For Untapped Talent, Hire Moms and Others with Resume Gaps

By Indeed Editorial Team

When Swati Sinha had her daughter 14 years ago, she planned on taking two years off from work. But as a military spouse whose husband was away half the time, Swati couldn’t find adequate child care that would allow her to go back to work. The writer and editor was unemployed for five years.

“It created gaps in my resume,” Swati, 40, says. “Working at home with a toddler was a struggle. I never really did go back into the newsroom or into a true communications position full time.”

Years later, Swati has her own business as a freelancer (or “consultant,” as she was advised to say to seem more professional). “I would love to be someplace more permanently — remote, hybrid or in the office,” she says. But the only jobs she’s been offered have been at entry level rates.

Millions of Indians have experienced gaps in their employment, including those taking time off to care for children or sick or elderly relatives and people with health challenges or who have been laid off. In March 2023, India's labour markets deteriorated. 7.8% was added to the unemployment rate in March, which was 7.5% in February. According to CMIE managing director Mahesh Vyas, this has a compounding effect because the labour force participation rate also decreased at the same time, from 39.9 to 39.8 percent.

For employers seeking to be more inclusive or struggling to hire in fields from health care to hospitality, people with resume gaps are an important source of untapped talent. They can help replace the millions of baby boomers who are exiting the labour force internationally; the working-age population is set to shrink over the coming decade in countries including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. 

People who are unemployed or underemployed and are often passed over in hiring. Yet organisations that hire them get a return on investment: however companies that hire untapped hidden workers are less likely to experience talent and skill shortages. Former hidden workers also outperform their peers on attitude and work ethic, productivity, quality of work, engagement, attendance and innovation.

Here’s how companies can tap into this essential talent pool.

Begin at the Beginning: The Job Description

Hidden workers can fall through the cracks at the start: the job posting itself. Are you using language that might discourage groups of workers you actually want to attract? Terms like “rock star,” “superhero,” “guru” and “ninja” can prevent women from clicking on a job listing, as Indeed’s sibling company Glassdoor points out. A cliché like “work hard, play hard” could be seen as code for after-hours bar nights, a potential turnoff to parents. 

When companies screen qualified people out of the hiring process or overlook their potential because they don’t currently have a job, it’s a lose-lose situation, both for motivated job seekers and for the companies that could benefit most from their talent and skills. 

Focus on Transferable Skills

From stay-at-home parents who raised funds for their children’s schools to caretakers who honed their compassion and interpersonal skills while assisting aging relatives, people with gaps in their resumes often have transferable skills.

Maternity may be one of the happiest times in a woman's life, but for some, it has a negative impact on her work. The online poll, Second Careers of Women Professionals-The India Story, was a component of Viewport 2019, an annual study by Avtar. With an average work experience of nine and a half years and an average career hiatus of four and a half years, it was done among 783 second-career women from diverse sectors across India. The results of the poll showed that, due to the presence of the "motherhood wage penalty," which refers to mothers experiencing wage and hiring disadvantages in the workplace, the majority of respondents (69%) anticipate a pay cut upon re-entry. The most prevalent reasons for women to leave their jobs are motherhood problems (45%) and pregnancy (35%). According to the same report, one of the top three major obstacles for women in second careers is a lack of support at home (23%) which is among the issues faced by women returning to the workforce. The other top two impediments, according to 59% and 36% of respondents, are a lack of a strong network and a talent gap.

Even though the women claim they worked to update their skills while on leave and to keep up with technological advancements and other developments in their fields, approximately 70% of Indian women in the formal workforce who left their jobs for family reasons are currently finding it difficult to reenter the workforce. According to the survey, which was conducted by workplace diversity consultancy Avtar Group, 69% of those surveyed anticipate a pay decrease when they relaunch their careers.

Prepare Your Workforce

After hiring people who have an employment gap, it is essential to integrate them — for example, pairing them with mentors and support groups. And prepare your existing employees to welcome them. Encourage others to share their stories of past resume gaps, and make sure the team understands the business case for hiring people who’ve had time out of the workforce.

The pandemic has transformed how organizations and employees view work and hiring. “We had all these constraints in our head, and then they all got blown away,” says Lisa Ramirez, Senior Vice President of Operations at Indeed, noting that everyone had to rethink everything, from the need to be on-site or work traditional 9 to 5 hours, to which candidates could fill open roles. “A lot of these things are constraints that we built into our heads about the way the world works, but maybe it turns out that nothing’s actually a constraint.”