Eager Cheetah asked
answered 5h ago
Hi Philip,
About a year ago, my family and I moved to a new city because my husband was asked to relocate for a new job. Around the same time, we also welcomed our toddler, so I made the decision to step away from my tech career and dedicate my time to my family and the move.
Now that it has been about a year, I’m ready and excited to return to the tech industry. However, getting back into the job market has been much harder than I expected, especially as a mom returning after a career break.
I’m not sure how best to address the one-year gap on my resume. I’ve applied to many positions, practiced extensively for interviews, and reached out to people for referrals, but I’m still not getting phone screens or interviews. At this point, I’m wondering if the career gap is making it difficult for recruiters to consider my applications.
Honestly, I’m at a stage where I’m not sure how to navigate this or what I should be doing differently. I’d really appreciate any advice or perspective you might have on how I can position myself and successfully make this transition back into tech.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.
Philip's answer
I'm so sorry to hear you've had such a hard time getting back into the workforce.
This is an especially hard time to rejoin. The past year or so has been the first time in my professional life where I have a few friends, each with 20+ years of experience, each looking for jobs for over 9 months without landing one. Each of them has had plenty of FAANG experience, so I don't think it's just about their qualifications.
Although it's impossible to know, my intuition is that what you're experiencing isn't because you've had a gap in your employment (especially in your case, where you've been on parental leave, which is totally understandable). At least in all the times I've hired people personally (and I've interviewed over a thousand people), I've never considered gaps in employment problematic unless it felt related to poor performance. What I can't speak to is whether modern hiring/filtering tools might take gaps into account... but even there, I tend to doubt it. I suspect what you're experiencing is, for better or worse, a reflection of how hard it is in general to get a job in the current market.
My advice:
You've not become a worse employee. A gap for parental leave is completely healthy and admirable.
While awaiting callbacks and interviews, build with the latest AI tools and get very good at the latest approaches. Read up on new developments. Try things yourself. You have a huge edge right now that others in jobs don't have, which is the freedom to explore whatever technology you want. Use this to your advantage.
In a tight job market, employers start biasing toward false negatives. Not being called back or not passing interviews isn't an indictment on you. Keep the faith and be prepared to take many shots at goal before something sticks.
You can do this. My sincere hope is that you land something great soon.