Instead, people should be allowed to list experiences that are relevant to the position. And then it is also fine to say, that one has worked for X years on something. But anything that is not related to the job should not be necessary to share.
Having been on the receiving end of a lot of CVs I can’t say that I expect any particular structure.
A CV is just like “technical specifications”. As long as it honesty tries to convey wether you are worth my time to evaluate for a particular role you can structure it anyway you like.
Things you are allowed to do +1
Thanks. Even though you are the first person who tells me this. Plenty of career workshops say the opposite.
Hiring managers and recruiters are just people, looking for other people to give jobs to. However you convince them to do it is what works.
You can’t possibly interview everyone who applied, so you have to filter. Sometimes it’s easy (eg you’re hiring a senior but the candidate has only 2 yrs experience) but that’s rare. You have to develop more filters, or you’ll drown.
If I see a resume with a recent gap, it presents a question: What’s up? Why was this person not employed? There are many reasons, many not good. So I’ll pass, there are many other resumes without this problem.
Doing your own thing doesn’t mean there needs to be a gap. Write what you did! Call it a Startup or Startup Explorations. Talk about the idea, the tech, the UX, the marketing, all of it. This will show that you’re a self starter, a problem solver. Leaving the years empty doesn’t show any of that.
Let me leave you with this pragmatic thought: We can argue here if chronological resumes are good or bad, and what we should have instead. In the real world, that doesn’t matter because everybody else is submitting a resume, and you want yours to stand out for the better, not for worse.
I work to live, not live to work.
In our case we have a fast moving project and so need people with specific skill sets. So having the right skill set has much greater weight than a CV gap.
TBF I would want to know what happened if you are just coming back into the market after a year or more, but if you have one gap is a year or so back and you've been working since, I don't see how that is a problem. I'd be more worried about someone who had no gap but never held a job down for more than 6 months.
Its true that if you are hiring a bunch of common roles you need to filter the CVs somehow.
I’m honest about what I did during any lengthy leave of work.
I’ve experienced no company loyalty so I give none. It’s a contract, an agreement, nothing more. I always will emphasize my talents and skills and explain how that fits into the role I’m seeking. 90% of the time this works but occasionally there’s someone who thinks it’s career suicide to leave a job before 10 years.
They are mostly boomers.