Interviewing Someone With a Medically Related Gap in Their Background

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discusses how to respond to someone who has a medically related gap in their background.

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Hi, I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter and I want to give you some more no BS hiring advice to 25help you do an even better job of recruiting, interviewing, etc. And this advice comes from someone who emailed me yesterday looking for some support. Now, she had already seen my video about how to address gaps in your background but she had a very unusual gap and her gap related to having been caught in a terrorist bombing, suffering traumatic brain injury, taking several years away from the workforce and now trying to return to work.

Now, I don’t know how it is for you hearing that but my heart was wide open. I did a video for her but I also told her I do a video for employers. This is something she said.

She said that often when she interviews and mind you, although she was in a bombing in Indonesia, she’s now a US . . . I don’t know if she’s a citizen or not but she’s a US resident and she said often when I interview and I’m asked what the gap is about and I talk about being caught up and having had a traumatic brain injury from the bombing, she seems perfectly fine now. I haven’t spoken to her but we’ve corresponded. She seems terrific and she says interviewers often look at me as though what happened to me is contagious.

Catch that. She’s a victim of a bombing and people respond to her with horror about what happened to her sufficiently so that she’s able to detect it. It reminds me of several years ago when I was still working in New York.

There was an administrative assistant in our offices who, through no fault of her own, was walking in midtown Manhattan right near the Empire State Building. A robbery had occurred. Someone had been shot.

The police followed the shooter and she was caught in a crossfire and injured as part of their attempt to apprehend this shooter. So she takes a bullet and suddenly she’s damaged goods and I mean that as though employers are looking at her as being defective. Now I’ve got to pause for a second and say does this really seem fair? Is this really the right response? I had suggested to her that it would be normal for her to hear the follow-up question of what happened why were you out for so long and to respond by saying I had a severe medical issue that lasted several years.

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I’m absolutely fine now but it kept me out of work for several years. I also told her not to expect to ever return to a job at her current level or her most recent level or most recent compensation that she’d been away from the workforce for too long but this isn’t about her this is about employers and how they respond when they’re dealing with difficult situations I want to encourage you that the worker who basically says I had a medical issue is not broken defective or contagious there’s someone who had a medical problem the worker who lost the parent or took care of a parent for years during the last stages of their life is not defective or broken but actually remarkably honorable and you need to deal with people in that kind of way in order to ensure that well they have a fair chance now again I’m not suggesting that you must hire them but to look at someone as though they’re broken or what happened to them is contagious is completely unfair I know you know that intellectually I would just say that if your emotional shock displays itself, then very simply return from that place and say, wow, I’m sure you couldn’t help but notice how shocked I was by what you said. If how I appeared was uncomfortable for you, I apologize and you’re under no obligation to do anything more than evaluate this person fairly but when you’re shocked it affects them you’ve got to do some backpedaling too.

I’m Jeff Altman. Hope you find this helpful. Come over to my website, TheBigGameHunter.us. I’ve got more information there that you can watch, listen to or read that’ll help you find work more quickly.

A few final points. First of all, if your current firm is trying to hire someone or if your firm is trying to hire someone, I’d love to help. Send me an email at JeffAltman at TheBigGameHunter.us. Let me know who to contact.

If it’s you, let’s set up a time to speak. I’d love to help your firm staff positions and if we’re not already connected on LinkedIn, send me a connection request at LinkedIn.com forward slash IN forward slash TheBigGameHunter.us. I accept connection requests from people worldwide except if you look like a spammer or scammer except if you’re a third-party recruiter. I’m Jeff Altman.

Hope you have a great day. Take care

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