A hole in the resume indicates that you're not prepared to volunteer an answer to the question "what were you doing?".
You'd be better off adding an entry to honestly say, "Backpacked through Asia", or "Recuperated from significant physical health issue", or "Caregiver for unwell family member" or "Mental health break following death of partner" or "Citizen journalist and volunteer" or whatever. That at least shows, 1) you're not hiding something, 2) you may have broader horizons than your peer applicants. At least, it would kick off a conversation (which ideally, you're prepared to have) around this thing you've done. If you can highlight how it may have strengthened the qualities you bring to the role, then it may end up as a net positive.
Makes sense, though I guess I don't understand why a hiring decision-maker wouldn't just ask an otherwise good candidate, "Hey, what's up with 2010 to 2012?"
Do hiring people (HR, managers, etc) tend to assume the worst of people?
I've hired a few people in my career, though never with any sort of restrictions placed upon me. I guess it would not have occurred to me that a resume lacking a perfectly recorded timeline of work-age experiences should be a disqualifier.
I suppose this idea that a gap in a resume is bad is pervasive in modern HR departments?
I'm sure it depends on industry, level of job, availability of candidates, etc, of course; but otherwise, this is the mainstream thought?
I have at times gone for years of just fucking around with nothing noteworthy to declare on my CV, and I've never had a difficult time getting hired. Maybe it's not as big of a deal in my fields. I guess the only jobs where I've worked for Faceless Megacorp are ones right after I earned various degrees, so a resume gap wouldn't have come up then. Still, I've never been questioned about my resume timeline in 25 years of working, so the idea just seems a little strange to me.
It makes me a little sad for people, in a way. Everybody should be able to fuck around for a while if they want to.
I think it's a bigger issue because there's no mention of anything beyond that year; even if you didn't work past that year, the resume should have something mentioned about more recent years.
Also, if I was hiring someone in tech and they took a break for 4 years without coding in between, that would definitely be an issue since any skill, experience, knowledge, etc could be rendered useless if not consistently practiced or used.
