[osolo]

I wouldn’t do that. Let me explain this from the perspective of a hiring manager. For a compelling position, it’s not unheard of to get 100 resumes per one spot (the ratio for my positions about 1:85). That’s a lot of resumes to go through. Often you’re hiring multiple people, so there are literally hundreds of resumes!

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.

[joeman1000]

What’s up? Maybe they just needed a break and/or they’ve been ill or burnt out. This doesn’t mean they’re useless.

[sokoloff]

I agree with you, but it’s quite easy to see how any of those could be seen as a negative by a prospective employer.

[ajb]

Well I too am a hiring manager. We get a lot of resume's but most are eliminated for just plain not being a good match to the job description.

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.

[gabereiser]

If a gap causes you to pass, I’ll pass too… thanks.

I work to live, not live to work.

[gxnxcxcx]

A recent gap might be the firewall that prevents burnout. You're self-selecting into a higher chance of imminent burnout.