The Insider Guide to Careers
Insider information, secrets and tips about getting hired and building careers. For employees and job candidates.
One of the top questions I get from students and employees, especially after the COVID disruption, is how to cover gap years on the resume.
Every HR recruiter is trained to look for gap years on the resume. So, the first feedback is not to cover it up. The question will emerge in the interview process about what you were up to. This query is not meant to be intrusive or threatening. The interviewer wants to know if you faced any personal issue that requires workplace accommodation or if you were at home doing nothing or something else.
At the same time, you don’t want to outright say on your resume that you took a gap year. It is better to add something else, like working on a startup or a family business, to the resume. If you took a year or less off the grid, looking for a job, put that period in your LinkedIn profile and declare that you were taking a break/sabbatical. After the COVID-19 health disaster, everyone, including recruiters, is more forgiving.
If the break was for more than a year, it gets tricky. If one is at home idling, it creates a negative impression. There are a lot of qualified candidates with no break in work experience who are more devoted to work and look better on paper when it comes to interview evaluation. I recommend that people with gap years have a story to explain their time of no work.
Some students say that they were studying for exams. For example, Indians spend many years outside college prepping for Civil services and Government jobs. I wish students were more calculating before doing these activities. First and foremost, all this prep can happen simultaneously in the free time when doing a full-time job. Secondly, you don’t want to be seen as unrealistic. Suppose a person gives their 100% and still falls short of the goal; that may speak a lot about the individual. Companies want people who succeed, not quitters. Students with over two years of gaps in their resume will face many questions and get docked easily. Going back to school for a Master’s or PhD could help these folks as you become part of the university graduate crowd. Middle and top management are seen to benefit from breaks and sabbaticals, not early-in-career folks. So, these folks need to weigh their options carefully.
Let us look at some ways to impress recruiters. The first point is to ensure that one is always active. After undergrad, you must gain some work-related skills every year, with no exceptions. So work on a startup, work on a family business by the side or even volunteer for a non-profit. There is no shortage of opportunities in the corporate world if you are willing to work for free. You should be conducting a skill gap analysis for the jobs you target and have a game plan of how you will be building the technical, business and people skills in the future. Gaining skills can happen in different ways outside the workplace – going to university, taking online courses, doing internships, volunteering, working on projects, etc. You should be able to tell a recruiter what skills you have gained and how that skill links to the job you are targeting.
Taking breaks is not uncommon. In Silicon Valley, people often take breaks and cloak it under the term “stealth startups.” A serial entrepreneur may not be a pure workaholic; he may have taken strategic breaks to help him juggle a healthy work-life balance. The current AI guru, Sam Altman, took a leave of a year after selling his first startup and spent it inside an ashram in India. He followed the footsteps of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, who spent an extended time at the Neem Karoli Baba ashram in India.
Taking breaks is a good idea, but also learn something on the side. With well-planned sabbaticals or breaks, you can refresh and rejuvenate yourself for a long and fulfilling career.
For more such articles, add me on Linkedin and join my Whatsapp community to ask me questions.
