Career Gaps: Retaining and Gaining Skills

Taking a break in your career is becoming more and more common – a LinkedIn survey from 2021 found that 62% of job seekers reported having a gap on their resume. Whether it’s becoming a full time parent, leaving a toxic work environment, taking care of a family member, bereavement or any other reason, the “old school” view on this is that employers don’t want to hire someone who is coming off of a break because their skills may be “rusty”.

I fully challenge this belief and would like to offer some tips for both job seekers and hiring managers to get rid of this mental block that could be holding you back.

I recently had a recruiter reach out to me on LinkedIn. The role seemed like an exciting fit for me - it's rare that a job description resonates as strongly as this one and tempts me to return to my old career. I engaged in brief conversation with her, and it all seemed to be going well until she asked, "have you done any PM work since Amazon?". I told her about my roles as Chair of the board for two nonprofits where I had to use them daily, and that I had also started my own business. She never responded.

Putting aside the fact that she hadn’t reviewed my resume closely enough to notice that my job at Amazon ended 6 years ago as well as my volunteer roles and Hire Possibilities, let’s take a closer look at some of my day to day duties as a Senior PM in a corporate role and my day to day duties PMing my household as full time mother during the first year. It does need to be stated that this is a very simplified glance of what I was doing in both of these roles, to illustrate my point- I could go on and on but I will spare you the nitty gritty details!

Corporate:

1.        Owning and managing projects from beginning to end

2.        Coordinating meetings to keep things moving and stakeholders informed

3.        Tracking progress towards goals

4.        Reporting on progress towards goals

Household:

1.        Owning and managing all household duties (except cooking dinner – my husband is much better in the kitchen), tasks and projects from beginning to end

2.        Coordinating daily appointments for members of the household, around my pumping schedule

3.        Tracking my daughter’s progress in PT, the amount of milk pumped for her over 14 months

4.        Reporting back to my husband on new developments to get him up to speed, reporting back to other new mothers what was working for me and what wasn’t

Unless you think my PM skills leeched right out of my breasts while I pumped 90 gallons of milk for my daughter (yep, told you I was tracking!), my role as a PM never ended. I simply (had the privilege to) made the choice to leave my corporate job when I realized I couldn’t be successful holding down two full time PM roles and my priority was my growing family.

Now, is it fully understandable that an employer might be concerned that a potential employee doesn’t have the skills they need related to tools they may need to use on the job, especially if they became available during the gap or if they were in a very specialized position? Yes, absolutely. However, it is not wise to make the assumption that someone taking a gap in their career isn’t still learning about new innovations in their industry, or using those special skills in their own time. Ask them what they’ve learned during their “time off” and you may be surprised to find they’ve learned more than your direct report has in the past year. Most people aren’t just taking time off between jobs to sit on the beach (and if you are- good for you!), they are volunteering, taking a class, taking care of a family member, taking care of themselves, and growing in the process.

What can we do to change this within our corporate culture?

 Employers:

• Assess your Unconscious Biases and lead training for your employees, especially those on the front end of the hiring process (and spoiler alert for future blog posts - any AI you are using does not remove bias!)

• Hire employees at the level that is fair based on their most recent professional experience

• Take the time to legally understand a potential employee’s career gaps, including what potential employees have learned from the process

• Value employees who have learned from real life experiences - likely bringing new perspectives, better work life balance and productivity to your team

Job Seekers during/coming back from a career gap:

• Focus on your needs and dealbreakers in your next role and find companies that align with your values

• Keep yourself engaged in your own passions, hobbies, interests and growth - not only is this helpful to bring into your next role, but can help you keep a sense of self while you're dealing with what life is throwing at you

• Volunteer for a cause you believe in or start a "side hustle" only if you have the bandwidth

• Inform recruiters and potential future employers of what you have learned or accomplished during your career gap. If they don't understand or appreciate this, move on to the next as it's truly their loss

Wherever you are in your career journey, I hope that you are feeling empowered to do what's right for yourself. If you are struggling, aren't sure what to do in this phase of your career, or you need help thinking through and objectively looking at the options from someone who has been there - reach out to me. We are in the middle of some impactful societal shifts and I believe we can work together to enact positive change. Think of the Hire Possibilities!

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