Am I moonlighting? (employee, applying, interviews, employers)
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I work full-time on my job and me and my graduate school friend are working on our own start up company in our free time. I want to apply for a new full time job and the new job requires skills that I learned working for our start up company. Is it okay to write in resume about my own startup I'm working for? Does it come across to the potential employers as if I'm moonlighting?
i associate moonlighting with medical profession... since most are day shifters, and they "moonlight" on night shift where it is short staffed. I call myself a PRN instead of moonlighting :S mostly because that's what the position is called.
Not a real part-time job because those are usually set schedules, I like PRN work since I can work when I want, and not when I don't want to. IE I don't feel bad about turning down the hours if they ask if I can fill in, they just go to next person if I can't.
don't try to get fancy with terminology, just say you have a 2nd job where you have a startup...
You would have to be careful because you don't want to get into a situation where your own company comes up with something amazing but the company you are working for tries to claim since you worked for them they have proprietary rights over it. Talk to a lawyer first if you are serious with your startup.
Generally speaking, if your part time job is not in the same field as your normal job and you're not using company resources for it, it doesn't matter or risk anything.
Moonlighting is generally a positive thing. It becomes an issue if the companies are in direct competition and/or there's trade secrets. If you're applying for a job as a chemist for Coca-Cola and your startup is a micro soda company, I'd leave it off your resume.
Is your start up company in the same field as the field in which you are seeking full time work? You can certainly list it on your resume, but you will get questioned about it at interviews. Depending on the profession and your start up, you could put yourself in a bad situation.
Examples, you work at a software company and your start up makes phone apps. THAT could be a direct violation of most employee handbook admonitions against moonlighting.
If you use resources at your job to create data, software, etc., for use at your start up, that is a violation.
I am aware of a situation where a marketing manager used the contact information from her job at a tech company to market the personal shopping business she was developing in her spare time and she was fired for violating the moonlighting policy as well as other unethical issues around that.
Now, if you are working in the medical field and your start up is related to auto mechanics, no problem.
I will also caution you that I have seen more than one instance in the tech world, where a person invented and applied for a patent related to the business he created on his own time, yet the patent was deemed to be "owned" by the employer, pursuant to the employment agreement.
Good luck with your start up and with your job search, I hope that they can co-exist!
I recommend you see a patent attorney to discuss what trade secrets you want to protect before you start employment. Then write a statement asserting your trade secrets.
Thanks all for your advice and suggestions. I decided not to use that experience while applying for new jobs. I would rather list that experience in other projects. Our startup is not even a registered company and we are only prototyping the product. Also, I work for tech services company which does not make my products that they sell. The work at startup is a product that will be sold.
Thanks all for your advice and suggestions. I decided not to use that experience while applying for new jobs. I would rather list that experience in other projects. Our startup is not even a registered company and we are only prototyping the product. Also, I work for tech services company which does not make my products that they sell. The work at startup is a product that will be sold.
It still could be seen as a potential conflict of interest.
For example, a employee of a disk drive manufacturer that moonlights as a data recovery consultant.
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