Should you add your vaccine status to your resume?

John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc, joins Yahoo Finance’s Sibile Marcellus in this week’s career control to discuss whether you should place your vaccination status on your resume and LinkedIn profile.

Video transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Some people looking for jobs have been adding their vaccine status to their resumes, but is that enough for hiring managers? Should that info also be on your LinkedIn page, for instance? Here with today's "Career Control" is Sibile Marcellus.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Failing to put your vaccine status on your resume could get you eliminated from job-seeker consideration. Now, that's according to hiring managers that have spoken to resume builder in their recent survey. Now, a third of hiring managers said they would eliminate someone automatically if they didn't see that vaccine status on their resume.

To talk some more about this, I want to bring in John Challenger of Challenger, Gray, and Christmas to break this down. Now, John, hiring managers are saying they have received some resumes with vaccine statuses on them, but what about putting that information on LinkedIn? Some job-seekers are already doing it. How critical is it to put your vaccine status on your LinkedIn profile?

JOHN CHALLENGER: Well, it certainly might help with employers who don't want to go through the difficulty if you are not vaccinated of dealing with the issues that inevitably come up as they begin to enforce more vaccination on their employees. They know that it's difficult, just more flack with the unvaccinated if they begin to follow the mandate from the government or decided on their own to put in a mandate requiring their workers to put their vaccination status into their application.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And how about disclosing your vaccination status on other social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook? Could expressing those views hinder the hiring process, or at least not get that person hired?

JOHN CHALLENGER: Well, one way or the other, there is some risk today. Still, it's a very polarized environment, as we all know. It's almost like making a political statement sometimes. And you don't know when you're looking for work what the person on the opposite side of the desk is thinking. And so some people are choosing not to make that choice just because they don't know who they're going to run into and they want to leave themselves open to all possibilities.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: A third of hiring managers have said they would eliminate a job-seeker automatically if they didn't see that vaccination status on that resume. So where does that leave anti-vaxxers? Are there companies or are there parts of the country where disclosing that you are unvaccinated could give a job-seeker an edge?

JOHN CHALLENGER: Sure. We know in rural areas, for companies with their operations that are out in the field, in places-- more so in the South and the West Coast-- there are, in fact, just kind of the opposite feelings towards having vaccination. It could actually hurt you if you're vaccinated. There are people who are feeling like they just can't tell their employers that they've had those vaccinations for fear of recrimination.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And President Biden is pushing for companies with more than 100 employees to either require vaccinations or weekly testing. Now, do many hiring managers prefer to hire vaccinated workers specifically because of the complexity of implementing weekly testing? I mean, are companies really set up for weekly testing right now?

JOHN CHALLENGER: Well, the weekly testing is an issue. We don't know whether those tests are going to be available. They're going to have to get downloaded or the proof of that testing is going to have to be given to the company each week. So again, it makes for more risk to the company that it doesn't get done properly.

No question that in regard to the mandate from the government, businesses need clarity. So if they can go to their employees and say, the government is requiring us if we're over 100 employees that you're all vaccinated, it just makes it so much easier.

Then they're not taking any kind of stand. They're saying, we're just following the law. So that kind of cover will make it so much easier for companies to move forward and just not get caught up in one side or another here.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: John, as many companies continue to deal with hiring challenges, do qualifications still matter much more than vaccination status?

JOHN CHALLENGER: Sure, of course. Companies are trying to find the right people. But think about this-- what's happening to companies is in a very, very tight labor market where they cannot find enough people, that recruiters are just so busy that they aren't getting their orders filled, their talented, college educated workers are saying, if you don't let me work from home 100% of the time, I'll go somewhere else.

Their unvaccinated workers in the field are saying, if you make me get vaccinations, I'm going to go somewhere else. And so they're caught in the middle here in a very tight labor market. And on both fronts, they run the risk if they take stands that would seem to make sense, to try to get your workers back to work at least some of the time, back in the office, or to get vaccinated, they run the risk of losing people in a market where they can ill afford to lose anybody.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Definitely-- many companies there trying to avoid conflict. John Challenger, great to have you on. Thanks so much.