[caymanjim]

Never admit that you were fired. Your prior employer isn't going to tell anyone, if they know what's good for them. Small, inexperienced companies with no lawyers might, but no real business is going to risk a lawsuit by saying anything bad about you whatsoever. They'll confirm that you worked there and that's about it.

Six months is not a big deal. You've been told all your life that gaps in your resume are a problem, and some people here will tell you that they ask about it, but they're all just following a rote pattern. You don't want to work anywhere that actually cares about this. Most people couldn't care less. You can always leave the months off your resume if you're really worried about it.

Do not under any circumstances tell people that you were unemployed or lost your job due to depression or mental health. I'm not going to sugar coat this for you. Never admit this during an interview. It's a bad idea to mention anything health related. It's also none of their business, unless you require an accommodation that needs to be addressed before you're hired.

Companies rarely check references. They might check your employment history, and they might ask for references to check your professional qualifications, but hardly anyone speaks to references. Don't put any on your resume. If someplace cares, they'll ask. Hopefully you have some ex-coworker willing to say a few nice things about you. If not, you might want to say you haven't stayed in touch with anyone from that particular job. If you can't summon any professional references at all, that may slow down your job search, but really, people don't usually check. Don't lie; just don't stress about it that much.

Lying is never a good idea, but you shouldn't be offering up negative information about yourself. Forget about what's fair, legal, politically or morally correct: there's a stigma around mental health issues and you don't want to bring them up with a potential employer.

You'll be fine going forward, although now isn't a great time to be looking for a job, so it might take longer.

[mywittyname]

> but hardly anyone speaks to references.

I'd be surprised if this were universal. I've been the reference for several people and had references checked for every job that I've had.

I can totally understand why a company wouldn't check references (bias, mainly), but HR is full of a lot of cargo cult superstitions.

[caymanjim]

I'm probably biased here due to the length of my career; at this point, my resume is extensive and speaks for itself. References may be more important if you've got less experience.

[Sodman]

I think that's kind of the point of references though, right? Your resume speaks for itself, but you wrote your resume. It's a good sanity check for a potential employer to quickly verify that it's actually accurate.

People exaggerate on their resumes all the time. Maybe the 2 interns they supervised materializes as them managing a team of 4. Maybe the project on which their boss did the brunt of the work on becomes a project they architected and lead. It's easy enough to make all of this sound true in an interview, so it's totally logical for an interviewer to want to fact check and keep the interviewees honest.

[exolymph]

> I think that's kind of the point of references though, right? Your resume speaks for itself, but you wrote your resume. It's a good sanity check for a potential employer to quickly verify that it's actually accurate.

This is 100% true. However, people are lazy and skimp on due diligence. Just because something is a good practice doesn't mean it's always done :P

[acdha]

The times where I’ve learned someone was lying on their resume, it was always someone claiming extensive experience. Several were managers, where it’s easier to bluff, but there were applicants for senior technical positions who were apparently hoping nobody would expect them to deliver.

[throw4failure]

Thanks for the reply and for offering a unique perspective :)

> Your prior employer isn't going to tell anyone, if they know what's good for them. Small, inexperienced companies with no lawyers might, but no real business is going to risk a lawsuit by saying anything bad about you whatsoever. They'll confirm that you worked there and that's about it.

This is an interesting point. I had been under the impression that even companies with fairly restrictive HR policies could safely disclose whether or not a former employee was terminated. After some fresh googling it seems I might have been incorrect and that now employers increasingly might just admit you existed :)

> Do not under any circumstances tell people that you were unemployed or lost your job due to depression or mental health. I'm not going to sugar coat this for you. Never admit this during an interview. It's a bad idea to mention anything health related. It's also none of their business, unless you require an accommodation that needs to be addressed before you're hired.

Sadly, I think you're very much correct re: mental health. I almost wish I could be more candid, but everyone (here and elsewhere) seems to agree that's just a terrible idea.

> It's a bad idea to mention anything health related.

I have, however, mentioned health / medical issues in some of my early conversations. I definitely understand how that could make potential employers nervous, so in some future interviews I may try to omit mentioning health at all.

> You'll be fine going forward, although now isn't a great time to be looking for a job, so it might take longer.

Thank you :)