Why are resume gaps frowned upon?

Previous recruiter here.

It’s an imperfect signal, but when you have 200 resumes on your desk, it’s a good low pass filter.

You want candidates who need to work, want to work and are capable of working. A gap could indicate any number of less desirable situations.

-Chronic health issues

-Mental health issues

-Imprisoned

-Homeless

-Not financially hungry enough

-Poor job seeking skills leading to extended unemployment

-Anti-work in some way, alternative lifestyle

-Unusually large family care responsibilities

Should you have a gap, the best way to close it is to describe career-related activities you did during your gap or other personal development. Continuing education, side projects, personal projects, interesting detours like overseas charity work.

It’s not fair at all, but you need to know how to project a “Worksona” and not being able to market your real messy life as a shiny seamless ideal worker is also a signal you’ll be less professional.

And YOU may be a perfect excellent candidate with a gap, but I promise you that among that pile of 200 resumes are a lot of barely functional people with major struggles you do not want to let into your company.

(Only mildly tongue in cheek)

Because anyone who is incapable of creating plausible lie about their employment is too naive to survive in corporate America.

The best people take career breaks as a flex. They don't need recruiters, they have the executive suites personal number.

The competent know how to mock employment without being employed. Board member, consultant, contractor, infinite unpaid-leave.....there are many such instruments.

The desperate are too desperate to take a break. That leaves the incompetent, the red flags and those of us with truth-itis.

To answer your question: Yes, Truth-itis is worst affliction a mere mortal can have. It doesn't matter that you aren't lying. Because you are anonymous (not famous), your word, along with all others will be put into the 'liar until proven otherwise' category. Get wise to it.

This really isn't talked about enough. Many of us are more principled than our capabilities will allow. Leads to horrible disillusionment later.

To think we punish our fellow man for pursuing all life has to offer, especially over a career spanning decades is a travesty. If I'm hiring, I don't favor someone who's never once broke away from the matrix of 9-5 employment year after year to explore something new or meaningful or to rest.

This hyper-optimization people have to go through now to beat the resume screening algorithms is dehumanizing as it leaves no opportunity for people to explain their individual life choices. I understand why it is the way it is, but I don't like it and it's not getting any better.

Pessimistic take: people don't want to deal with deviation and "complexity." A resume gap makes people ask questions, which is way too much effort.

The easy way to fix that gap: start your own business. It doesn't have to be successful, but it fills the gap.

Maybe you were working somewhere, but you you don't want to talk about it. A competitor, something under the table, somewhere you were fired from and don't want anyone to follow up...

Because when you work at a company, you are a human resource, and when that resource's growth cannot be measured in a standard quantifiable way, it is considered a risk.

Because hiring practice is outdated. Previously, it largely discriminate against women who decided to have babies. Now, it's going against everyone who decided to take a break.

Like a gap in your car insurance, it implies that you were unable or unwilling to find employment, which makes the employer wonder, why not?

I have no strong claims, just a related link: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/04/co...

>[E]mployers would rather call back someone with no relevant experience who’s only been out of work for a few months than someone with lots of relevant experience who’s been out of work for longer than six months.

It didn't seem to be a big deal for me when I started looking for work in a new country after being out of the job market for 14 months due to passport issues. But that could be that I was keenly aware of just how bad that looked, and took steps to ameliorate it.

A resume gap is either:

A: a job that ended so ignobly that you don't even want to acknowledge it existed

B: you spent a long time out of the game and weren't getting experience etc during that time

C: something prevented you from working/being a good candidate

A gap is not the death knell it used to be, especially one in the past. That said, it's still nice to offer a vague reason - homemaking or health problems or something. So long as it's clear you didn't spend 3 years selling drugs and playing video games an employer probably won't care.

Don’t assume recruiters are rational or have agency. Actually if you start thinking of them as low reliability automatons you’ll start to understand.

With a few exceptions I think this is an outdated idea. Time off is pretty common.

I had a year off between jobs. Most people didn't bring up the gap or care that I talked to.

Only one person did bring it up, it was a underpaying job and clearly not a fit.

Most people couldn't even read my resume close enough to know I hadn't worked for months.

Ive been meaning to wrote about my time off, maybe I should get to it.

Are they? I have taken two full-year sabbaticals over the course of my thirty-year career, and this has yet to pose a problem when looking for a new job.

People rarely ask; when they do, I have some good stories to share, and I think the experiences make me more, not less, interesting.

I think it might be because recruiters will think you've been getting used to doing just your hobbies for the time that you had a gap that it'll take you a while to "get back into the game" of the daily work grind.

Run a side business doing consulting, then fill in any gaps with that.