I’m sure you’re familiar with the notorious “Mind the Gap” announcements on the London Underground, but I want to share thoughts around a different kind of gap, the one that can sometimes be perceived from a not-so-linear career path.
Are you too a multi-passionate person who has made courageous, unconventional choices along your way — choices often labelled as “gaps” on your CV?
Recently, while exploring various career avenues, I engaged with several corporate interview processes. It has been an enlightening exercise. I noticed a recurring theme in these conversations: a palpable uneasiness around my work “gaps”. Where I see a wealth of diverse experience, traditional structures seem to see a void that needs defending rather than rich opportunities to be talked about.
In some environments, when a CV shows time spent away from a desk, the tone seems to shift. Is there perhaps an assumption that if you aren’t climbing a corporate ladder, you are standing still?
As I embarked on a new volunteering mission oversees – joining a global non-profit conservation organisation for two weeks—I am reminded of how misplaced that label is.
My CV “gaps” aren’t empty spaces. They are seasons of intentional, intensive growth.
Redefining the “In-Between”
While a CV might show breaks in traditional employment, my professional evolution has been anything but stagnant. These periods were some of my most vital workshops:
• Entrepreneurial: Logging over 1,200 hours of coaching 100s of individuals internationally, through their own professional and personal transformations, via my practice: Gr8fool;
• Learning: Gaining professional certifications, diving into new course subjects, turning strangers into friends and mentors, and challenging any stale perspective I held.
• Solo Travelling: Navigating unknown places and cultures, saying yes to new quests and honing adaptability and problem-solving skills in real-time.
• Volunteering: Dedicating time to community and environmental causes, following a deep curiosity for wider and global perspectives and nourishing personal core values of adventure and contribution.
Different Paths, Equal Value
There is immense value in the dedication of staying the course in a corporate environment for many years—and I did that too, with 18 years devoted to the same international organisation. That consistency builds a specific type of vital expertise. However, there is equal value in the perspective gained from stepping into something different.
Some still hold the idea that professional development only happens at a “desk”. The skills I refined or earned while coaching, studying, or travelling and volunteering aren’t “extra-curricular”—they are highly transferrable. I don’t believe everyone is designed to limit to a narrow niche. I am just as comfortable advising on corporate governance and compliance as I am coaching a client through a powerful transition or volunteering at a school site or on the deck of a ship. One path informs the other, creating a professional who is not only technically proficient but also deeply human and adaptable.
When we allow ourselves to step away from the desk, willing to face uncertainty and fears to learn and explore, we can “return” with a refreshed perspective and a broader and more diverse toolkit.
A New Conversation
If you see a “gap” in a CV – or in your own life – I invite you to shift the conversation. Instead of asking why you weren’t “corporate working” e feeling a need to justify, try getting curious and ask how you have grown from it.
A career doesn’t have to move in a straight line to be a success. It is possible to keep multiple doors open and design a journey that is as strategic as it is colourful. For me, this means being able to access and combine a wider range of skills to different contexts.
Let’s shift perspective and start seeing these courageous choices not as “gaps” but as chapters that make the whole story stronger.
