Should Candidates be Expected to Explain a Gap in Their Resume

This week, Brianna and Taylor discuss another controversial topic. Should candidates be expected to explain gaps in their resumes?

As always, they share their perspectives and experiences, emphasizing the importance of transparency and controlling your narrative regarding employment gaps. They urge candidates to use the time to showcase their transferable skills gained during that time.

Give this episode a listen, and share it with someone who needs help explaining their employment gap.

Apply for the last live interactive The Millionaire Recruiter Program:   https://talentperch.typeform.com/to/jfIh6qc0

We want to hear from you! Connect with us on Instagram at @talent_takeover_unfiltered

To watch this episode, visit The Millionaire Recruiter YouTube channel https://youtu.be/VWxIfstJGt4

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Creators & Guests

Host

Brianna Rooney

I am the CEO and Founder of TalentPerch, Techees Recruiting, The Millionaire Recruiter, and now Thriversity. My vision for the last 14 years has been to change the way the World views the Recruiting Industry. Even though I have two little kids, I remain firm on maintaining a work-life balance. I believe you can be as successful at work, as you are at home. You don’t have to choose. The choice is, to be present and rock everything you do!

Host

Taylor Bradley

Chief Strategy Officer, Talent Leader, Advisor, Podcast Co-host. I specialize in turning DIRT to GLITTER ✨

Producer

Jessica Reynolds

Editor

Kait Vickers

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Hello, hello.

Welcome to Talent takeover.

Unfiltered. Taylor Bradley.

What's going on? How you doing? Living the dream. Good.

How are you? Living the dream. I love it.

I got my Llama shirt on, which, by the

way, you can see on the Millionaire Recruiter YouTube.

And you can purchase at.

And here's the link. I love that.

You actually get a lot of

compliments on that Llama shirt. I do. I dig it.

I dig it.

You know what's funny is so my mom's always

randomly giving me shit, which thank you, mother.

But sometimes it's like, mom, where'd you get this?

Did you find it on the floor somewhere?

And so she gave me this.

I loved it instantly.

And she looks at me like, oh my God, you liked it?

Which to my question was, well, where

the fuck did you get it from?

Why are you so surprised I liked it?

And why did you give it to me if

you didn't think I was going to like it?

She's like this clown over here.

She's trying to dress you up, like

make a joke out of you. Come on, boozy.

Susie that's not nice.

You know what's funny?

Know I would never be caught dead in

a walmart, even when I was younger. Okay.

I love Walmart pictures. I know, I know. I got a thing.

Well, anyway, so my mom would randomly give me things.

She's like, oh, do you like this?

I'm like, yeah, I love it. And I would put it on and

she'd be like, that's from Walmart.

After it's on my body.

I said, I like it.

Oh my God.

Anyways, I actually love Walmart.

So for any of our listeners, this

is not how we both feel.

I fucking love Walmart.

And any of those little gas stations.

I don't know if you guys have them

in California, but gas stations that are like

we have well, I love that random stuff.

Yeah, for sure. That's cute.

And it's small.

Okay, well, there's Walmart Super

Centers and then there's Walmart.

But a Bucky's is the size of a walmart.

When you come to Texas again,

we're taking you to Bucky's.

Because they've got like, beef

jerky, they've got dipping dots.

The kids go nuts in our and they've

got like a Little Beaver is their mascot. Oh my gosh.

It's the biggest deal in Texas. I know.

Jessica our producers behind the

scenes, like, yep, yep.

People come into town to go to Bucky's. It's crazy.

I'm having that moment where I'm like, you know,

when I want to live in California, I want

to get the hell out of California.

Maybe I want to stay in California.

No, you're going to want to move to Bucky's.

Once you see one, you're not even

going to want to move to Texas.

You're going to want to live in the Buckies bathroom.

Pristine.

All right, let's get to this.

Okay, so what we're going to talk

about is actually from a LinkedIn post.

This is a poll regarding should candidates be

expected to explain a gap on their resume.

And just so everyone knows, only 23%

said yes, and 77% said no.

There's over 22,000 votes, which I think

is I'm shocked to see this.

What are your initial thoughts?

I think that if you would have asked me

five years ago, I would have said, don't put

anything on your resume with regards to a gap.

But you and I both know,

like, we have somebody internally.

We hired an amazing employee who had a gap

because she was a stay at home mom.

She worked and was a stay at home mom raising

babies, and then went back and entered the workforce.

And we actually loved it that she put that on

her resume and explained what she was doing at home.

Yeah, it didn't I actually support that.

And I had somebody as I started to tell you, I had

somebody that was just last week reached out to me and was

at home, had been at home for a couple of years.

It was a male, and he had been home a

couple of years taking care of his special needs son.

And so he was like, should I put

that on there or should I not?

And I thought it was great because he kind of

gave me an overview of what he'd been doing to

care for his son and what his days involved.

And first of all, I was like, wow, I can't even

harder than any job I could ever even imagine anyone having.

Hats off to you.

Just like how we talk about stay at home moms.

That's a job that's hardest shit.

Don't discredit those jobs.

It's way harder than a real job. Yeah, exactly.

And so what he had been doing was commendable, and

I also think it was telling of his character.

And so I was like, yeah, absolutely put that on there.

Because I think that if you don't work for two years,

you have to explain that it's going to come up.

Whether you put it on your resume

or not, it's going to come up.

So I think my initial thoughts are tell your own story.

Like, don't let them just make

a judgment about your background.

Tell your own story.

And to go back to the employee that we have

that works here, she told her own story of what

she did, and we absolutely ate it up.

Loved it, hired her.

She's been one of the greatest

employees, like, absolutely still kicking ass.

And so I think it just like, I would want to

tell my own story, so I would want to put that

on there that this is what I was doing.

And if it's like, if you were searching for

a job, which I know so many people are,

and I have gotten this question before, it was

just very unique to that situation.

But I've gotten this question several

times before in this last year.

And I always tell people, like, yeah, what have

you been doing while searching for your job?

Because very few people, especially if they're reaching out to

me to ask me, like, hey, what should I do?

Should I put this on here?

Do you know anybody that's hiring? Whatever.

I don't think they're sitting on there, like,

twiddling their thumbs, like, sitting on their ass.

They're trying to do something.

They're trying to find a job.

So what have you been doing since then?

So I think what the post is about is that can

a recruiter ask you about what you've been up to?

And first of all, yes, of course we need to ask.

And also, it's a conversation starter.

But to go to your point, is it's like,

just put it on there so it's not weird.

So we don't have to be like, hey, what

have you been doing for the last two years?

Even if you've been traveling or now you

get to spend more time with your kids.

And like you said, even if it's been a really

hard time finding a job, even if that's exactly the

reason why what's been going on, spin it, though, in

your own what fun have you had?

What maybe things have you learned?

But someone on here.

I'm sorry, I'm getting really fired up right

now because people are the whole post, first

of all, should have nothing negative about recruiters,

but it's all negative about recruiters.

And it's like, okay, whatever.

But what I'm getting at is that, look,

there's so many cool things you could do,

but in this post, they're like, how are

you supposed to acquire skills when you're unemployed?

What do you mean?

Read YouTube.

Go to the library.

That's a joke.

In today's world to say that that you have to

have money to learn something new, that's a fucking joke.

That is a joke.

It's at our fingertips.

And I mean, yeah, you could really go the extreme

way and say, well, I don't have any Internet.

Go to the library.

That's free. You can't even say you

don't have everywhere has Internet.

Like, go to Starbucks.

They'll let you work there for free.

But you could say the extreme.

Like, they don't have a device. They don't have a phone.

You know what I mean?

I'm talking extreme, extreme situations that if

even in extreme situations, there's no excuse.

Yeah, I feel like in extreme mean, I

see the homeless guy has a cell phone.

You know what I mean?

Everybody's got a cell phone.

So I don't think there's newspapers.

Like, there's something to read,

there's something to learn.

I think that's an excuse. It's a cop out. Yeah, it is.

But to go back to what you were saying about

people are just, like, going in on recruiters, my initial

thoughts when you said that is like, where do they

think that these recruiters are getting these questions from?

Like we're asking questions that

are important to the company.

Yes amen.

A lot of times they are direct questions from

the hiring manager or we already know the hiring

manager is going to ask us, so we better

not show up without an answer.

Exactly 100%. Oh my God. I love you said that. Yeah.

And it's like the recruiters get the bad rap.

But do you understand that we're doing a job?

And I love whenever it's like say it's a recruiter

from Meta and the recruiter is asking these questions.

You'll hate the recruiter but still think so

highly of Meta when it's like, where do

you think these questions came from?

These are questions that this company wants to know.

So because we're asking the questions on behalf of them,

we're not the bad guys, we're doing our jobs.

That absolutely blows my mind that people are like, oh,

how dare recruiters ask this, that or the other.

It's the same thing the hiring manager is going to ask.

So you could either get in front of

it and tell your own story or you

could just probably not get advanced ahead.

Because if you have a gap of employment and

you don't want to explain to anybody why, I

guarantee you that their minds are going to go

to the darkest places of like, well, they are

probably in prison for a couple of years. Yeah.

Again, I think this is so extreme.

Someone was like everyone that voted yes.

I would think about how you would feel if

you underwent something traumatic that required several months off.

They're completely, in my opinion, missing the point.

The point is just like

just something personal situation.

You could just put that and if you don't

want to talk about it, totally get it.

You don't need to talk about it.

But you can't just be like and you

can all say I was traveling the globe.

But also in this other thing is someone goes, what?

A recruiter should actually read

a profile and a resume.

Like, wait, what does this have

to do with the actual question?

The question is, should job candidates be expected to

explain what they're doing during each employment gap?

How did it get so far away from the actual question?

And now it's going to if

recruiters reading resumes or not. Yeah.

Mind boggling.

That's like a whole nother subject

that we haven't touched on.

Which I'm surprised is the amount of shit

that people talk about recruiters and the hate.

Yeah, the one that we had with

Aaron and I cannot remember that title.

Shoot, we'll reference it in the YouTube

so people can go back to it.

He definitely gets into it a lot.

And I think actually he got into it

a lot more before we were recording.

I wish that we had that recording.

But yeah, the shit people talk

about recruiters when guess what?

Hiring is the most single most important

function any company everywhere has to do.

And guess who doesn't?

And what I always think about too, is as

a recruiter myself, I've had bad experiences with recruiters.

We've had bad experience with everybody, though.

But we don't hate opposition, right? Exactly.

That's why it's so crazy to me

is why do recruiters get this?

Just hate, like, you don't see somebody who puts up

a post about a customer service rep and then everybody's

just like, fuck customer just going in on them.

You know what I mean?

And it's like, recruiters always get it.

And I've had bad experiences with recruiters.

I've had bad experiences with customer service reps.

On behalf of every position, I guarantee you've had some

bad person that you've worked with, but that is not

a representation of everybody that does that job.

Yeah, talk about bias.

We are always trying to be like, oh,

we need to have put away your bias.

Yeah, okay, who's going to do that? All right.

I don't want to totally steer away from

this because I could really because you're right.

I think this should be an episode.

And I'm wondering if we want to rock this one with

ourselves or if we want to bring on a guest, but

maybe a guest would just rile us up too much.

Oh, well, we would love that.

We'd love to get riled up. Okay.

I'm writing that down so I can

make sure that we reference it.

But going back to should you explain it?

Our thoughts are you should and that

you should put something on there.

And the amount of detail that you want

to put is completely dependent up to you. Totally.

Like we said, the person that we

have was a stay at home mom.

I'm thinking back when I even think she listed out,

like, CEO of yeah, of Casa Day buyers last name.

I freaking loved it.

I loved everything about it.

And we poached her.

I came across her LinkedIn profile

because I loved it so much.

And I saw that she was already employed, and I saw

she hadn't been employed that long, and I was still like,

hey, I know you kind of just started your company, but

I freaking loved how you put how you're stay at home

mom, how hard that was, because it is.

And I think even if it's I've seen stay at home mom.

I've seen travel, like you said, I've seen stay

at home or taking care of elderly parents.

I've seen a million different things.

And not once I can truly say not once was

I ever like, oh, that's not a good look.

If they just had a gap for two

years with no explanation, I do question that.

I'm like, okay, well, this doesn't ended in 2018.

I don't see that they started working again till 2021.

I wonder what they were doing in that time frame.

I'm going to ask you because I'm going to get asked.

Yeah.

Anybody's going to ask that question.

So I think that's what the LinkedIn poll like.

Just listen to this podcast.

You don't even need to worry

about the results of that poll.

You need to put something because you're

going to get asked the question.

It doesn't fucking matter if you put

it on your resume or not.

So I would get in front of it, spin

it the way I want to, and put it

on my resume because you're going to get asked.

You get to have your own narrative, and

it's like the elephant in the room. Yeah.

And also on the other side, as recruiters, do

we want to dig into your personal life?

No, we don't.

All we really care is like, hey, how

can you be great for this job? And now here's the thing.

If you have multiple gaps, then of

course, to us, it's now a pattern.

So now we need to figure that out.

After COVID, for example, there's been so many

of us being like, oh, God, so much

more empathy has been going into these gaps. Right?

So I had someone recently who was only somewhere for nine

months and then only somewhere for less than a year.

And yeah, now, is this a coincidence?

Is this on you or is this on

the environment that we're in right now?

And so I had asked that question, and naturally,

it was the environment that we're in right now.

Unfortunately, that person picked two bad companies in a row, and

so they're a little more hesitant to join, which I actually

think is a good thing for me to say.

So on the client side, I'm going to say,

hey, look, this person made two bad choices.

They're really hesitant to make a move,

but it's just not a good fit.

They've had layoffs.

Now this person really wants to find their home.

They want to find somewhere they can be for five years.

And so, as the recruiter, that's exactly

what I'm telling the hiring manager.

We can go to bat for you if you let us.

Okay, so I have a question for you then.

So you just got me thinking of this.

Okay, so it's one thing to have a gap on your

resume, but like you were talking about in COVID, a lot

of people were impacted and a lot of people were doing

what they had to do to get by.

And so say somebody has steady work history for

ten years, COVID happens, and then they're taking roles.

Maybe got laid off three different times during COVID

I've seen people do it two different ways.

I've seen people not put anything and then

I've seen on resumes people put laid off.

What would you recommend that

people put on their resume?

I would say laid off, actually. Yeah.

Like, impacted by a layoff.

And actually, I like the people who say

X amount of force was laid off.

Like, hey, laid off.

This team, 40% was laid off.

Or whatever it is. Yeah, you do.

And then here's another thing, too, is that and it's

not a perfect science, but yeah, if you're the last

one in, you're probably the first one out.

That's what companies try to do, right?

Like, they have to take care of the people

who have been with them for a long time.

So sometimes it really has nothing to do

with whether or not they're a good employee.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that there are certain scenarios where I

know we've talked about it in past episodes about terminating

and being fired and saying that you're fired.

But I think in certain situations like that, you

just need to put on their laid off. People get it.

And like, what we're seeing with all the

tech layoffs and stuff, people get it and

everybody's going to remember those times.

Everybody remembers how tough things were in 2008,

and that was how many years ago people

are going to remember those times.

So I think it just as like a general

rule of thumb, and I think this leads us

nicely into our broke to boss tip.

I think transparency is key with

regards to your job history.

That is my belief.

I believe that we live in a day

and age where work, life balance and things

like that are so much more accepted.

Traveling the world, wanting to see

the world, things like that.

So I think it's okay to put that on your resume,

and I think it actually does you a disservice if you

don't and you leave your work history open to interpretation.

Exactly.

Their own narrative. Yeah. Control your narrative.

Be transparent, and don't leave your

work history open to know.

Something that I was just thinking about, that I

wrote down is that even if you're traveling, do

you know how many transferable skills you now have

you've now gotten from just traveling and understanding different

cultures and understanding different ways of start?

So when I was in Spain, I started a

little note section that just takes all the different

countries I've been and I take what do they

do really well, including our own. So I started.

The United States does this well.

Spain does this really well.

So a funny example, and Lincoln was making fun

of me, but they do waste management really well.

They have these giant, beautiful, great

trash cans all over the place.

Therefore, there's no know it's like, duh.

That makes sense.

America, why are we not doing so?

But it was just interesting, like, just the

things you learn from traveling and what you

can to to the workforce and put that

on your resume, I think that's really cool.

I think you and I would share that with each other.

If we saw a resume where somebody had traveled to

different countries and put here's what I learned from each

one, we would probably try to poach that person.

We would love that.

Yes, exactly.

That's a great, great point.

So I think we've given our listeners a lot

of different tips with regards to the gaps.

And if all else fails, guys reach out to us.

Like I said, we have people reach out to

us on LinkedIn and ask us these questions.

We'll be happy to answer your questions.

I think ultimately, what we want to

do is give back to recruiters.

Talent acquisition obviously change this god awful

perception people have of recruiters, but we

specifically, we're here to help.

And if there's anything that we could do for

our listeners, we appreciate you guys listening to us.

So, yeah, we want to give back. Reach out to us.

If you have any questions about your resume or gaps

or how you should spend something, we're here for you.

But just rule of thumb broke to boss tip.

I think transparency is key as much as you possibly

can, and I think there's always a way, like, truly,

unless it is you spent time in prison.

I definitely think there's always a way we can

spin whatever the gap is into a positive.

So I'm laughing over here because I'm thinking about

the Spin doctor episode that we want to do.

Give me a time that I was in prison for money

laundering or something, and I'll tell you how I'll spin it

and then try to tell us who would hire you, too.

I know, exactly.

Oh, my God. Love it. All right.

Another great episode. Thank you all.

Remember, you can watch us on

our YouTube channel, the Billionaire Recruiter.

So we are loving we are loving when you review us.

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See you next week. Thanks, y'all.