Ahhhh, but at what time? Your new position probably started at 8 am on 4/1, so from midnight to 8, you were at your previous position.
So:
Assistant to the Regional Manager: January, 20xx to April, 2022
Regional Manager: April, 2022 to Present.
.
I guess I was overthinking it.
But my solution allows you the joy of over-thinking it!
I’ve been self-employed pretty much my whole working life, so I guess I wonder – why would any employer care about this? “Hey, I just wanted a couple months to chill and relax before starting a new job.” “Cool.” Like what bad mark is this supposed to leave? Are most people expected to work non-stop through their lives without any gaps? I mean, I guess I could understand asking about a 3-year gap in employment history, but a few months? Why would that even raise an eyebrow?
If it’s the most recent three months, and you are currently unemployed, I’ll probably ask about it. But I agree, if I noticed a gap of a couple of months on a resume, a couple of years ago, I doubt I’d care one way or the other.
I did have an interesting chat with a job applicant about his time in seminary. I didn’t bring it up – honest – back off, HR, it was what he was doing with his time, and he introduced it. But actually, it was interesting that a guy had studied to be a rabbi, and then decided to hang it up and become an actuary.
Sure. I can see asking about it. But how does the answer: “Eh… I just wanted to spend a few months off of work enjoying my life” come across? That’s kind of what I’m getting at: are you expected to have gapless employment?
No, I’m not. I have lots of friends who have taken time off. I mentored a young actuary who left to take a year off and travel around the world. But i would hope you have a better answer than, “my prior employer fired me, and i haven’t been able to find another job.” I mean, even if that’s true, you should be able to spin it better than that.
The problem is, to a HR person/hiring manager, they can’t distinguish between “this person wasn’t trying to look for a job” with “this person tried as hard as they could to look for a job and nobody would give them one”.
If their baseline assumption of you is the former, then they’ll believe you when you said you were taking a break and it won’t count as a ding. If their baseline assumption is the latter, they’re going to assume you’re using a white lie to cover a gap in your resume and other HMs were passing on you for some reason.
The more the balance of power is on the candidate’s side, the more they’ll believe the former which is why like, data scientists can feel free to take months off between jobs but corporate drone types feel a strong pressure to never have a gap on their resume.
I agree. And if an HR department doesn’t understand, one might want to stay away from them.
Anyhow, getting and starting a job in a month or less is very fast for any high level job. (Obviously not for burger flippers.) If I even drew the wrong conclusion about the gap, I’d think the person must be in high demand and interview very well.
I’m glad the OP is no longer worried.
Yeah but if they did ask, you’d have one helluva story to tell!
In fact, you’d WANT them to ask about that gap. Hopefully you brought home some of that debris?
I did!
It all depends on the industry, I supposed. In my previous field, the industry was small and outsiders needed to be hired and trained, which took a yearish. And since it was Japan, people tended to stay a lot longer in the same company so generally , people were staying for five to ten years.
Like anything else, it just depends on the industry. If everyone in the industry is changing jobs every one to two years, then obviously it’s not a bad sign.
I think to some extent that’s going to depend on how long the break is and what kind of job it is. When I was working, I never encountered a resume with a real “break” - ending one job in March 2022 and starting the next in April 2022 is very likely to be either the OPs situation or something similar where there is maybe a 2 week break.
But since I worked at a government agency and the resumes I reviewed were for people who primarily worked in government jobs it would have been very unusual for there to be say, a two or three month break. At least in my area - but that was for reasons specific to government jobs in my area and field including little or no flexibility in start date.
You don’t want to know.
:: shudder ::
(It’s a Noodle Incident)
It depends if the new jobs are lateral moves or effective promotions. My son-in-law has been moving every three years or so and doing quite well. It appears to be a lot more common now than it was in my day. Not surprising given that internal raises so puny and the market is so hot.
I think there’s probably also some interplay between a series of 1-2 year jobs and gaps on a resume. A person who keeps getting new jobs while still employed at the old one might just be a hot commodity, getting head-hunted or poached or whatever. A person who puts in the better part of a decade at each job and takes a year off in between to travel or start a family seems like a steady person who gives a job their all and then plans some time off to live their life. But a person who works one job for a year, and then is unemployed for months, and then has another job for 18 months, then another few months of not working, etc., over and over, might just be a mess everywhere they go.
Excellent points. I screen carefully when I see job hopping.
It depends on industry. Here in Silicon Valley tech, unfortunately job hopping is not uncommon.
Well unfortunately Silicon Valley tech has brought that on itself by treating every job as disposable and transitory.
Including, sometimes, within themselves. There’s a major tech company which encourages its people to job-hop within departments and looks askance at anyone who has been performing the same function for more than two years; they consider such a person to have stagnated and label them unambitious, whereas someone who’s actively pursuing new opportunities within the company is vigorous and valuable. It’s very strange.
I’m guessing that they’ve never added up the cost of continually training people to do new jobs.
My company has a culture of encouraging people to apply to different departments; but for most jobs, one of the requirements is that you’ve been in your current position for 6-12 months, depending on the specific position. Plus, many jobs have at least a few things in common, so it’s not like an internal applicant has to learn everything from scratch.
That’s my concern too. After 6 months you’ve basically just learned the job and you’re starting to be productive. I encourage people to grow and advance, but I want some production out of you before I’ll support and encourage that transfer. Generally, 2 years.
My concern is that after 6 months, I’ve mastered the job and am now ready to stretch into a role with greater responsibility with a title and comp befitting my newfound expertise!
I think what’s truly important is to not have the most competitive thing about your resume being the right cadence of job tenures and (no) gaps.