Last week, while on a Zoom call with other resume writers and career management coaches, someone mentioned that they have clients who have been out of work for 18 months or more. As a result, I thought it was time to reiterate and update my recommendations for those jobseekers who have been unemployed for a while.
Employment gaps are inevitable for too many of us. We might think employers would understand and accept career breaks, but experience shows this is not the case. Instead, research shows jobseekers lose market value when they have been between jobs for too long. Consequently, we recommend recognizing that it may take longer than you think it will to find your next job. Start developing a plan right away.
A key part of the strategy should be to avoid a resume gap. Research has shown that employers are less likely to hire job candidates that have been unemployed for six months or more.
Today, we are sharing 4 of the strategies we have learned in the last 25 years that have worked for my clients. These strategies include:
- Taking on temporary work,
- Doing freelance assignments,
- Skills-based volunteering, and
- Helping friends and family.
A few clients we have worked with in past recessions were unemployed for a long time even though they had many years of experience and advanced degrees. This trend concerned career coaches, so we looked for answers. We learned that Rand Ghayad, an M.I.T. researcher quoted in a 2013 Boston Globe article “found that employers showed four times more interest in candidates unemployed for six months or less — even if they had less experience and fewer qualifications than those experiencing longer bouts of joblessness.” Additionally, he noted that older unemployed workers, were “most frequently passed over.”
You can reduce the chances that your resume will be passed over if you are out of work for six months or more, but you should act now.
Accept temporary assignments.
The most important thing you can do is show current activity on your resume and LinkedIn profile. A strategy jobseekers have used for decades is to take assignments through temporary employment agencies. For example, a client we worked for accepted administrative assignments at a pharmaceutical company through a temp agency after leaving the Army. He came to us because he needed steadier, and higher paying work to support his family. It turned out that, because all his temp assignments were at the same company, and they had a consistent theme—project administration—we could combine them under one heading to show a solid history as an IT project administrator. This gave him a much stronger presentation than a resume that portrayed him as an administrative temp with many short assignments. He started a new, more highly compensated role as a business analyst within days.
Take freelance and consulting projects.
A related strategy is to do freelance or consulting work. Admittedly, this is a distinction without a difference for resume purposes because the practical result is the same. You work on a series of relatively short projects to stay active in your field.
Our clients in the fashion industry have used this strategy. As an example, one client worked on projects for several start-ups, and also created her own fashion brand and put her portfolio online. We used her portfolio brand as her employer “headline” for LinkedIn and her resume and combined her projects for start-ups with her independent design work to create one “job” spanning her employment gap.
You can even create a logo for your freelance or consulting brand and put it on LinkedIn. Establish a LinkedIn company page for your brand and upload a logo. Then, when you enter your freelance brand name in an “employer” dialogue box on LinkedIn, your brand name will be recognized and your logo will appear. That’s how my freelance work initially grew into “Resumes that Shine” on my LinkedIn page before we had a professional Web site and blog.
Get involved in skills-based volunteer work.
Volunteer work is another possibility for filling an employment gap. An MBA candidate we worked with who was seeking a position in strategic consulting, for example, prepared a strategic plan for the International Rescue Committee as a student volunteer. Another talented jobseeker with an advanced degree from M.I.T. volunteered to teach children and their parents in low-income households how to use the Internet.
Colleagues of mine have found work in college career offices and public employment programs by volunteering to help at job fairs or to help jobseekers with cover letters, resumes, and online job search. Volunteer work can provide great experience, it can be fun and could even lead to a job in the organization you volunteer at or a related organization.
Help out your friends and family.
We may be able to add experience to your resume even if you are not doing substantial temp, freelance, consulting, or volunteer work related to your field. A resume writer told the LinkedIn “Resume Writers & Co.” group some time ago that she filled a “stay-at-home Mom’s” employment gap by describing her as a “Stay-at-home Mom and Community Volunteer,” and then including bullet points illustrating her accomplishments.
An industrial engineer that was staying home with her young child helped a relative with strategic planning and design work for her startup. This project neatly filled her gap. A teacher we worked with built a Web site to sell his family’s crafts while he stayed home with his son. This filled his gap between teaching roles in a large school system and his job at a charter school.
Neither family project generated much income. Nonetheless, we were able to demonstrate business accomplishments for the projects to make them viable resume entries
Concluding comments
Whether you were downsized by the DOGE last year, accepted a deferred resignation package from the Federal Government, were laid-off from a public agency or corporation, or needed family time, you will benefit from filling the gap. You will gain or maintain skills, have a valid resume entry, and more accomplishments to discuss at interviews. And it will probably be more interesting than job searching all day!
Guide to the Post-pandemic Job Market
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