In 2016, I left my cushy agency job and decided to take a break from the corporate world. By that point I’d saved a comfortable amount of money and thought I’d take a few months to be funemployed and then freelance, potentially forever.
10 months later, I decided it was time to return to salaried work and I posted this on my LinkedIn:
After taking a magical career break to work on some personal passion projects, volunteer, and freelance, I'm feeling refreshed and ready to get back into a full-time role. I thought I was done with the agency world, but who am I kidding? I love the hustle.
I'm now looking for opportunities in account services or planning/strategy at an advertising or creative agency in LA. I'm also open to digital, integrated, or brand marketing opportunities at the right company. Let me know if you know of any leads!”
What I didn’t say was that I was down to my last few hundred dollars in my bank account, weighing whether I should move back home with my parents or cash out my credit card points to pay rent.
Why didn’t I feel like I could tell the truth?
There’s a lot of shame around taking extended periods of time off from the workforce. While career experts tell us that it’s ok to have resume gaps, they also say that we should be transparent and have a story to tell - for example caring for a sick family member or traveling the world or going back to school. Something that proves we were still productive members of society.
But what if we don’t have some noble, Pulitzer-worthy story to tell? Is it not enough to accept that sometimes people just need time to get their shit together?
My LinkedIn post did end up helping me land my current job at Edelman, but the feeling of shame I’d gained during my unemployment spell didn’t just wash away after signing my offer letter. By that point I’d submitted many job applications - few of which materialized into interviews. Fear and self-doubt had already become too deeply embedded into my internal monologue. Maybe my prior career success was just a fluke? Maybe I would need to settle for a pay cut and a title demotion? My shame spiraled into a feeling of imposter syndrome that haunted me in my new role, and I felt totally out of my depth my first year at Edelman.
The only reason I feel comfortable sharing all of this now is because I’ve achieved some measure of success since then (and have also gone to a lot of therapy). I’m no longer embarrassed about what I failed to accomplish, because I know that experience helped get me to where I am today.
There is a tremendous amount of personal growth and transformation that happens during one’s resume gaps. During my gap I went through two breakups, took a spontaneous trip to Europe, and enrolled in a Yoga Teacher Training - all of which taught me new tools to protect my physical and mental well-being. And so I argue that our worth should not be measured by our productivity during periods of unemployment, but rather in the lessons we learned that made us better versions of ourselves.
One unintended benefit of the pandemic is that it shattered the facade that we are all high functioning and productive members of society 100% of the time. That’s just not reality. The truth is we are whole humans with a whole range of experiences and emotions that cannot be easily decoupled from the way we show up at work.
As the world slowly returns to some semblance of “normal,” and especially as many people return to the workforce after their own extended absences, I challenge other leaders to use this as an opportunity to practice empathy. Instead of asking people to explain their resume gaps, can we instead ask them what they learned about themselves during this period? How have they grown? Can we offer more grace so that there isn’t an unspoken pressure to pad one’s resume with consulting jobs or freelance gigs that are sometimes just euphemisms for trying to find one’s way (like I have on my resume)?
Imagine if we had the freedom to admit, "yes, I struggled, but now I know myself and feel ready to get back into the world and make an impact” - without fear that it would negatively influence our employability. Imagine if we gave more credit to each other for having the bravery to admit that we are human and have experienced moments of humanity. If we didn’t feel the need to mask the challenges that shaped us, maybe it would make the corporate world a more inviting place to return to and show up as our full selves.
As humans, I think we would all benefit from a world - both corporate and otherwise - that was a little more empathetic.