https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/linkedin-career-breaks
LinkedIn announced that it is adding new job title options to reflect career breaks for professionals. After two years of pandemic parenting gaps and career shifts, users expressed a need for new job descriptions that better describe the pauses in their careers.
There are 13 new career breaks members of the site can now add to their profiles, including things like caregiving, career transition, bereavement, layoff or position eliminated, personal goal pursuit and voluntary work. There’s even an option for a health and well-being break.
While the company had already introduced “stay-at-home mom,” “stay-at-home dad” and “stay-at-home parent” as official titles, the latest addition adds more nuance to the resume gap. LinkedIn found that career gaps spiked 39% year-over-year in 2020. Hiring managers’ view of a career gap as a red flag has changed, too: 79% of hiring managers now say they would hire a candidate with a career gap on their resume, according to LinkedIn.
“The world of work is just changing,” said Camilla Han-He, a senior project manager of Profile and Identity Products at LinkedIn. “More and more people are looking for more flexibility, whether it’s their work arrangement or how they plan out their career trajectory. A lot of people we see are becoming more open to taking a different path and including thoughtful life experience as part of that narrative as well.”
Han-He told Protocol she anticipates this shift in acceptance of the career break is here to stay. “We started seeing these trends even before the pandemic,” she said.