7 ms·

Ask HN: Why are resume gaps frowned upon?

32 points by codingclaws 3y ago

dtagames 3y ago
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?
- k8svet 3y ago
  "Because I didn't need to". Holy shit, I can't take how out of touch people are with tech comp, living within your means, and not living to work. I need to just stop reading this thread. I took five years off, was statistically underpaid (read: I had peers that made a jump, making double my base salary) when I was previously employed, and every retirement calculator I can find says I still will have more money than I'll need to retire at 45 or 50.
zero-sharp 3y ago
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.
futureshock 3y ago
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.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  And for some reason it's a mystery why people are having few or no kids these days.
  - iosguyryan 3y ago
    I had a baby, but in reviewing its resume realized it had a 9 month gap of doing nothing. I asked that recruiter what policy was, realized my mistake for bringing him onto the team, and fired jr the next day. Strangely morale plummeted.
    - FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
      It's amazing the baby even came to term. Without results by the end of the quarter, I'd have expected Mom to have been taken out back and shot. Weird how the company is struggling to make progress, despite the high bar for performance.
    - hotpotamus 3y ago
      Just make sure and get him into a competitive preschool since I'm sure recruiters will be looking at that by the time he's applying for a job.
- admissionsguy 3y ago
  That's what unvarnished truth sounds like.
- latexr 3y ago
  Why is it important that someone was never homeless? Or why does it matter that they’re “not financially hungry enough”? Or that they have poor job seeking skills? If anything, wouldn’t those last two mean the candidate would be unlikely to ask for raises or leave your company for another offer when you least expect it? The latter in particular has seemingly zero impact on someone’s dedication or skills (same with homelessness). Why would you prefer someone that’s good at finding work? That’s like looking to date someone who is good at starting new relationships, wouldn’t you rather someone who is good at maintaining them?
sp332 3y ago
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...
joshuamcginnis 3y ago
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.
- avmich 3y ago
  This is a negative sum game - to stand out, I embellish my resume, so now you have to do the same and we're back on square 1 but the efforts are spent. Do we want to turn job seeking into a contest of resume designers? Do we have a feedback from the employers who are supposedly interested in best employees, not the best to pass interviews?
aynyc 3y ago
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.
mcv 3y ago
The easy way to fix that gap: start your own business. It doesn't have to be successful, but it fills the gap.
- joshuamcginnis 3y ago
  This used to be the case. So many people have gaps attributed to "consulting" that the feedback from recruiters is now something like, "well since you've been independent so long, how do we know you can work well with others?" eyeroll
- grepfru_it 3y ago
  When I lost my job, I took some time for myself then immediately put up a landing page for a new idea. Then iterated on said landing page until it was a full marketing website for the idea. Everything else can be hidden behind a robots.txt or require signup for demo etc. having a marketing page that evolved over time allows recruiters to pop the website into archive.org and see your company evolving. Just saying you had a business is no longer sufficient. I like to also make merch and take video interviews while wearing say a branded shirt to show I was serious (I was not, it cost $20). I’m also not afraid to offer a screen share and walk through infrastructure diagrams or other intriguing IP to show something I have been working on instead of publishing everything to GitHub (unless it’s an OSS project) Mind you this has backfired on me. I took an interview with a series A startup and the ceo flat out rejected me upon hearing my startup. He wished me best luck but stated he needed someone who was 100% invested in his startup and not someone thinking about their side hustle. Couldn’t fault him on that and instead flipped the interview into a Q&A with a billionaire. YMMV
  - cableshaft 3y ago
    I've just worked on personal projects, not always even releasing them (because they tend not to be small projects), and put it as freelance development work in my resume for any gaps (it's true, I did work on those things). I don't think I've been asked about that once. Never been an issue as far as I know (maybe it pre-screened me out from a few places). Your idea is interesting but might be more elaborate than you even need.
legitster 3y ago
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.
- DimitriPetrova 3y ago
  Even a gap of a few months?
  - legitster 3y ago
    I wouldn't consider just a few months to be a "resume gap". The rule of thumb is at least 6 months.
    - futureshock 3y ago
      I started to notice gaps after a year as a mild signal. A gap of 5 years was a strong signal and nearly every candidate I talked with had some level of hireability issue beyond the gap. Even a mother that decided to stay home till her kids were in school was going to have a difficult re-entry to the rigid expectations of the working world. After someone had be back in the workforce for a year or two and had some mildly plausible explanation for their 5 year gap, I stopped noting it as a downside. But experience older than about 12 years was often not factored in, so a person with a recent 5 year gap will just have less recent and relevant experience than someone who had worked 12/12 previous years.
      - legitster 3y ago
        My brother in law had something like a 5 year gap. He had a mental breakdown and went on disability. He's doing great now, but that first boss he had after coming back to work was a saint, putting up with so much emotional baggage and spent personal time coaching him out of giving up. So, yeah, if you are taking on someone who has been out of the workforce for a long time, you take on lots of risk. But once they are back in the workforce and getting good referrals, the gap shouldn't matter as much. (And seeing it first hand: if you are having mental health problems, staying home and playing video games for 5 years will NOT make it better).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
screye 3y ago
(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.
iancmceachern 3y ago
Run a side business doing consulting, then fill in any gaps with that.
FinnLobsien 3y ago
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.
- cableshaft 3y ago
  So what? A coworker just came back from 10 weeks of paternity leave today. He mentioned it felt like he had to 'remember how to code again'. By that logic, the company should fire him because it's going to take him a while to 'get back into the game' of the daily work grind, right? But it's not going to be that bad, and we don't have anything so pressing he couldn't take even a few weeks to "get back in the groove" for all that matters for our department. We somehow managed fine without him for 10 weeks, he can take his time to get back into the swing of things. And even if we did have pressing things, that's more on the company and not him. Probably means they should be hiring more than just that one person, and should have hired earlier so they have the chance to get used to things (there's always a ramp up of learning for every job anyway, for pretty much everyone). Not accusing you of thinking that way, btw, you did say specifically that recruiters might think that, just challenging the thought process of those recruiters.
lulznews 3y ago
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.
tayo42 3y ago
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.
evanjrowley 3y ago
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.
marssaxman 3y ago
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.
- dougmwne 3y ago
  It’s not holding you back because you are jumping over the low bar. A year is not a particularly long gap and might even go unnoticed. But f someone noticed and asked, sounds like you had a great answer. That’s all you need. Having no good explanation for a 5 year gap will probably get you filtered out.
hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
I have no strong claims, just a related link: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/04/companies-wont-even-look-at-the-resumes-of-the-long-term-unemployed.html 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.

32 points by codingclaws 3y ago

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?

k8svet 3y ago
"Because I didn't need to". Holy shit, I can't take how out of touch people are with tech comp, living within your means, and not living to work. I need to just stop reading this thread. I took five years off, was statistically underpaid (read: I had peers that made a jump, making double my base salary) when I was previously employed, and every retirement calculator I can find says I still will have more money than I'll need to retire at 45 or 50.

zero-sharp 3y ago

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.

futureshock 3y ago

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.

hotpotamus 3y ago
And for some reason it's a mystery why people are having few or no kids these days.
- iosguyryan 3y ago
  I had a baby, but in reviewing its resume realized it had a 9 month gap of doing nothing. I asked that recruiter what policy was, realized my mistake for bringing him onto the team, and fired jr the next day. Strangely morale plummeted.
  - FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
    It's amazing the baby even came to term. Without results by the end of the quarter, I'd have expected Mom to have been taken out back and shot. Weird how the company is struggling to make progress, despite the high bar for performance.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    Just make sure and get him into a competitive preschool since I'm sure recruiters will be looking at that by the time he's applying for a job.
admissionsguy 3y ago
That's what unvarnished truth sounds like.
latexr 3y ago
Why is it important that someone was never homeless? Or why does it matter that they’re “not financially hungry enough”? Or that they have poor job seeking skills? If anything, wouldn’t those last two mean the candidate would be unlikely to ask for raises or leave your company for another offer when you least expect it? The latter in particular has seemingly zero impact on someone’s dedication or skills (same with homelessness). Why would you prefer someone that’s good at finding work? That’s like looking to date someone who is good at starting new relationships, wouldn’t you rather someone who is good at maintaining them?

sp332 3y ago

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...

joshuamcginnis 3y ago

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.

avmich 3y ago
This is a negative sum game - to stand out, I embellish my resume, so now you have to do the same and we're back on square 1 but the efforts are spent. Do we want to turn job seeking into a contest of resume designers? Do we have a feedback from the employers who are supposedly interested in best employees, not the best to pass interviews?

aynyc 3y ago

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.

mcv 3y ago

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

joshuamcginnis 3y ago
This used to be the case. So many people have gaps attributed to "consulting" that the feedback from recruiters is now something like, "well since you've been independent so long, how do we know you can work well with others?" eyeroll
grepfru_it 3y ago
When I lost my job, I took some time for myself then immediately put up a landing page for a new idea. Then iterated on said landing page until it was a full marketing website for the idea. Everything else can be hidden behind a robots.txt or require signup for demo etc. having a marketing page that evolved over time allows recruiters to pop the website into archive.org and see your company evolving. Just saying you had a business is no longer sufficient. I like to also make merch and take video interviews while wearing say a branded shirt to show I was serious (I was not, it cost $20). I’m also not afraid to offer a screen share and walk through infrastructure diagrams or other intriguing IP to show something I have been working on instead of publishing everything to GitHub (unless it’s an OSS project) Mind you this has backfired on me. I took an interview with a series A startup and the ceo flat out rejected me upon hearing my startup. He wished me best luck but stated he needed someone who was 100% invested in his startup and not someone thinking about their side hustle. Couldn’t fault him on that and instead flipped the interview into a Q&A with a billionaire. YMMV
- cableshaft 3y ago
  I've just worked on personal projects, not always even releasing them (because they tend not to be small projects), and put it as freelance development work in my resume for any gaps (it's true, I did work on those things). I don't think I've been asked about that once. Never been an issue as far as I know (maybe it pre-screened me out from a few places). Your idea is interesting but might be more elaborate than you even need.

legitster 3y ago

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.

DimitriPetrova 3y ago
Even a gap of a few months?
- legitster 3y ago
  I wouldn't consider just a few months to be a "resume gap". The rule of thumb is at least 6 months.
  - futureshock 3y ago
    I started to notice gaps after a year as a mild signal. A gap of 5 years was a strong signal and nearly every candidate I talked with had some level of hireability issue beyond the gap. Even a mother that decided to stay home till her kids were in school was going to have a difficult re-entry to the rigid expectations of the working world. After someone had be back in the workforce for a year or two and had some mildly plausible explanation for their 5 year gap, I stopped noting it as a downside. But experience older than about 12 years was often not factored in, so a person with a recent 5 year gap will just have less recent and relevant experience than someone who had worked 12/12 previous years.
    - legitster 3y ago
      My brother in law had something like a 5 year gap. He had a mental breakdown and went on disability. He's doing great now, but that first boss he had after coming back to work was a saint, putting up with so much emotional baggage and spent personal time coaching him out of giving up. So, yeah, if you are taking on someone who has been out of the workforce for a long time, you take on lots of risk. But once they are back in the workforce and getting good referrals, the gap shouldn't matter as much. (And seeing it first hand: if you are having mental health problems, staying home and playing video games for 5 years will NOT make it better).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

screye 3y ago

(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.

iancmceachern 3y ago

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

FinnLobsien 3y ago

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.

cableshaft 3y ago
So what? A coworker just came back from 10 weeks of paternity leave today. He mentioned it felt like he had to 'remember how to code again'. By that logic, the company should fire him because it's going to take him a while to 'get back into the game' of the daily work grind, right? But it's not going to be that bad, and we don't have anything so pressing he couldn't take even a few weeks to "get back in the groove" for all that matters for our department. We somehow managed fine without him for 10 weeks, he can take his time to get back into the swing of things. And even if we did have pressing things, that's more on the company and not him. Probably means they should be hiring more than just that one person, and should have hired earlier so they have the chance to get used to things (there's always a ramp up of learning for every job anyway, for pretty much everyone). Not accusing you of thinking that way, btw, you did say specifically that recruiters might think that, just challenging the thought process of those recruiters.

lulznews 3y ago

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.

tayo42 3y ago

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.

evanjrowley 3y ago

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.

marssaxman 3y ago

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.

dougmwne 3y ago
It’s not holding you back because you are jumping over the low bar. A year is not a particularly long gap and might even go unnoticed. But f someone noticed and asked, sounds like you had a great answer. That’s all you need. Having no good explanation for a 5 year gap will probably get you filtered out.

hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago

I have no strong claims, just a related link: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/04/companies-wont-even-look-at-the-resumes-of-the-long-term-unemployed.html 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.