LinkedIn has a new feature to record a break in your career. Gaps can be pre-planned, or they may come as a surprise. Prepare an explanation for an interview, as you may be asked, “Why did you leave your last position?” or “Please explain why you were not working between x and y.”

As of March 1st, LinkedIn wants to set the tone that career breaks are normal, as announced by their Product Manager, Camilla Han-He. She wants people to know that there is no stigma in having a gap between work.

Sometimes individuals need to take a break if they have been in a toxic work environment, or they may need time to think and reevaluate their next steps. They may have lost their job due to downsizing, a merger or acquisition, or their industry got hit by the pandemic. Each situation is unique, and no one should jump from the frying pan into the fire.

When you take a break, you can rewrite the narrative and develop a story about how that break helped you in some way and what transferable skills might apply to a new role.

You can add this career break to your profile both on mobile and desktop. The demo of what it looks like on mobile can be seen in this post, along with some suggested courses you can take. There will be a live event on March 11th at noon ET on this topic also.

Here is a list of items you can designate for your career break:

• Bereavement
• Career Transition
• Caregiving
• Full-time Parenting
• Gap Year
• Layoff/position terminated
• Health & well-being
• Personal Goal Pursuit
• Professional Development
• Relocation
• Retirement
• Travel
• Voluntary Work

If you decide to take a break to upskill or reskill, you might want to check out Linkedin’s Future of Skills on their Github.

Read a previous article on Conquer the Employment Gap on Your Resume and Linkedin Profile to garner other ideas.

If you need a resume or LinkedIn profile to get you to your next step, book a call to chat!

Missed the previous article, “The Great Reshuffle To or From the World of Education”?

NEXT STEPS

• Subscribe to my newsletter on LinkedIn for bright ideas to manage your career.

• Join as a member at https://greatcareers.org/membership of the #1 business networking association on the Philadelphia Business Journal’s Book of Lists two years in a row! Please note that we changed our website URL since the last article I wrote and it is correctly listed here without the “phl.”

• Register on the events page for these upcoming online events noted below.

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• 3/7 Mon – Career Success Group
• 3/7 Mon – Being Seen as Credible: 5 Day Challenge Day 1
• 3/8 Tues – Business Executives Networking Group (BENG) Atlanta
• 3/8 Tues – Rejection to Redirection: Instant Power of Subconscious Mindset
• 3/8 Tues – Business Executives Networking Group Chester County, PA
• 3/8 Tues – Being Seen as Credible: 5 Day Challenge Day 2
• 3/9 Wed – PowerThinking: Rejuvenating Your Amazing Mind Weekly Resilience Building Call-In
• 3/9 Wed – Build Your Professional Brand On LinkedIn
• 3/9 Wed – Being Seen as Credible: 5 Day Challenge Day 3
• 3/10 Thurs – Career Success Group
• 3/10 Thurs – Career Panel
• 3/11 Fri – Interviewing Techniques
• 3/11 Fri – Leveraging Training, Mentoring, *& Coaching to Boost Your Search Results
• 3/12 Sat – Refining Old Job Search Tools for New Environments
• 3/14 Mon – Get Hired FASTER with Networking & LinkedIn