Gap on your resume? Here's what to do.

We are excited because we have a new format today. We are transitioning this into a podcast. And so what we're going to do is gather questions throughout the week. I'm usually going to talk about maybe a certain type of a topic and then answer some questions. And Allison, you are going to make me go deeper on those questions.

Let's do it.

Our topic today, the thing that people really wanted to know initially was about career gaps and how to sort of message career gaps. And I think that's a really important topic because almost nobody has a totally linear career and also things happen in people's lives. It also is totally appropriate to take some time for yourself, especially kind of after school and things like that. I wish I wish I had traveled, I wish I had gone someplace and saw something and done something a little bit differently. But then there's a challenge of how do you message that you know, or if you take a break to care for a family member, be a parent, things like that. So I know an other industries that can be challenging, but it's very challenging in biotech because people leave the bench and then employers figure you're rusty and you don't have like the skills anymore or you can't pipette like you've forgotten how. So it's challenging and I think it's something that people worry about.

Yeah, I agree with that. I do think that we're seeing more of a shift towards understanding that life happens, that things happen, pandemics happen, people lose their jobs. I mean the expectation that people now have a 30 year career, that there's no gaps in employment, I think has radically shifted. So I do think that there's a little bit more fear on the candidate side than is necessarily warranted because I think more hiring managers are understanding of what happens. So to set the stage, it's definitely something to consider. You want to have good messaging, but it's not, it's not going to stop you from getting a job at this stage.

Absolutely not. And I think along those same lines are career shifts also I think we can talk about messaging for both of those things. Partly it's we have to stay positive in our messaging. So what I hear a lot of people come into my office hours, for instance, and say are kind of painting themselves in a negative light, like, well, I don't have XYZ skill or I did take a break and saying it in sort of a way that sounds negative when it doesn't have to be negative. And in fact we can absolutely message that it's a marketing problem. It's just how do you market yourself and how do you make that sound exciting? So let's do a few examples. I was thinking about, you know, taking a career gap, maybe to travel. That's something that some of our earlier stage candidates have done. If I came into an interview, Alison, and you asked me about my career gap, you know, I would say something along the lines of, I had an adventure, and it really opened my eyes to what the world has to offer, and it made me so excited to come back and make an impact. Yes, you took a break, but what did you learn?

Well, also, we live in a global economy. Right. So, yep, I wanted to experience other cultures. I wanted to expand my worldview. Those are all positive things. Now, on a personal note, and I am not, as many people here know, I am not a scientist, so I'm an operations person. But I did that actually. So I actually got my master's degree and graduated in 2008, 2009, which was a terrible time to try to get a job. So I did take advantage of a program where I was able to go to Australia and I was able to work over there. But it's a very cool visa program. I'm happy to give people more information, if it even still exists. But the way I messaged it when I came back, because I was very concerned, was there wasn't an opportunity for me at the time. So I decided to go expand my horizons. I took advantage of where I knew I could find work. Maybe it wasn't exactly in line with what my initial goals had been, but it was a really good opportunity that I wouldn't have had otherwise. So there are ways to navigate those challenges. And then it's a hockey point, because if you make it positive, people are like, oh, well, what'd you do? I did this thing. And now those are positive examples. Right? We're talking about traveling. We're talking about doing something cool. There's a lot of reasons why, unfortunately, people take time off, and it's negative. And it's very hard to spin. I was a caregiver as a positive thing, because it's not easy. It's really challenging. So what if it's something that's not positive?

Yeah, it is more challenging, but you probably learned something during that time. And I think that's really the way to spin it around and say, I was a caregiver for a family member. Let's say it was an aging parent. Let's say it was a child. Either way, you have to take that time and that is important time. But what were the skills you learned? You probably learned deeply organization skills for the household. You learned a whole new aspect of budgeting, of finances, things like that, that maybe would, if you're going into a scientific role, you can think about. Well, I was never exposed to budgeting previously, and I really had to take that into account. And I think about that in terms of budgeting for projects now. And I'm really interested in making sure that I understand budgets for our different R and D programs so that I can make sure that I'm maximizing those. Those sorts of transferable skills. You know, you don't know those until you have to live them.

You know, I would also say what's interesting is just, I was just reading that the Merriam Webster dictionary, you know, word of the year is authentic. So, like, be authentic. Just explain what your reasoning was for, you know, whatever the gap in employment is to the extent that you want to. And then also be authentic about why you're excited about this opportunity now. Like, have you spent time thinking like, oh, I'm so excited to get back into this because X, Y and Z share your authentic self. Because that's really, even according to the dictionary, what everyone wants to hear about.

And I always say, biotechs are made up of human beings, and you may really resonate with someone else's human experience. So if you're authentic and you bring your full self and your experience, they may go, oh my gosh, the same thing happened to me. Or they may really deeply connect with you in that interview process. And you wouldn't have had that opportunity to connect if you hadn't ever brought that story, that authentic self. So it is. It is a challenge. But it's a challenge in that we just need to figure out for each job what are the transferable skills that you could bring while you sort of tell your story.

Yeah, the pandemic taught us one thing. It's that people now have a much deeper understanding that work life is really not separate. Those two things are very entwined. And sometimes life is a. You know, life takes over, sometimes work takes over, and it's that balancing act.

Everyone understands that just to caveat all of this, you do not need to share personal details during an interview if you don't want to. And in fact, there are some things you shouldn't share. So if you ever want to go deeper on that, come into the Slack community. We can talk about what you should and shouldn't share in an interview, but what's in the Past and what you did in those breaks and things like that, that's usually fair game. You don't need to give specifics though, if it's not pertinent to the job or if you think it might hurt your chances at landing the job. So just to caveat all of that, we have gotten quite a few questions in the past week or so about salaries. And I think people are really wondering where they can even find salary information. So I have bad news on this. There is no good single source of truth for most people. If you're not in a talent acquisition or an HR career where you have access to this data, it's really challenging to find. And we have a lot of people who go to Glassdoor and that, I'm not going to say don't do that. That's really your best option. But it's not a good option because everyone self reports on Glassdoor. Like take Scientist for example. The title scientist means something different in different companies. In some companies that may be a non PhD level person, where that equivalent title might be research associate. Other companies. In some companies that scientist title might be a very senior person. And so what you get are these really wide salary bands. It's like scientists, you could expect anywhere from 80 to $180,000. It's really not helpful to most people. It also doesn't tell you how many years of experience somebody had, what degrees they had. So you really can't compare there. And it's, it is broken up geographically, but not well. So again, even in different parts of San Francisco, for instance, you'll see different salaries. Alison, were you surprised that Glassdoor is a, is a bad option or have you heard that before?

A big thing is that when people self report their salaries, a lot of times they're not taking into account the benefits as well. There's total comp in their salary. So that's another thing to think about. And that's something that sometimes the salary number might be lower, but your benefits are so awesome that you know if you're not making total comp. So yes, I've definitely heard that before to answer your question.

Yeah, and I think too the intangibles, the different cultures, you have the same salary at two different companies, but one offers you a lot more flexibility and what's that worth to you? Or you might have a lower salary at that company with more flexibility, but you think that's great, I'm willing to take that. So it's kind of a personal choice as well. I always think for individuals the Best thing you can do is to get really deep into your LinkedIn network. Now, this doesn't happen overnight, but if you have been diligent about building your LinkedIn network like I tell people to do, then when you do go to apply for jobs, maybe in a new area, you will be able to reach out to folks that are in your network that are in similar roles and ask about their experience. You don't want to just come out and say, what are you making? But you can get there through a discussion. You can say, hey, I'm moving to X City. I'm going to start. I'm looking for scientist roles. I see that you're a scientist there. Could you tell me about your experience? Do you have any tips, tricks for me? And sort of five or six messages in maybe you get down to the compensation question.

Because another thing to think about, and we have seen this, people will accept a job offer without having researched the area. And so then they are just shocked by how sensitive it is to live in Cambridge or Boston. And they realize they're going to have to live way far out of the city because the rents are just so much more than wherever they were coming from. You have to do your own research as well. Like before you accept a salary for anything, do your research. I talk to people on LinkedIn, but also think about what do you need to live a life that you're comfortable with. And those numbers have to align.

There's some good calculators online that will tell you the difference in cost of living. But to Allison's point, it's not just dollars. It's also what your creature comforts are. If you're moving from a less expensive area and you're used to having a house with a yard because you have dogs and you want to have a walkable neighborhood, knowing that while the cost of living may be one thing between areas, if you want that in Boston, you're going to be paying an extreme premium, or you're going to be living really, really far out of the city and your commute time is going to be impacted. So there's so many considerations there.

Not every city has great public transportation. So if you are coming from a place with great public transportation, you may find that now you're looking at a car paying for parking. I remember when I took a city job, I was shocked at how expensive parking was because. And if it's not covered by the company that's coming out of your paycheck. So there's a lot of factors to think about.

Yeah, so this is a huge non answer to this question, but I think it really depends. I think it's going to come down to your network. And the other thing is that in our accelerator program, if you do want to go deeper with us, we have these, some of these tools, so we're able to actually look up some salary bands. Now, again, this does not take into account all of the things we just mentioned about commuting and whether you want a yard and all these things, but it will at least give you an idea. We are able to access those HR tools that give us a deeper understanding into the salaries in different areas. So that's something we're happy to share with folks in our accelerator community.

One thing I see online, people are really frustrated by, they have the, you know, initial phone screen with a recruiter or the interviewer, they have an interview, they go down the path, and no one is being transparent about what the numbers are. When is it appropriate to say, like, hey, I really need to know, like, before we go down this entire interview path, when can I even ask about, is this in line with my salary expectations?

Yeah, I just flip it right around. If I were a candidate, I would give my salary expectations within the first call with that recruiter because the recruiter knows what the bands are. And I'm always so appreciative when a candidate's really upfront about that and they say, hey, you know, I've done my research and this is what, this is what I'm looking for in my next move. And then it can be a more candid conversation. Let's say the band, the salary ban for a scientist in Boston is around 120,000 midpoint. So if they come in and they say, well, I'm looking for 150,000, and I know that's outside of the range of the job, it's a much easier jumping off point. There are so many considerations when we actually go to make an offer. So it's hard for us at that first conversation to give a firm number, but we can definitely chat about it if you're outside of the range. And that is so impactful for candidates because it lets you opt out or in really early in the process. And it also is helpful for the company because if we're getting that feedback early on and we get that from several candidates, it's a nice opportunity to say, hey, maybe the market's moved here. Maybe we need to bring in a comp expert for the whole company to, like, see where things are. And we've done that. Before with our clients, too. It's very common to renegotiate sort of the internal comp of companies. So share it. Be transparent. You don't have to. Again, going back to what you do and do not need to share in interviews, you never need to share your comp, your current comp, or any past compensation numbers. But you can share what you're looking for.

Yeah, that's great advice.

Another really good question. And we get this a lot. People will say, I've applied for X number of jobs, and I'm not hearing back, you know, what's the problem? So I think of both recruiting and applications as funnels. You are going to apply for more jobs than you're going to get. So if you think about that in numbers, it's going to be a funnel shape. You're going to apply for a certain number up here, you're going to get a certain number of interviews. You're going to end up accepting one job. So what do you want that funnel to look like? And in recruiting, it's the same way when we, when we start recruiting, we expect a certain number of applicants and we funnel down to the person we actually hire. And from a data perspective, we can look at that funnel shape and we can think, is there a problem? Are we seeing a problem in this data? So, Allison, I've talked to you about this before. The leaky funnel where we see candidates leaving our pipeline, I think we just flipped that around for people applying, too. Where are you seeing the problem? And that's the step that you need to work on next. Now, is that all the problems? Probably not, but we can start there.

I guess this is a big question. I don't know how. I don't know how we're going to answer this one. But, you know, right now you have like the LinkedIn Easy apply, right? And people are flinging resumes all over the place.

So what are we considering?

Like, I actually applied to this job. Like, I sat down and I really did the thing. And what number is okay, this is indicative of a problem because, like, let's be honest, if you're really applying to 10 jobs, you're not hearing about 10 jobs. That's probably not a problem. That's probably just. That's probably just math, right? But if you're hitting 100, that's a problem. But if you're hitting 100 on the easy apply, I don't know that the same metrics apply, because that's kind of like just throwing a net out and saying whatever happens, happens. So what are your thoughts around that? I know it's a very convoluted way of asking what's the metric for when there's a problem. But there's kind of a couple factors.

No, it's a great question. And I think that that really, that really hits the nail on the head. There is another challenge beyond LinkedIn Easy Apply that has emerged with all this AI stuff. And it is, there's several bots out there. You can sign up for like 30 bucks a month. One of them is called, actually called Lazy Apply and they will apply for thousands of jobs on your behalf. And so you upload one resume and you put in your standard, you know, bog standard contact information and they will go through and the bot actually is able to go on to like websites and actually fill out applications for you, but they're not customized in any way. So we are getting, I can tell you that I opened a job the other day and before I had even refreshed the page, I had 10 applicants. That's not actually physically possible. There's no way. So those were bots. Clearly by the next day we'd had 210 applicants. And again, that's not actually normal. Before, I mean maybe like three years ago we were expecting maybe 100 applicants in the first week and that was pretty standard. 210 applicants in less than 12 hours is not standard. It's not normal. And so we have to then weed through those. So I can tell you right now that if I'm going to go look at those 210 applicants, I am going to be giving them a glance and I'm going to just see did they even care to customize their, their resume. If they didn't, I'm probably not going to look at them because a few of them will have cared. And those are the ones that I'm going to look at. I'm going to interview 10 candidates out of those 210. So I would have said 10%, but now I'm saying 5%. So that's kind of the numbers that we're looking at on our funnel side. So if you sit down and you follow our methods and you customize your resume and you do it for jobs you know that you are excited about. And this isn't a big lengthy process. The way we teach it, our framework is very simple. So once you have your standard resume, it's really a matter of customizing it for the job description. And we, our template is, our template's a little bit ugly. It's very Simple. So it's not like a pretty picture. It's none of that. It is, it is meant for applicant tracking systems and it is meant for. When a recruiter opens it up, the very first thing they see is why you are perfect for the job. It's one sentence. It's just like, hey, it's me. You're welcome, I'm here. And that is so great for us. So if you do that, you should get about a 10% response rate because of you still have to apply for lots of jobs, but you should not be replying for 100 and not in that way and not getting one. So if you are applying for and really sitting down and customizing your application for each one, and you've applied for six, 80 jobs, this, this most recent question was 80 jobs, and you're not hearing back from any of those. That's a resume problem. Does that mean you don't also have an interview messaging problem? No, but I don't have data for that yet because we haven't even got to that step. So you have to have enough data points to even be able to measure where the problems in your funnel are. So this individual who asked this question has had two. In a few instances, they had a couple of second rounds, first or second round interviews. But that's not even enough data points to know because we typically will interview 10 candidates and one of them is going to get the job. So again, we're looking for that progression. Right? You should be kind of moving Forward at a 10% rate if things are all working really well.

You've done the lazy apply thing, right? You've done the bot. You're like, forget, I'm just going to have this thing, mass apply, and nothing's really tracking. So then you decide, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to do the thing myself. When I do the resume, I'm going to send it in, I'm going to do the applicant, I'm going to do the whole thing. Right, you're going to manage the process. Now, what if the bot has already applied on your behalf? How does that show up on the client side?

Ooh, that's a great question. I hadn't even thought about that. You're already in the system and you're probably already rejected. And so you're updating a rejected application. They're never going to see that again.

Huge concern.

So that is really huge concern. And what's interesting is that with these applicant tracking systems, we can also see we have a full history of A candidate. So if I were to open up a candidate application, I'll be able to see all the jobs they've applied to below. And if they've applied to 15 different jobs, that is going to indicate they're indiscriminate, that are all different. Right. Unless I have 15 of the exact same type of job for different clients open, which is rare, I'm going to look at that candidate and think, okay, they're, they're easy applying. They're bot applying.

Okay, now let's put people's minds at ease, though. Sometimes we have people say, hey, I applied, but I reworked my resume. It's much stronger. Can I reapply with this? Is that like, no, it's too late? Is that like, yes, but reach out directly to the hiring manager.

Yeah, so that's a really good question. And we've been workshopping that a little bit in the accelerator program because some folks have come in having already applied and we've reworked the resume and they're like, oh, I really would rather this resume go into the system, which is fair. And so what we, what we teach is to work in conjunction with your applications by networking on LinkedIn. So if you do want to reapply as you're networking on LinkedIn, I would try and network and we can help find people that you should be networking with and say, hey, I applied for this little while ago, but I have an updated resume. You know, how should I send that in? There's often, like, there's often an email address you can find on the, on the website. You could send it in that way, but you do want to flag it in some, some way that it's a brand new resume. Because these applicant tracking systems are meant to decrease our workload so they auto merge candidates. When new applicants come in, it just kind of updates. So your new resume will be the most recent resume document that people see, but we won't see it if we've already rejected you.

And now I guess what's interesting is if you have a bot. Sorry, we're totally chasing this thread now.

I love this because this is all new technology and it is really wild.

Well, so my question, and I don't know because I haven't used this, but does the bot generate a list for you of like, I've applied to these 5,000 jobs on your behalf so that you could even scan through and be like, oh, you've applied to XYZ company. Oh, I should follow up personally with hiring managers. How are you going to know I.

Have no idea how that works. I read about it the other day in an article and it was so interesting because I read about it and I was like, well that sounds terrible. This is going to be awful. And then I posted that job and got all those out and I was like, oh, okay, this is the bot in action. This is horrible. And it just means that our workload. I can envision a time when there's, there's going to be an arms race, right, of AI. Our applicant tracking systems are going to implement AI to figure out which bot, like what they think is a bot applicant versus not and just auto reject those and we're never going to see. So you're going to have to kind of be always on top of what is and isn't working if you want to use bots. Now if you're personally applying and you're doing the networking and things like that, you're going to be okay. But if you want to be, if you want to use lazy apply and you want that bot to, you're going to have to know, okay, well I have to tweak it in this way or maybe lazy apply tweaks and it's just going to be this arms race of like whose AI is better.

And look, I get it, I get it. Job hunting is hard, it is draining, it can be demoralizing, it is a lot of work. Job hunting is a full time job. So I get, I just think that as this technology emerges, there's some really interesting corollaries that like, I mean, I've known about this for a while too and I've never sat down and think, well, wait a second, if the bot rejects you, we know that how it shows up on heart and so they can be reapply. So I think that's super fascinating and maybe, maybe there is an answer and.

I'm just not aware so far, no answer. It's going to be, it's going to be, stay tuned. We'll keep updating on this technology because it changes all the time.

So tying this all back in, I think here's the biggest crux of what we're talking about. You can have a great resume, you can have great LinkedIn, you can have a lot of really good things going for you. But I think a big thing is that like we are still people and it's that connection, it is the networking ultimately, like even what you're talking about following up with somebody saying, hey, I did change this, like this is a people's business ultimately. And so I think honing Those networking skills. And someone the other day brought up imposter syndrome. And I have thought so much about this so deeply this year on so many different levels. And what I've come out learning is that every single person in the world has it. And it's just as soon as you accept that even people who you would never ever think have imposter syndrome, have imposter syndrome, it all just gets easier and you have really nothing to lose. Most people are so generous and kind with their time too.

People actually love to help other people. And I think that is something that we're not always as we, we feel bad asking. We feel like we're taking someone's time and energy and it's all in how you ask. And so one networking tip. When you are thinking about, I, I want to apply to this company. This company looks really cool. Follow them on LinkedIn. Set up a job alert for the types of jobs that you are interested in. And then go and look at their employees and you can do that right on their page on LinkedIn and start to link in with those employees. And as you do, send them a note. Don't just hit connect and go away. Send that personalized note, which you can only do. You can do it on your phone, but there's multiple clicks more. But if you're on the desktop version of LinkedIn, it's, it presents right away when you go to connect. It says, do you want to send a personalized note? The answer is always yes. It's always yes. And send a little note and say, hey, I think your company looks really cool. I'm thinking about applying a job to a job there. You know, how do you like your work? How do you like it there? What's your day to day like?

Another one that people really like to hear is, hey, your job title sounds really cool. It sounds something I'm really interested in. Would you have 15 minutes to kind of talk me through how you got there? You know, I think that that's really, I think it's really valuable. And I've like, I talked to tons of people who I'm like, yeah, sure, happy to, you know, chat you through this and whatever.

Absolutely. I think that's great. And people want to do that. They want to be mentors. There's a huge dopamine hit when you actually feel like you're doing something good for someone else.

I also went to a networking event the other day in person, and it was for people who are looking for jobs. It was like a job job networking event. And the people who actually went and then came up to me and engaged with me, they really stick with me. Like I'm still chatting to some of those people. I'm still helping them work through some things. I've got a couple calls scheduled this week to kind of talk through like different careers and different steps I would do because I was like, well, you guys cared enough to take the time to come to this thing and talk to me. And now we have that personal connection. So sometimes you just can't discount going to a couple of these networking events and a lot of them are free. There's a ton. I mean, depending on how close you are to a major city, that I will say can be a caveat. But there's also virtual events and we try to put those in the collaboratory Slack room as I see them come up because sometimes the virtual networking events are great as well and we're a spread out world so might as well attend them all.

Really good advice. Thank you for chatting with me about this, Allison. I think this is really valuable stuff and we get these questions kind of over and over because we know they're top of mind for people and so hopefully this helps get the word out a little bit. If you are interested in in chatting with us asking these sorts of questions, you can pop into our free Slack group and we're always happy to engage there and then your question might end up on this. Also I have a column that I write for Biospace called Career Coach and some of the questions end up there as well where I kind of elaborate a little bit more. So if imprint is more your thing, you can head over to Biospace and look for the Career Coach column. It's a monthly and we have another podcast which is called Building Biotechs that is for more of our recruiting work. But we talk about career paths there. It is fascinating to follow our guests career journeys and they almost all have imposter syndrome as well, so just know that they are impressive, impressive people.

No one just was born knowing what they know, right? Everyone had help along the way, everyone had pitfalls, everyone had. Most people have had at least one massive failure and then you kind of grow and learn from that. And those people are so willing to share their stories, which is awesome. So. But yes, definitely send us your questions because it's super helpful to know what people actually want to hear about.

All right, that's all for this time. See you next week.