/5 years(because that's all you'll know) that actually has less than her also due to maternity leave.

I don’t necessarily disagree on the mat leave but you sound biased against the candidate.

So basically @windygallows what's really bothering you is how she worded it? She probably thought nothing of it!

I would expect that any interview process worth its salt would determine whether a candidate was competent regardless of whether they had been on maternity leave or not.

Was going to say much the same thing as @StatisticallyChallenged. If this were an external candidate, would it not raise some eyebrows if she'd said 2 years when her CV shows 3 years in the role? It feels rather like she's being penalised because of what you know about her purely because she's internal.

And yes, surely she could well have "worked on" a project even if the bulk of it took place when she was on mat leave? Presumably she still made a contribution, so ask her about that in her interview.

It sounds reasonable but it still smells of sexism.

So a well as maternity leave are you also going to quiz applicants about their disabilities, sick leave and time off for other reasons?

I hope that your company has plenty of funds for discrimination litigation.

I agree with bored. Also, to add in to that... where do we draw the line? What about part time working? Do we have to add up each individual hour worked before declaring our experience? You're being ridiculous simply because you either don't like the candidate or because you don't like people taking leave to have children.

There is a difference between how long you are employed and how long you have done the job

Indeed. So let’s start adding it up. In an 365 period a person is off for 104 days for weekends. That’s 261 working days. 28 days off annual leave. So that’s only 233 working days. The average Brit has almost 5 days off sick, and as parents there can easily be the same number for kids off sick. Down to 233. In those working days they have a lunch hour. That’s another 45 days of not working. Taking it to 178. Factor in another hour or so making tea, chatting with colleagues, general faffing about that’s 133 days actually doing their job. So actually, in a 12 month period a person only spends about 6 months of it actually doing their job.

Do you put that on your CV?

Incidentally, I put projects I’ve worked on but not completed on my CV. Were it not for them, my CV would be empty and yet I’m one of the biggest fee earners in my team. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing so.

I had maternity leave in 2016 on my cv I would just say I've worked with x employer from 2012-present I wouldn't say minus 2016.

I think you're getting a tough time on here OP but given this is MN, the majority of posters will be biased about the maternity leave question - yet somewhat ironically accuse you the OP of bias.

It sounds like you have 2 concerns:
1. She doesn't have full project lifecycle experience
2. She is trying to take credit for work that happened while she was on maternity leave so her integrity may be questionable.

The only way to tackle this without all the shouting about discrimination is to drill down into her experience with some competency questions focussing on the areas of the project lifecycle that you have concerns about her experience in. Then it gives her a fair chance but will reveal any holes in her experience that will prevent her doing the role at the level you require.

I completely agree with this poster on previous page.
If one of your criteria is that they have a minimum of 3 years experience of doing the role, then she doesn't meet the criteria. Whether other posters thing that is a daft criteria or not is irrelevant - she hasn't got it, and is applying for a job she doesn't meet the criteria for.
Now, in itself, there is nothing wrong with applying for things a bit above you - you never know, on the day, who else will be applying and how important that one aspect is, against all the other aspects they feel they are good at.
There is an issue - as others have said - in that you happen to know that she has missed a year, whereas another applicant might have the same history, that you wouldn't know about the 'gap' in work experience.
What strikes me, is that it is a bit naive to imply internally for something and exaggerate your CV - surely it should have occurred to her that the company would know she was missing for the overwhelming majority of a project she is saying she worked on.

I think you might be on dodgy ground to use the fact you have this knowledge to dismiss the application altogether (as ethics and the law rarely seem to go hand in hand), but I'd have thought some keen questioning at interview stage - if she makes it that far (and of course similar questions would need to be asked of all candidates) which would then unearth if she were making claims about things she hadn't done, or if she has the sense to do a lot of research and be able to answer those questions.

All of this will depend on what the other candidates are like.
If you have 140 suitable applicants, you can react differently from if you only have 3.

She's not claiming credit for work she didn't do, she's correctly stating that she worked on a project when that's exactly what she did.

It sounds like you don't really know how to ascertain people's competencies during the interview process. And tbh it sounds like you have a major issue with this particular woman.

YABU and discriminatory.

I wouldn't view this as 3 years experience, but i'm a bit uncomfortable that you're cautious of her because of her maternity leave... I wouldn't raise it with HR in case you find yourself backed into a corner where they tell you it counts as 3 years. Or is that precisely why you haven't asked...

"She's not claiming credit for work she didn't do, she's correctly stating that she worked on a project when that's exactly what she did. "

This. And it's her CV - her opportunity to sell herself. Any good cv will play up the good and minimize the bad.

I wouldn't discount her for this alone. If you would otherwise interview her then do so, and focus on the competency in this area. If not, then it doesn't really matter.

Agree with those saying you need to be able to break down the skills/experience that she will have gained from this project that she'd only worked on part of (why is this so important? She worked on it. Do you mean that the part she missed would have been the critical part? Is it the only project of that type she has ever done?).

If you can't describe what things she would have learned from this year, then it's an entirely arbitrary choice of 3 years over 2 years as a qualifying bar and you can't justify it. Yes, more experience matters in a lot of roles, but you still have to be able to describe what kind of things you would expect from a more experienced candidate. I would (and have) be able to describe this, give examples (that form part of a promotion matrix), and design behavioural interview questions that I can ask, and score the answers for.

Also, bear in mind that men are often rewarded for "bigging up" their role in things and rarely face any penalties even when it is bleeding obvious. How confident can you be that your feelings about this candidate aren't subconsciously biased by her "bragging while female"?

How did she work on the project if she was on maternity leave?
The OP doesn't sound biased to me, the candidate sounds like she's exaggerated her experience on her CV and is running the risk of being caught out.
If I interview internally , which I do quite often, then d'oh, of course I know more about that candidate than other external ones! Warts and all.

YABU. Your internal candidate has done what any other person would do when applying for a job...talk up their experience and show involvement in as many relevant projects as possible. You've said you're 'irked' by this, but every CV you read will include a positive spin. It is just in this internal case you know precise details. It is widely known that women returning from ML often face work place discrimination. She knows she's in competition with external candidates and has talked herself up a bit.

I think it's fair to give her an interview and ask all pertinent questions/ask for examples of any required experience for the role. If she is way off it will clearly show. If she could do the role with perhaps some extra training, she should be considered. I had several very loyal and hardworking team members who appreciated the fact I'd supported and promoted internally, rather than just bringing people in.

Hi

It's different for a man on sabbatical, the main reason being it's illegal to discriminate against someone at work purely because of anything to do with maternity. So if someone was off sick for a year, or off for a year for any other reason, you can take it into account. If the reason she was off was purely down to maternity you can NOT treat her any differently than you would if she had been at work. For example you can give someone a poor review if they have had a lot of sickness or absence but you cannot give them a poor review purely because they have had sickness or absence during a difficult pregnancy.

So although I see your logic, it is not correct in the eyes of the law which has been put in place to try and stop women's careers being fucked due to being on maternity leave.

You will have to treat her as you would have done if she had been there for 3 years. To be honest there can't be many situations where 2 years is too small to b considered for a job but 3 years is fine

I would think very carefully before not considering her for this promotion purely because she's had a baby as that's clear discrimination and you are putting yourself and your company in a very vulnerable position.

I think you are discriminating against her as an internal candidate to be honest. If she was an external candidate she could hypothetically put she has 5 years experience but has actually had 4 children in those 5 years. You'd have no idea as you don't have to put it on your cv. I'm applying for jobs at the moment, I've had 2 children within an 18 month period, so I was effectively off a year back a few months off another year. Nowhere on my cv does it say "off on mat leave for 12 months X 2".