Gaps in one’s CV are well known to be hugely damaging to the prospects of landing a job. Research from Columbia Business School explored some practical ways that this can be overcome.
The researchers worked with over 9,000 job vacancies and found that applicants were 8% more likely to get a call back from the employer when they included previous employment history with the number of years worked at each employer rather than the specific dates. Indeed, listing the total years of employment experience boosted the chance of a callback by 15% compared to those with a visible employment gap on their CV.
“Our intervention helping people return to work after a prolonged unemployment spell is not only critical for working mothers but has also shown promise for men and women alike, both with and without employment gaps,” the researchers explain.
Employment prospects
The study involved an experiment conducted in a real-world setting with real employers. The employment prospects of job-seeking mothers were compared to a control group.
The comparison found that when CVs were redesigned to display the number of years the applicant had worked for, it gave them a better chance of securing a callback than adopting a more traditional format with dates of employment on. What’s more, these results endured both with and without an employment gap, and even when any employment gaps were explained by explaining that the applicant became a full-time mother.
The technique also applied to others with employment gaps, as the findings were replicated for male job seekers, with the approach effective regardless of whether the applicants had 5 or 15 years’ worth of experience.
“The results of our field experiment offer applicants a promising and effective strategy to overcome barriers to work re-entry,” the researchers explain. “While the onus should not be on unemployed applicants to prevent bias against them, there is plenty of evidence to suggest job applicants with employment gaps face lower employment prospects.”
“We found that by replacing the standard employment dates on the résumé with the length of time of employment applicants are highlighting their experience to prospective employers, thus eliminating employment gap penalties that hinder these applicants’ advancement beyond the first gateway of the selection process.”
The researchers believe that their findings demonstrate a low-cost and practical way of counteracting stereotypes and biases during the recruitment process by focusing the attention of recruiters on the accumulated experience of candidates rather than any employment gaps.
“Hiring managers can add this intervention to their toolbox of ‘debiasing’ strategies (that is, by explicitly requesting that all résumés be submitted with years instead of dates), just as ‘blinding’ résumés has become commonplace in many settings,” they conclude.
