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Businesses Editorial

Of NDAs and Resumes? 69

Posted by Cliff from the screwing-with-your-CV dept.
TheFuzzy asks: "I was just updating my resume, and came to the sudden realization that over half of the projects I've worked on in the last 3 years are under ironclad non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and I can't list them. This leaves me with either a slacker's resume, or makes me insert vague statements like "advised 3 Fortune 500 companies on database performance issues" which sounds rather fictional. Attempts to get clearance from these clients to use them as references get forwarded to their legal departments, never to return. Have other Slashdot readers encountered this issue? How did you deal with it? Is it particular to the database field, or is it common for other specialties as well?"
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Of NDAs and Resumes? More

Of NDAs and Resumes?

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  • When asked, say you are bound by an NDA and can't divulge any information about the projects except in the broadest terms.

    You will be hired for being able to keep a secret. It's an asset that companies find very valuable.
    • Excellent!

      You could start a course, "Padding Your Resume, 101: NDAs and The Truth".
    • When asked, say you are bound by an NDA and can't divulge any information about the projects except in the broadest terms.

      Cool, time to go fluff my resume with an imaginary major project under an NDA! ;-)

      Seriously, though, this doesn't strike me as helpful. Although companies value the ability of their potential employees to keep their mouths shut, how does an interviewer know if you really worked on such a project, or just made it up? Not like they can just ask your former employer (or rather, that
  • Describe the project in terms of technologies, size and, if possible, objectives. People reading resumes don't need to know exactly the project. If you need to reveal anything more to a potential employer, your letters to previous employer's legal departments will be much more focused (permission to reveal data X,Y and Z to individual W in the scenario of prospective employment).
    • I second that. I worked for the army before on various project, which are army-secret, not just NDAed. However, when I interviewed for various positions in the civilian sector, I could talk about almost everything (technologies, implementations, mechanisms, algorithms, etc.), as it is NOT a trade secret to mention them and explain the basics to an outsider. For instance, hypothetically, if I were to work on a ICBM software system, talking about the UI design of the operator text console will NOT violate any

      • Real-hard realtime (Score:5, Interesting)

        by MarkusQ ( 450076 ) on Thursday October 16, 2003 @10:26AM (#7229015) Journal

        A friend of mine work on a number of "deeply embedded, hard realtime" applications, where he was able to clarify that "deeply embedded" meant there was absolutely no user-interface or even user-access to the device, and "hard realtime" in this case meant that any operations not completed in their alloted time window would be aborted due to the hardware they were running on no longer existing. He was also able to name his employer (a known defense contractor).

        While he couldn't tell people the nature of the product, he could tell them what his duties on the project included, as the parent poster suggested. Overall, he was able to drill down enough on the non-classified details to satisfy any interviewer that he knew what he was talking about without breaking any rules.

        -- MarkusQ

        P.S. Some interviewers also look for the ability to respect previous NDAs as a major hireing criterion, so handling this issue properly (respect the NDAs without acting freaked by them) could be a strong point in your favour.

        • "hard realtime" in this case meant that any operations not completed in their alloted time window would be aborted due to the hardware they were running on no longer existing.

          I like anecdotes like this. When I first started learning about realtime systems, the example that stuck in my head was a data acquisition system to transmit data from a nuke explosion. Before the last data packet had time to reach the receiver some miles away, the transmitter no longer existed. That's hard realtime!

  • You could reveal details of your past work experience, but then you'd have to kill them.
  • I personally don't have that problem. The NDAs that I've signed were limited in time and have expired.

    That's in Europe of course, where the rules are more strict than in the US. Another example is if you sign an NDA which stops you from working within your profession. It is either illegal (beacuse it takes away your right to work), or, the company has to continue to pay your salary whether you work for them or not.

    I've heard (on /.) about similar cases where american companies stop ex-employees from worki

    • Most courts in the US have held that a company cannot keep you from doing your job. So you can sign all the NDAs they want you too, it doesn't matter. Either you are taking the IP of some other company with you, and guilty of crimes based on those laws, or you are not, and thus the NDA cannot prevent you from working elsewhere. There are very few cases where an NDA has prevented someone from working, and in all of them it was claimed in court that the person in question was not only working elsewhere, b


      • I believe both you and the parent poster are confusing "Non-Disclousure Agreements", which covers the disclosure of technologies worked on, and "Non-Compete Agreements", which make some attempt to forbid you from working in the same field in the same area.

        While I have seen some indication that Non-Competes are often failed in court, I don't know that the same is true at all for NDAs. I would suspect not.

        • I believe both you and the parent poster are confusing "Non-Disclousure Agreements", which covers the disclosure of technologies worked on, and "Non-Compete Agreements", which make some attempt to forbid you from working in the same field in the same area.

          The inevitable disclosure doctrine [google.com] creates heavy overlap between non-disclosure agreements and non-compete agreements. There is a presumption that an employee moving from one employer to a competitor will inevitably carry at least some trade secrets wi

    • Every NDA I've ever seen has been time-limited too. Most of them also have clauses releasing you when the NDA-covered topic becomes public knowledge. So an NDA regarding a software product, for example, would expire when that product is available to the public.

      I am, of course, not a lawyer, I just play one on the Internet. But I have had lawyers explain past NDAs to me, and that's what they've told me.

      • Most of them also have clauses releasing you when the NDA-covered topic becomes public knowledge.

        In-house software never becomes public knowledge. The source code of proprietary software never becomes public knowledge. Thus, waiting for a trade secret to become "public knowledge" doesn't always work.

    • The NDAs that I've signed were limited in time and have expired.

      I thought "limited Times" in the European Union meant life plus 70 years. At least this is the case for copyrights; trade secrets (the subject of NDAs) are probably different.

    • At least in the state of California, there is a legal sense of right-to-work. No employment contract (including things like no-compete or non-disclosure) can legally prevent you from working.

      For example: someone I know recently left a nation-wide company. His employment contract stated that he could not work in his field for 1: any of that companies clients, or 2: any competitor within 25 miles of any office of that company.

      That left him with 0 possibilities. So, what did he do? He went to work for a
  • "By reading this Resume you indicate your acceptance of the terms of the attached NDA."
  • I am planning on listing the work I did for your company on my resume in relation to project ABC which I worked as a contractor for during the period somedate to someotherdate. The exact text I am planning on using is this: ...

    Please have your legal department check that this does not violate the NDA I signed. Let me know within 14/21/30/60/whatever days if you would object to me including this on my resume.

    etc.

    i doubt it would be legal if you have clearly violated the terms of the NDA but you might actu

  • Depends I guess... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ComputerSlicer23 ( 516509 ) on Thursday October 16, 2003 @06:42AM (#7227865)
    I believe that where I live (Nebraska), has a reasonable strong precedence for "nothing I sign as an NDA or non-compete can force me to give up my right to make a living in my professional field". They can limit areas of what you can do, like doing the same work for direct and indirect competitors.

    In essence, write up your resume however you like, ignoring the NDA. (My suspicion, is that either, your NDA is uninforceable if you can violate it in less then the 3 bullet points, and 1 paragraph description of what your job is, or you are writting your Resume incorrectly). If what you do is standard industry practice, nearly every NDA I've ever seen says "anything that is standard industry practice is not covered by this NDA". It's completely uninforceable otherwise. They pay you to tell them common knowledge, the then hold you hostage to never give up that information again for the term of your NDA.

    No mister roofer, you put shingles on my roof. For the next 3 years, every roof you build can't have shingles, otherwise I get to sue the bejesus out of you. You can't even tell the next guy you work for, that you know how to apply wooden squares to a angled board to keep water from hitting you. Nope, I've got an iron clad NDA right here. Uh-huh. Judge would throw you out on your ear withing 15 minutes of hearing the arguments for doing that.

    For goodness sakes, your describing what's already known to the general population in the industry. No offense, but your not doing anything terrible secret in the area of RDBM's database optimation. Most of the really cool stuff was figured out 15 years ago, and they've been waiting around for the hardware to catch up. Lets see, schema layout, indexing, denormalizing data, princepal of locality (temporial and spacial), and instrumentation/profiling. Everything else probably came straight out of the vendor documentation, and was applied to a particular database. Optimation comes down to "time this, change param A, time again, change A some more, lather, rinse, repeat. Move to parameter B". Maybe you've figured some cool stuff out about ODBM's or something. However, even most of that is just following the bouncing ball after reading the documentation from the Vendor.

    If they come after you, just explain to them, you'll take your six figure settlement now, or you'll find a nice attorney who'll work on contingency for 1/3 of the 7 figure settlement after the trial.

    I'm not a lawyer, this isn't legal advice. However, they can't compel you to give up your right to earn a living. Barring a matter of national security at least.

    Kirby

    • That is incredibly poor advice.

      I'd assure you that places hiring contractors to do classified contract work for the military or police or planning the implementation project relating to offshore outsourcing projects are quite justified in keeping the relationship between the employer and contractor in confidence.

      Why? Security and insider trading issues. You can figure out alot of things about a company in transition by interviewing ex-employees and contract staff.
      • Security clearance, and an NDA are completely different things. He quite clearly was talking about an NDA from a Fortune 500 company about Database work. If he said, I've done work under Top Secret clearance for the last 10 years, no I wouldn't recommend committing treason (or whatever level of Federal law). Any issue you have a clearance for, they should have explained quite clearly what it is you can tell. Just call the people who cleared you, and tell them you need to write a resume, I'm sure they'l

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • >My very favorite part of the IBM thing was they had lawyers review and blackout every document that hit my desk; apparently they thought my NDA wasn't strong enough.

        No one has more fun dealing with IBM lawyers than IBM employees (particularly engineering folks). For the current project I am working on, related to [censored] technology, we needed to talk to a number of vendors, to see who had useful products in the pipeline that we could leverage. Getting all of the NDAs in place for those conversatio
  • Ask yourself, is there anything you can't say about your job (for example) at Goldman Sachs that you couldn't say about "one of the top 3 investment banks"? Just write up your resume with the names on, then do a quick search and replace to "anonymize" it.

    Also ask yourself why you really need to mention these names... are you hoping some of the "prestige" of these companies will rub off on you? What you did is far more important than who you did it for, especially in technology. I'd be as impressed by a DBA
    • Also ask yourself why you really need to mention these names

      I'd say it does make a difference if you're a DBA for a small or a major company. The DB is larger, the data is probably (but not necessarily) more complex and important. And working for a big company is more prestigeous - your team is bigger, you have more responsibility.

      That having said, a decision to hire someone should of course not be exclusively based on who (s)he has worked for in the past.
      • I'd say it does make a difference if you're a DBA for a small or a major company. The DB is larger, the data is probably (but not necessarily) more complex and important.

        That's by no means a hard and fast rule, tho'. Candidate A might have maintained a terabyte's worth of genome data for a biotech startup while candidate B might have maintained a few megabytes of names and addresses in Access for a Fortune 100.

        Either way, if a candidate can't explain what they did, and why, and what the net effect was,
        • That's by no means a hard and fast rule

          Absolutely not, no. But, frankly, if I would have to invite just one person for an interview, the DBA for a Fortune company has better chances than the DBA for a startup - given that the rest of the resume is identical.

          This example is a bit of a stretch, since I could easily invite 2 ppl, and it's always better having talked to both ppl... and it might be even unfair, since the startup-guy may be much better & smarter. But I do believe that known companies ca

    • Also ask yourself why you really need to mention these names...

      Specific company names provide your claims with credibility. It's supporting evidence that you really did the work and aren't padding your resume with made up information. It provides accountability, a potential employer can actually call up your old company and confirm that you worked there. There is no way for someone in HR skimming resumes can distinguish between someone who needs to be non-specific for NDA reasons and someone who is sim

      • Specific company names provide your claims with credibility. It's supporting evidence that you really did the work and aren't padding your resume with made up information.

        No company I've ever heard of prevents you from mentioning you worked there as an employee. The only case in which an NDA might apply is if you were employed by a consulting firm and these companies were the consulting firm's clients.

  • I'll assume that you got to keep copies of your NDA agreements. Find a lawyer who can go over the NDAs and advise you on what you can do. Make sure the lawyer is bonded and insured so that if you get faulty advice that puts you in legal hot water it can get traced back to the lawyer and keep you out of it.

    While you may not eventually be able to disclose which companies, you may be able to describe your duties and the scale of the company, and disclosue that additional details are covered under an NDA, for

  • All of the NDA's I've signed in the past covered secrets that could cost the company a competitive edge, not that the actual employment took place. Why would Morgan Stanley be harmed if Goldman Sachs knew you had been in their building? Check the terms of the NDA carefully, first by yourself then with a lawyer. An NDA is not a gag order.

    And secondly, if you are prohibited from revealing any of the details from the project including the employer name, list the goals and the results in way that a manager
  • If you were an employee of these companies, then they must have a) paid you and b) withheld state and federal income tax, social security, etc. The IRS likely didn't sign an NDA before taking your money, and the NDA you signed very probably does not cover your own personal tax return. Ergo, the fact of your employment by these companies would seem to be public knowledge not covered by the NDA you signed.

    What's more, if I'm not mistaken, the companies you worked for are pretty much obligated to verify the d

    • NDA you signed very probably does not cover your own personal tax return

      Your tax return in not public information. This is part of the reason that candidates for public office (and news reporters) make a big deal of the candidate disclosing their tax returns and related financial information. IRS agents are not allowed to publicly disclose information in a person's filing. You cannot file a FOIA request for someone's tax return. In this case, the government is presumed to be a confidential holder of inform

      • Your tax return in not public information.

        Understood, but the point is (and again, I'm no lawyer) I don't think the average NDA would prohibit one from disclosing one's own tax records to another party. If, for example, I chose to run for elected office, I might choose to make that information public. I very much doubt that the NDA I might have signed with Paranoid Projects, Inc. would prevent me from publishing the W-2 that they sent me, and which I later furnished the IRS. Therefore, I have to conclude
      • Hmm... don't most employers do background checks nowadays? I've had to sign agreements to allow them to include a credit check, which included a list of previous employers (no idea how that even go there...?). Does this make it illegal to agree to credit checks at future employers (if indeed the name of the company is included in the NDA)?

      • ...companies you worked for are pretty much obligated to verify the dates of your employment...

        Nope. If they want to, they can hire you just because you made a really good impression in an interview.

        I'd assumed the context was that a past employer was required to confirm to a prospective future employer that you really did work for them between certain dates, not that a prospective future employer was somehow required to do background checks on all job applicants. (Obviously, in some fields that is ne

  • Most contracts that I have been a part of for the last few years have been the same way, or a few have included "Approved description of job roles."

    I have also had some company's that their security policy only allows them to confirm that you were under their employ, and nothing more.

    • I had the same damn problem with one of my ex-employers. You could list that you worked for them and such, but any employee of theirs was expressly barred by company policy for giving any kind of personal reference, job reference and even barred from discussing what your responsibilities were.

      You could list them and they would confirm you worked for them and confirm the dates etc but they would not provide any more data.

      When I pushed to find out why, it turns out that they had successfully been sued seve
  • People working on defense and national secuirity (black) projects have been getting jobs for years with no problems, how secret can your database be???? There are usually on a couple of unique features which you hand wave about and 99% of the work is generally pretty simillar to whatever the competition is working on so there is no secret. NDAs are ussually most interested in devluging info to competitors. "I worked on next gen databases" is good enough for listing in a resume. You need to get the inter

    • Hmm... If I were interviewing someone who was willing to disclose information that they'd said in an NDA they wouldn't, my hiring decision would be real quick. The legal situation would be irrelevant to me: the moral character of the applicant is clear from that alone, and I don't want someone like that working for me.

      • How would you know what information was covered in an NDA unless they told you that it was. If so then they are incredibly stupid and thats the end of the interview. Plus, most companies I have worked for put NDA or "proprietary" on just about everything. I've even seem companies claiming IEEE and DOD specs, and "object oriented software develop process" are covered by NDAs when the info is public knowledge. There has to be some measure of trust that the employee is not breaking an NDA when you hire them. I

        • OK, let me rephrase. If I were hiring someone and they were prepared to discuss anything in detail from their past employment that could clearly be prejudicial to that employer, whether or not explicitly covered by an NDA, then I would black mark them. I want someone to demonstrate their skills, and it's perfectly possible do so without giving any inappropriate information away. I'd give someone the benefit of the doubt, since inevitably I wouldn't know the specifics as you point out, but any clear case is

  • Not that big a problem. (Score:3, Informative)

    by crmartin ( 98227 ) on Thursday October 16, 2003 @12:14PM (#7230196)
    I've been consulting for about 20 years, and before that I did classified work for one of those customers, so I've dealt with the same problem extensively. It's really not that big a problem.

    First, it's not an unknown issue for the people reading your resume -- they know about NDAs, and probably are under one themselves. So they'll understand, in general at least.

    Second, being in an NDA doesn't mean you can't say anything. Quantifiy what you did in terms that will matter to a potential employer ("improved transaction rate to 500 tps, a 75 percent improvement") without associating the information with an identifiable employer ("In a project under non-disclosure for a Fortune 50 firm"). List the firms you've worked for as "Consulting clients include" so that people know who you've worked for in general, without making that association. Or, if the very fact that you worked with a firm is under NDA (betcha it isn't), then list the company that was paying you your paycheck, and say "Working for Big Deal Consulting, Inc.; Consulted to Fortune 50 clients...."

    (Notice, by the way, that if you were working independently, the fact that you were working for a client is public record; you deposited the checks which had a name and account number on them. Even if you were working for a DoD agency, the check says DoD, or "Maryland Procurement Office", or something.)

    Third, be prepared to talk about the tasks you did in the interview. Again, what you did as an engineer isn't all that sensitive -- it's the association between the specfifics of the problem and the company that's sensitive.
  • IANAL ... but I don't think that an NDA can prohibit you from listing the project. It can prevent you from disclosing information about the project, but that's it.

    mm

  • Resume expert.

    Find someone who does HR consulting, and have them give you a resume structure for your type of work experience, including NDAs. You may have to disassociate actual projects with the employers, but I don't see why you couldn't list your employers in one section, and general project details in another. Again, an HR/Resume consultant can help you structure this much better than Slashdot.

  • The fact that you signed an NDA for XYZ corporation can't be hidden. After all, let's say that Microsoft asked you to sign a non-disclosure. If you refused, you could legally say that Microsoft asked you to sign a non-disclosure.

    Given this, they can't prevent you from mentioning who you worked for. The exception to this might be if you worked for a contracting company who then sent you to a specific site. You could then say you worked for the contracting company but perhaps not the end-client.

  • Rather than asking we techies, why don't you contact an attorney and get an answer specific to your jurisdiction? Another reader commented that the ability to respect an NDA may be important to the prospective employer. When I read that I thought: "what if it is legal? Then is would not be a respect to the NDA, but paranoia." So, ask a lawyer what you can say, and don't say any more.

    • why don't you contact an attorney

      The rationale surrounding legal questions in Ask Slashdot can be summed up: "To those who have been in this situation and talked to an attorney, what has (s)he told you?" Secondhand legal advice is often useful for preparing oneself in order not to waste billable time making a fool of oneself in front of an attorney.

  • How do you show what you are capable of to a perspective employeer when everything you have written at a high techinical level is property of the companies you have worked for, and for internal use only...
    • How do you show what you are capable of to a perspective employeer when everything you have written at a high techinical level is property of the companies you have worked for, and for internal use only...

      Develop a portfolio. Ask for permission to add screen shots of your projects to your portfolio. If that's not possible, then develop a personal web site that demonstrates at least a little of what you can do. Be prepared to talk about the rest of your work, leaving out details like exactly what you did f
  • You should [and probably do] have copies of your NDAs. Read them.

    [wait for you to finish reading]

    That's what you agreed to. Does it say that you can't mention your tasks, or just that you can't disclose your ideas? Does it say that you cannot discuss ANY work done with the company with ANYBODY who isn't under NDA, or does it have provisions for discussing your work with people not under NDA under a 'need to know' basis? Does it have a time limit? [If not specified, courts have ruled that non-compete ag

  • The best policy, I think, is to describe the kind of work you are doing, but also mention that NDA prevents you from saying much more. You can impart a fair bit about what you did without giving away the important details.

    Often times, honesty will win you points with a potential employer (particularly one is as honest a scrupulous as you are).
  • told me i'd have to sign and NDA and a no-compete agreement, but after 3 months here i haven't seen either one....

    so i should keep my mouth shut maybe?

    but what about after i leave, on good terms. can i outline what i did without offending anyone? if i use the "well, i never signed it" line, will i get a bad ref? hmm...

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