Addressing Career Breaks Head-On: On Your Resume and in Job Interviews
Use your career break to your advantage when writing your resume.
Gaps in your work history happen.
It’s estimated that 62 - 68% of workers have a resume gap in their career. And that makes sense because life happens!
Most people begin their careers in their early 20s and work until at least their mid-60s, if not longer. That’s a minimum of 40 years, and a lot can happen during that time. Whether it’s a job loss (layoff or firing), taking on a caregiver role for children or elderly parents, a relocation, a health scare, etc., there are so many scenarios that can happen.
While career breaks are becoming more common and it has become more socially acceptable to openly talk about them, they can still be seen as a red flag by recruiters and hiring managers.
It’s not that recruiters and hiring managers aren’t understanding. After all, they’re human too, and life throws them curveballs. But because of the potential negative impact a career break can have, applicants tend to take the “if you don’t move, they won’t see you” approach in dealing with them during the job search process. Instead of acknowledging and addressing the work gap upfront, people try to gloss over it on their resume and cross their fingers that they aren’t asked about it in the interview.
This is hiding from the scary situation. When you try to hide, you don’t control your own story and you leave room for others (recruiters and hiring managers) to make assumptions about you and why you weren’t working (within your career field). When others make assumptions, it’s almost guaranteed that they will lean toward something bad.
Here’s the thing, though…you’re going to be asked about your career break. That’s a given. And that’s if you make it to the interview phase. By not acknowledging it upfront, you risk your resume being screened out altogether for no other reason.
According to Harvard Business Review, applicants who have a work gap on their resume that is not addressed only have a 4.3% response rate from employers. Job applicants who do provide a reason upfront for the career break have an increased response rate of 6 - 8.5%, depending on the reason for the hiatus.
Hopefully, I’ve convinced you that it’s better to address the career break before you’re even asked about it. Now let’s cover how you do that.
Where to talk about your career break:
Transparency and consistency are key in all of your communications revolving around your career. Acknowledging your career break is being transparent, but it’s just as important to be consistent to promote clarity and reduce confusion. What does this mean? Your career break should not only be documented in one area, but in multiple areas.
If you have a LinkedIn profile (if you don’t, you should), this is the easiest place to start. LinkedIn offers an option for you to include a career break under your employment experience on your profile. You just select the button to add an experience, and it gives you two options: “add position” and “add career break”. You click on “add career break” and then it gives you several options for reasons. I would start here because this can help you determine how you want to acknowledge your work gap on your resume, cover letter, etc.
After adding the career break to your work history on LinkedIn, I would then add it to your resume and cover letter. You can choose to add it to just one of these, but again, transparency and consistency are key, so I would add it to both. Make sure that the information you provide about the gap matches what you put on your LinkedIn profile.
If you are concerned about your career break information being missed or if you feel like more explanation is needed, you can also address it and expand on it in an email or direct message to the recruiter. I think that having your career break on your application documents and LinkedIn is good enough, but again, if there is something particular about your situation that you feel is important to get across, this is an option.
Now that we’ve established where you can put your career break information, let’s go over how to talk about it.
How to Talk about Your Career Gap:
If you don’t acknowledge your resume gap, recruiters and hiring managers will assume that you did nothing relevant to your career during that time. This is where you need to control the narrative of your journey.
When you talk about your work gap, you need to think about the questions recruiters and hiring managers will have and what is important for them to know.
The questions they’re going to have are:
Why did you take a career break?
What did you do with your time “off”?
What skills did you use or learn?
What impact will this have on your ability to do the job?
If you can anticipate these questions and have solid answers ready, you will effectively reduce the negative impact that the career gap will have on your application.
This information should be included on your LinkedIn profile and your resume (because, again, you don’t want to give them an opportunity to fill in the blanks on their own) and formatted similarly to how your other experience/employment history is laid out. When you include it on your cover letter or in an email/DM, that is where you can provide additional context and explanation for the gap that might not be appropriate for or fit on the resume or LinkedIn.
Now let’s dive into turning gaps in your employment into a positive!
Career Gaps: Relevant Content
Regardless of the reason you took a career break, or whether it was voluntary or involuntary, if you intend to someday jump back into the same career field, you should be thinking ahead about how you’re going to stay relevant.
The easiest thing you can do is keep a finger on the pulse of the field by listening to reputable podcasts about your field, reading newsletters from your field’s professional accreditation organization, and following local field organizations on LinkedIn or other social media. This option allows you to be more passive and doesn’t require much of your time or energy. For instance, I listen to a podcast that discusses current trends and events going on within the Human Resources field while I’m doing laundry and the dishes. By staying updated on your field in this way, you will be familiar with its current state, you’ll have an easier time talking with hiring managers in job interviews, and you’ll have less catching up to do.
Something else I recommend everyone do, but that is more active and requires intention, is to complete trainings or certifications. Investing in education will help you reskill and upskill. This will show hiring managers that even though you’ve not been employed within the field for a period of time, you’ve still done work to maintain and grow your knowledge and experience.
Another option that may not be available or feasible for everyone, but is worth considering, is to volunteer for an organization where you can use your career experience. The more directly related this is to your actual career, the better. This will not only give you valuable experience, but the more directly related this experience is to your career, the less you’ll have to explain its relevance and the more obvious it will be as to why you should be considered a strong candidate despite having a resume gap. An example of this would be if you worked in the finance field and during your career break, you volunteered at a homeless shelter as a personal finance coach, teaching the residents how to budget, open a bank account, etc.
If you decide to volunteer out of passion and personal interest versus career relevancy, you can still use this volunteer experience to your advantage in landing a job. You’ll just have to connect the dots more on how it developed your skillset.
The best way to handle a break in your career during the job search process is to face it head-on.
Being honest and transparent will be appreciated by those reviewing your resume, it will provide clarification, and it will open the door for a productive conversation with recruiters and hiring managers. Will there still be those who will use your resume gap as a reason to screen out? Yes. Ultimately, you can’t make them hire you. But by focusing on what you can control - what you do with your time away - you can improve your chances of receiving a job offer!