Last week, I asked you in a poll if you include your Covid vaccination status in your resume.
Now one week later, this is the result:
60% No, will never do that
30% Not yet, but I’m thinking about it
10% Yes, I do
Read my reasons below why you should not include your Covid vaccination status in your resume or even for that matter in your LinkedIn profile. With one exception though!
Caveat: The contents of this article are not intended to be a substitute for legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Please seek legal advice on any issues you or your organization may have on the subject of this article.
Reason# 1: Resumes are for marketing
Your resume and LinkedIn profiles are not documents used in a Court of Law or at the Police station.
You don’t need to tell us everything, which you probably cannot do anyway in a 2-page resume. Too much information will be used against you.
The two profiles have this one and only purpose:
To Get You An Interview
Tom Sorensen, Headhunter
In other words, your profiles are for marketing purposes. It is your larger version of a business card; it is your proposal that you present to an employer how your experience and skill set can help the employer accomplish their business goals.
Reason# 2: the US leads the way as always
SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, reports from the US that before you ask a question about a candidate’s Covid-19 vaccination status, know that there are legal limits to such questions.
Employers that are asking these questions need to make sure they’re doing so appropriately.
This is what two attorneys had to say:
“Determining any type of term or condition of employment based on vaccination status is going to open up a lot of legal issues for employers, so they need to think very carefully about why the person’s vaccination status is relevant.”
“Employers should only ask applicants vaccination questions that pertain to the job. So, if the company is not asking employees if they have been vaccinated, it should not pose that question to applicants, either.”
Read the very insightful article on the SHRM website, read here.
Reason# 3: In EU still no guidance and legislation
In Europe, save for the EU Green Pass, there is still no guidance or legislation to make vaccination mandatory. Vaccination of individuals is thus still voluntary under EU law.
SHRM has provided an excellent update, this October 2021, on what individual countries are doing at national level. See what various countries are doing.
From what we know so far, it is lawful in Europe to ask employees and job candidates for vaccine information provided that you have made an assessment of why this data is important to your company.
With the changes happening frequently these days, even from country to country, you must seek proper professional advice when drafting your own Covid related policies.
Reason# 4: The exception, when to include vaccination status
There is really only one situation where you need to include the information about your personal Covid-19 vaccination status.
If you are applying for a job and the job advertisement requests information about your Covid-19 vaccination status, then you must obviously include it. So do the following…
Make a duplicate of your current resume, rename it to include the word “C19”, and then under Personal Information (the last paragraph on page 2 in a two-page resume), you add the information.
Examples:
- Resume File name: Sunida_Huyanan_Resume_C19.docx
- Covid status: Covid-19 vaccination completed in September 2021
