Worried about a gap in your resume? This small tweak could result in more job callbacks

Worried about a career gap in your resume? Turns out, there's a pretty easy workaround that's been scientifically proven to lead to more job callbacks.

Previous research has shown that hiring managers discriminate against candidates who have a break in their resume. That puts some folks at a greater disadvantage, such as women who are more likely to leave the labor force to raise children. This can lead to a lasting scarring effect as those out of the labor force take longer to return or are hired at lower levels, and they lose out on earning potential and career growth in the long-term.

But in a new study recently published in Nature Human Behavior, researchers found resumes that listed years of tenure at an employer, rather than the actual dates of employment, were more likely to get a callback for a job.

For example, instead of saying you worked for a company from January 2018 to January 2023, you would simply list your length of tenure as 5 years.

Listing tenure rather than specific dates increased the chances of a callback by 15% compared with a resume with an employment gap, and even by 8% compared with a resume without a gap.

Researchers were focused on seeing the impact for working mothers and tested resumes with no career break, resumes with an unexplained career break, and resumes with a break and brief explanation that they left the labor force to care for children. In each case, though, resumes with just length of experience listed received more invitations to interview than those with dates, with or without a gap.

When tested in other manners, the same pattern held true for both men and women, and for workers with many or with few years of total job experience.

The effect is a result of highlighting the applicant's job experience, not just because the different format is easier to read, according to the authors — Ariella Kristal of Columbia Business School, Leonie Nicks of the Behavioural Insights Team in London, Jamie Gloor of the University of St. Gallen and Oliver Hauser from the University of Exeter Business School.

They also point out there's a lot of advice that puts the onus on job-seekers to keep hiring managers from discriminating against their break, like by having a compelling story about how they stayed "productive" during that time. Other research points to intervention methods like training managers to recognize and address their biases (for example, stereotyping moms as being less committed to their work than dads or child-free workers).

But the study authors wanted to see if removing a point of potential discrimination altogether could lead to positive results for job-seekers. The new tenure format "draws attention to the applicants' job experience while also obfuscating employment gaps by omission."

Of course, hiring bias can still happen at further stages of the interview, they note, but "the powerful, lasting effects of first impressions and the necessity of passing the first gateway to get to the second gateway further underlines the importance of the current research."

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