Hey, a gap on your resume is totally okay

One day I want a mini-retirement. Maybe a year, but six months is fine too. Not working, not starting a new business, just being free. The average workaholic probably gets a burnout at the thought, but it seems like a delight to me. A bit of meditating on a mountain (yes, me too), taking a language course with the locals, being a foster mother at a shelter on a Greek island, and especially seeing the world. Only I'm already a bit afraid of that gaping hole on my CV. Recognizable? LinkedIn thinks this needs to stop.

Puck Landawé (you know, that million for her fortieth) has on her LinkedIn that she was on a Eat, Pray, Love sabbatical for a year. I think that's brilliant and understandable at the same time. I want it too. By the way, 69 percent of working Dutch people have ever taken a break. Some for health reasons, others to travel or just to spend more time with children. All legitimate and thus all temporary.

A gap on your CV used to mean the end of your career. As soon as someone was off for a few months (or a year), the big digging and shuffling began to cover it up. Everything to make it seem like you worked non-stop, without a break and in one go. A bit of living to work indeed. A waste of your time, right? But still, half of the working people think there is a taboo on it.

Individuals who take a break are often people who dare to invest in their own development. You would think this is an asset for your company. Yet directors, managers, and executives do not always see it that way. The chance of ending up on the rejection pile is much greater if you apply after a temporary break. Unnecessary, say experts at LinkedIn, because these are often precisely employees who have a clear idea of what they want to do in life. And honestly, don't you prefer someone who knows what he/she/they want?

The gap on a CV is so much more than just that gap, because it doesn't mean that the person isn't going through development. Research from LinkedIn shows, for example, that for 62 percent it had a positive effect on well-being and many employees become better at creative thinking and time management. So that works much more efficiently as well.

LinkedIn wouldn't be LinkedIn if they didn't come up with something nice for this. Recently, you can use the feature ‘Career Break’. With this break, it's easy to indicate what you developed, learned, and discovered. Because that gap doesn't mean you were just lounging on the beach, although that is of course allowed too. Already looking forward to my mini-retirement.

Source: LinkedIn