Confidentiality as a Sub-Sub-Sub-Contractor

Question

I'm a programmer. I work for a small contracting company that indirectly does contract work for a very large company.

I was recently contacted by a recruitment company about a position at the very large company. My company is encouraging me to apply for this direct-hire position. However, I need to show experience in this industry on my resume.

My challenge is that my secrecy agreements prevent me from disclosing the fact that I have indirect experience with the very large company or the contracting company that works directly with them. My work has also been very narrowly focused on building specific pages within large applications. While I'm very good at working with little context, I'm worried that I will not be able to intelligently explain the type of work I've done in the industry without having to disclose details about that work that I'm not allowed to disclose.

How can I best present my experience in an industry to a company I'd like to work for when all the experience I have in the industry is indirectly working for them and I'm not allowed to disclose that I have that experience?

Answer 1

In my experience, what you put in writing and what you say verbally to people in confidence are different things.

In your resume, you should just mention that you have significant experience building a variety of application pages in the industry for a very large company. You do not not need to name the company, but you can say things like "large, multinational" company. You can also mention the subject area that your applications relate to. For example, you might say you built pages in support of "Aerial Reconnaissance Applications". The point being that you can still disclose the subject area you worked in without disclosing specific project names, company names or any proprietary information.

In terms of an interview, it should be OK to verbally disclose to employees of the very large company that you have indirectly worked with their company and you might mention the internal (i.e. internal to very large company) names of some of the projects you worked on. If you are very concerned about sensitivity, then only disclose this verbally and only to actual employees of the company. That is, do not disclose it to your recruiter and do not disclose it to contractors of the very large company.