To think that "we require a 5 year job history with no gaps"

[PyongyangKipperbang]

is effectively saying "We dont want anyone with young kids"?

And it will disproportionately affect women who are usually the ones who give up work for a few years when the kids are little?

If you write "ill" next to a period of time, there is no gap!

If my job history was good, but had some gaps I would apply anyway and not let that sort of requirement stop me, as it is often a HR 'requirement' rather than a 'manager who will actually be appointing' you requirement. It actually has to be put (god knows why) on some of the adverts for nhs jobs that I have been on the interviewing panel for. If we like the look of the person we ignore it completely.

I would take it to mean an account of the past 5 years without gaps, as Purplewithred said above

No gaps - means accounting for gaps, of which taking time out for caring for children would be a reason. As opposed to leaving the crappy job after two months and not including that in your job history.

It’s to show if you have a pattern of leaving jobs after a few months.

It doesn't mean* you need to have had five years continuous employment but that you cannot leave gaps when detailing what you spent the past 5 years doing. So if that includes periods of maternity leave, unemployment, FTE, etc, you ensure you include them.

*If by some chance it does mean that, whoever wrote it is going to end up in trouble!

As an Autistic person, these sorts of requirements make me feel really crap. I didn’t get a diagnosis until I was a few years into adulthood, so I have a couple of jobs I left because I couldn’t cope, and a few gaps where I was decompressing after being overwhelmed. Trying to explain that is so disheartening. It’s just another example of everyday ableism.

When I worked in HR we required explanation for full 5 yr history, therefore a gap of 2 years being SAHM was fine as long as it was acknowledged/explained

When I was in HR we needed the 5 year history with any gaps explained ie caring responsibilities, travel abroad, claiming benefits etc. We usually only referenced the most recent 2 years but we needed the full 5 years history. Over time I learned to read a trumped up job history as if it had "written by Enid Blyton" at the end of it.

We ask for 5 year history with no gaps where I work because we have to carry out DBS checks.
If someone has a gap we ask them to be honest and write what the situation was. It's not for us to judge it's just for DBS purposes.

I think it’s more discrematory than just towards women. It’s also disabled people, long term sickness periods where you can fully recover, redundancy in a difficult job market, ageism against younger candidates.

Don’t most employers ask for this? It just means you need to explain what you were doing when not I’m employment. I was a SAHM for a year and a half and explained that - if I hadn’t explained it then it would be a ‘gap’.

It is the norm in jobs with high safeguarding requirements, eg teaching. You have to be able to account for your history with no gaps but it doesn’t mean that you have to have five years’ uninterrupted service. Career breaks due to caring responsibilities are perfectly valid.

Cherry, surely you should carry out the DBS check whether or not they tell you they have a gap and why?

There are ways to explain what you've been doing, I don't think it literally means "we won't accept anyone who hasn't been working" or similar. (As surely that would be very discriminatory.) It's very common to ask for this in NHS/healthcare/civil service jobs, as effectively it's your honesty they're interested in; my understanding has always been it's just so they know you weren't up to something you shouldn't have been.

• Caring for dependents
• Travelling overseas
• Teaching overseas
• Working on a series of temporary/part-time/zero hours contracts in....admin/care/retail/hospitality
• Working on a voluntary basis for....
• Career break (health and/or family reasons)

And if getting professional references are tricky as you've been out of the work environment for a while, or people have left the company without trace, some employers will accept personal/character references, though you might need to provide more of them, if you see what I mean. I've certainly had to both ask if an employer will accept, and be, a character reference in the past, due to exactly these kinds of gaps.

Is it for security reasons?

I used to security check candidates and gaps to SAH/travel etc were ok as long the candidate either had a character reference (a friend was ok) or proof of travel.

@NamedyChangedy yes we carry out a DBS for every employee due to the nature of the business. Unfortunately we have had people lie in the past on their applications which don't match up with their DBS information so we are really hot on it.

Jobs such as teaching usually require no unexplained gaps in a CV. A DBS only tells someone if you have been convicted of something after all so there will need to be a lot of cross checking of references and someone might omit a job if they left under a cloud.

Exactly that @Comefromaway

Or maybe they just want to be sure that people fully define their employment history over the last 5 years. It's amazing how many send CVs that don't make it clear where they've worked and when. So if you did for example go travelling you specify that rather than leave a year out of your 5yr history.

If you've been a stay at home mum, put that on your job history. Perfectly reasonable and acceptable.

This is entirely normal. It doesn’t mean you have to have worked continuously, only that you say what you were doing when you weren’t working.

It is discriminatory because why would anyone ever have a gap? Probably because they've been ill or looking after small children because childcare is so damn expensive or because, I don't know, they want to!

It seems odd really, I'm 58 and had a year off work because I felt like it and I have worked full time since 1980.
I went back to work afterwards and had to get a character reference for the year I was off as they don't really like a broken career record but it wasn't a huge deal.

My company doesn't explicitly ask for 5 year history with no gaps. But if your CV has any, you will be asked to explain them at the interview (so you might be better of just saying "career break to raise family/travel/look after elderly relative" in the first place).

Yes I had this. Not safeguarding related job. Admin type job with a very large national quango type- organisation. I got the job but I withdrew out of frustration at the HR discriminatory process.

They asked me to prove I was a SAHM during career gaps
I asked how do I this? They said child benefit payments. I said that doesn't prove I was a SAHM (as payments are universal). They said out of job benefits. I said I was not seeking work nor studying. I was at home looking after child. They had no answer.

It means, as others have said, that all gaps must be accounted for, for safer recruitment purposes.