How to Deal With Career Gap Bias

Career gap bias is complex

It’s also a cover up for a host of other biases in the hiring process.

A career gap is typically defined as six months or more out of the workplace.

COVID 19 partially disrupted the idea that we all need continuous and linear career paths to perform effectively, but it still lingers. Organisations today want to be agile, which is business speak for they want you to be disposable.

People get laid off, companies close, mergers and downsizing happen.  But people also take career breaks for a variety of other reasons, whether nurturing new lives, or simply a break doing something else. This doesn’t mean to say they can’t still make valuable contributions, despite an absence.

Nothing induces more paroxysms of anxiety in job seekers than the worry of having to account for a career gap on their CV.

However, this particular stigma overlaps a number of other perhaps more insidious and deeply embedded biases where they all combine to become a hot mess of discrimination.

Impact of the pandemic

The pandemic shifted our biases around gaps in resumés, but sadly they still linger. Research from Groysberg & Lin (HBS) shows that that 61% of surveyed managers still view résumé gaps negatively.

This was based on the following deficits:

• reliability (29%)
• motivation (27%)
• retention risk (25%)
• skill fade (19%).

The data also showed gender differences in perception.  60% of both men and women viewed resume gaps as a negative sign BUT women are less likely to consider a resume gap as a positive signal. (4% vs 10% men and 30% of men who see it has having no impact.)

And yet women face a consistent 9% pay penalty for résumé gaps, both at previous and new employers.

Reasons for a career gap

Infographic from BeApplied

What underpins career gap bias?

 1. Gender bias

This penalises women for taking time out for caring responsibilities for either kids or others It even penalises them because they might take time out at some unspecified time in the future.

The reality is that women are more likely than men to suffer from “career gap bias” in the hiring process. women are three times more likely to take career breaks for childcare, compared to men. 38% of  women who had taken a career break of 6 months or more cited childcare as the reason, compared to just 11% of men.

Research from Applied revealed that 18% of women have been asked whether or not they have children (or plan to have children in the future) at some point during a recruitment process. This rose to 40% of women applying for senior management roles…

2. Non-continuous career bias

This is unemployment bias by another name. There is a stigma to being outside the workplace in many geographies, which seems to be stronger in the US than other regions. In other regions, taking time out for sabbaticals, gap years, burnout breaks and other, are becoming increasingly common.

This is even true for candidates who have worked as freelancers or consultants.

3.  Workplace skills bias

This bias attributes a higher value to skills gained in the corporate workplace than any other activity. Research from Applied suggests that in their survey, 51% of people with career gaps believe they gained new or transferable skills during their break.

See below a list of skills learned from care giving. There are also multiple studies citing the skills people learn from surviving cancer, volunteering and travelling. The assumption (bias) that the best skills are acquired in the workplace, preferably corporate is one we need to archive.

4. Experience bias

Hiring Managers still measure experience in years gained in a corporate workplace. But frequently someone can have two years’  experience five times, not ten years. The fact that someone has had a break may not make any impact on the amount of experience they have gained in real terms.

‍Most candidates would rather not tell a prospective employer about their career gaps to avoid discrimination even though the majority felt they had benefited from the break.

5. Unemployment Bias

There is no doubt that in certain geographies unemployment bias is rampant. This is the thinking that if someone is not in a place of work that their life has no meaning.  Nothing could be further from the truth. Acres of posts have been written by “dimfuencers”  on every platform. Ignore them. Swim in your own lane and you do you.

6. Consultant Bias

This is the thinking that if someone has worked outside a corporate environment they will struggle ti adapt. Once again this is a bias and about a need to feel in control. They fear an independent mindset or entrepreneurial spirit even though this is the life blood of any organisation. Be prepared to be convincing. Independent consultants are also penalised by the LinkedIn algorithm as corporate roles are given higher priority in recruiter searches because they are paying the LinkedIn Recruiter licences..

7. Regency Bias

Experience or knowledge gained recently carries greater weight which penalises those wishing to re-enter the workplace after a career break .

Types of career gaps

Happily, the world is starting to change, and the best way is still transparency. Career breaks tend to fall into two categories:

• Planned: maternity leave, sabbatical, gap year, study, relocation, surgery,
• Unplanned  – redundancy, global pandemics, downsizing, mergers etc, unexpected family, domestic or personal crises, (bereavement, health)

The LinkedIn algorithm also contributes to the problem by enforcing the biases of our wider cultures, by penalising people with employment gaps in search results.

The algorithm also gives priority to employment entries where the employer carries a logo  – thus enforcing another bias  – corporate employment, because, I suppose, that’s a main source of revenue for LinkedIn.

Key strategies

1. Short career gaps.

My take is don’t muddy the waters and just drop the months off the date piece of you resume or LinkedIn profile. Some even say to move the date to the right side of your resumé. Whether this makes a difference it’s hard to say. This advice is anecdotal only.

2. Longer career gaps

• Create a placeholder with a title. I am not a fan of the LinkedIn suggestion of “Homemaker” especially as it’s penalised by the LinkedIn algorithm.  LinkedIn guru Kevin D Turner suggests creating a company page with a logo to avoid penalties of the algo  Here is a job profile I created for the Head of Domestic Operations. I could set up company page with Dalton / Brussels Services for example.

• Focus on the skills learned in any situation. That is easily done. I still suggest avoiding the functional résumé and to keep your career in chronological order. When you are out of the workplace if you can, I suggest maintaining your networking efforts and keeping up to date with any trends  although sometimes this is not always possible. Be sure to list all your success stories and achievements:
  • Launched an e-commerce jewellery business
  • Completed an online leadership course
  • Reached peak physical fitness to scale Mount xxx
  • Provided 24/7 care to terminally ill family member

  Recruiters are not going to miss a gap. They are trained to look for them.

• For a period of freelancing: Rather than list all your different assignments separately, create an overall header such as 2016-2022  X Consultant. Group together key assignments without dates or only the year underneath, together with impact statements and metrics and the companies you worked with.

Tips for employers

In any inclusive recruitment process you shouldn’t be required to explain your career gap to an employer. Any decision should be based on your core competencies and how they align with the job posting.

For organisations the best solution is with blind CVs where candidates should indicate how many years, they spend in a role rather than the exact dates. However, we still have to be careful about using time as an indicator or competence so the sooner we move to skill based hiring the better.

Research suggests that when candidates replace CV dates with number of years’ experience, call-back rates for candidates improved by 14% compared to candidates with an ‘explained’ or ‘unexplained’ gap on their CV.

This is an excellent way to deal with career gap bias. It’s not complicated or expensive but requires a mindset shift.

How many employers are ready to do that?

Need to mitigate against bias in your organisation’s recruitment process?