CVs are starting to look different after the pandemic, following the furlough scheme and businesses making redundancies. Katie Underhill, Client Services Manager at leading employment screening provider Accurate Background, looks at why more people are now taking career gaps and employers’ attitudes towards them.
Career gaps are becoming more commonplace on CVs, especially since the pandemic, which led to a near quadrupling of reported weekly redundancies over the course of 2020. More people are taking voluntary breaks to travel, for personal projects, or to spend extended time with family. We’re also seeing more individuals undertaking contract and temporary work and moving roles more frequently due to the challenges in today’s rapidly changing job market.
At Accurate, more than half (53%) of all candidates screened in the last 12 months have career gaps on their CVs; of those gaps, 50% are for six months or longer. Any stigma there used to be around taking a career break is certainly changing, and employers appear more open-minded about accepting them, provided that the candidate is open about what they were doing during this time.
Who needs to carry out career gap analysis?
Regulated sectors and professional services, such as finance and legal, are required to verify what a potential candidate was doing during certain time periods out of employment, including career breaks, but this won’t necessarily prohibit regulated employers from hiring someone with gaps on their CV. Instead, evidence will be required to demonstrate what an individual was doing during any periods they may have been out of employment, and this requirement is not expected to change any time soon.
If you compare this approach with other industry sectors, there is a distinct difference in the level of verification required for periods of unemployment. Some organisations tend to use screening to solely verify a candidate’s previous employment activity and experience, rather than focus on any career gaps they may have.
In such industries, this relaxed approach enables employers to ramp up their staffing levels swiftly – for example, during the festive period when retailers are looking for seasonal staff. When it comes to screening in these situations, employers tend to give more weight to social media and adverse media checks, rather than examining any gaps in employment a candidate might have on their CV.
The candidate experience of screening career gaps
From the candidate side, the process can feel intrusive when they are being asked to evidence their gaps in employment, especially if they aren’t used to this in the screening process. In some cases, we’ve seen candidates fill these gaps with details which may not truly reflect what they did during this time, fearful that the truth (such as travelling) might be frowned upon by prospective employers who are looking for career-driven candidates. However, we would always recommend candidates remain open and transparent, and add details of any career gaps within their CVs; this will ease the recruitment process and allow the employer to have an open discussion during the interview process.
It’s also important that potential employees are mindful that the most successful approach to hiring is to make decisions based upon the candidate’s skills and qualifications that are relevant to the role at hand, alongside any previous experience; and that an employer’s primary concern is to find candidates truly capable of carrying out the job advertised.
How does Accurate carry out gap analysis?
As the negative connotations of taking a career break ease, we are also seeing an increase in businesses accepting HMRC records to validate a candidate’s employment history, as they can use this information to verify when an individual was paid at each organisation they have been employed at, as well as periods when a person has received government support during career gaps. There is a lot of interest from clients in using this direct source data; it is simple for a candidate to freely opt to provide such information, which speeds up the time to hire, and often allows the candidate to commence their role whilst the full screening process takes place in the background.
So, as we look to the future, we believe that the stigma around career gaps will continue to decrease. We see that employers are primarily focused on a candidate’s experience and qualifications to see if they are suitable for the role before hiring them – which, we would argue, is a far more important and relevant consideration.
If you’d like to discuss identifying and verifying any gaps in your candidates’ CVs, chat to us at UKEnquiries@accurate.com.
