Tell Me About The Gap In Your CV: The Nightmare Job Interview Question.

Some time ago, we released an article dedicated to job hunters who struggle with pitching the gap in their CV during job interviews, entitled “How To Explain A Gap In Your CV? Professional Development, Personal Development, or Wasted Time?” (please also take a look at our YouTube episode dedicated to the same topic).

According to a field experiment published in Nature Human Behaviour, testing over 9,000 real job applications, résumés that listed years of experience instead of exact employment dates saw a 15% increase in callbacks for candidates with employment gaps — evidence that employers can be nudged to focus on experience over timeline.

This time, we would like to flip the tables and take the perspective of the employer. Namely, to talk about why it might be a great idea for the employer to accept an employee with a gap in their CV.

Do Employers Indeed Have Preference For Hiring Candidates Without a Gap In Their CV?

Yes, research strongly suggests that employers still prefer hiring employees without gaps in their resumes and career paths. The recent field research by ResumeGo revealed that applicants with gaps in their CVs are, on average, 45% less likely to get invited to an interview than others. The difference was especially pronounced among professionals with a gap lasting for more than three years. This is exactly where a clear career strategy for professionals re-entering the workforce makes the biggest difference, helping candidates frame their story with confidence. Employers who take the time to learn about a candidate’s career strategy for professionals re-entering the workforce often uncover exactly the kind of resilience they are looking for.

Why is this the case? Well, one might think that the main difference between a candidate with and without a gap in a CV. This is as well as in their career path is the difference in knowledge levels. Simple arithmetic – the same age, less experience and fewer skills, hence, less value for the employer.

And, there would be a simple remedy for that difference in experience: a bit lower paycheck. In fact, it is not all that simple as the crucial question for the employer is: how did the gap in the CV as well as in the career path even come about?

The issue lies in the potential implications of the long-lasting gap with respect to the candidate’s work ethic and personality in general.

What employers fear the most, are employees who are unfocused, lazy, without work motivation, overly fragile, entitled, self-centered. Additionally, mentally unstable. In other words, an attitude that could be summarized as a proverbial “snowflake.”

Additionally, employers also traditionally search for signs of loyalty. Thus, they view a few long-lasting employer-employee relations as more promising than a long list of short contracts in a CV. 

Large organizations tend to receive hundreds of applications per position. In such circumstances, any warning signs suggesting that the candidate might be any less than excellent or disloyal can be a reason for early elimination. In a sense, automated elimination of candidates with career gaps is nothing else than time management with that respect.

The View at Gaps In a CV Is Slowly Changing For The Better.

However, according to Business Insider, to employers, gaps in a CV are not viewed as so much of a problem as they used to be in the past.

Namely. Meanwhile, careers used to be linear and well structured a few decades ago, today, more and more professionals decide to change not only jobs but also professions during their professional lives. And often, quite a few times! (as nicely explained for example, in Emilie Wapnick’s best-selling book “How To Be Everything?”).

Obviously, changing career tracks naturally triggers incubation time and delays between subsequent jobs. No wonder that, according to the aforementioned ResumeGo study, the employers were the most welcoming to the candidates who pointed to extra education as the main reason for the gap in their CV.

And, in general, employers prefer to see the gap in the CV well explained, preferably as early in the recruitment process as possible (for instance, in the cover letter). In other words, it doesn’t pay off to try to ignore the elephant in the room.

It is all about openness, integrity (as mentioned in our recent article “Integrity: Why Is It Important For Your Professional Development and Why Do Employers Seek Integrity?”). Additionally, building trust between the employer and the employee.

Employers want to know the reasons behind the pivotal decisions in the candidates’ careers and their personal motivations to better predict their future behaviors and reactions to problems.

Yet still, the problem persists and the candidates with a gap in their CVs are often skipped in the recruitment procedure. Is this a real problem though?