For too long, gaps in resumes have been a red flag for recruiters. But what if this outdated bias is costing you your best hires? In today’s world, where everyone’s constantly reskilling and skills become obsolete within months, penalizing career breaks makes absolutely no sense. This red flag mentality drives ageism and automatically screens out experienced professionals. Organizations clinging to “recent experience” requirements are handing their competitors access to mature talent bringing fresh perspectives, proven loyalty, and decades of expertise.
So how can forward-thinking employers flip this nonsensical bias into strategic advantage by recognizing that career breaks often create stronger professionals, not weaker ones?
My guest this week is Hazel Little, CEO at Career Returners. Hazel exposes the real cost of resume gap discrimination and shares proven strategies for building returner programs that deliver business results. In our conversation, she reveals why the red flag mentality around career breaks belongs in recruiting’s past.
In the interview, we discuss:
• What is a career returner?
• What are the common issues returners face
• The human impact of bias
• What drives career gap bias?
• Incorrect perceptions, false assumptions, and outdated approaches to hiring
• The significant advantages of tapping into the returner talent pool
• The significance of the decreasing shelf life of skills
• Advice to employers
• What might the future look like?
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00:00
Matt Alder
For too long, gaps in resumes have been a recruiting red flag. But is this outdated bias now costing you the talent you need as well as driving ageism in your organization? Keep listening to find out what to do about it.
00:16
Matt Alder
Support for this podcast comes from Hiring Branch, creators of the world’s first soft skills AI. In today’s AI driven workplace, soft skills are the new currency. That’s why, even before the interview, top hiring teams are using Hiring Branch to measure what matters. Empathy, critical thinking, collaboration and more than 50 other soft skills are detected with 98% accuracy from hiring Branch’s conversational assessments. This is skills based hiring at scale. Visit hiringbranch.com to see how you can start hiring to for the right skills.
01:17
Matt Alder
Hi there. Welcome to episode 723 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. Recruiting Future helps talent acquisition teams drive measurable impact by developing strategic capability in foresight, influence talent and technology. If you’re interested in finding out how your TA function measures up in these four critical areas, I’ve created a free Fit for the Future assessment. It’ll give you personalized insights to help you build strategic clarity and drive greater impact immediately. Just head over to Mattalder.me/podcast to complete the assessment. It only takes a few minutes. This episode is all about talent. For too long, gaps in resumes have been a red flag for recruiters. But what if this outdated bias is costing your best hires? In today’s world, where everyone is constantly reskilling and skills become obsolete within months, penalizing career breaks makes absolutely no sense.
02:26
Matt Alder
This red flag mentality drives ageism and automatically screens out experienced professionals. Organizations who cling to recent experience requirements are handing their competitors access to mature talent, bringing fresh perspectives, proven loyalty, and decades of experience. So how can forward thinking employers flip this nonsensical bias into strategic advantage? By recognising that career breaks often create stronger professionals, not weaker ones. My guest this week is Hazel Little, CEO at Career Returners. Hazel exposes the real cost of resume gap discrimination and shares proven strategies for building returner programs that deliver business results. In our conversation, she reveals why the red flag mentality around career breaks belongs in recruiting’s past. Hi Hazel and welcome to the podcast.
03:26
Hazel Little
Hi, Good afternoon Matt. Thanks for having me.
03:28
Matt Alder
It’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Please could you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
03:34
Hazel Little
I will do so. I’m Hazel Little. I am CEO of Career Returners and we are a social impact organization. We work with returners and employers to enable professionals to return to work after long career breaks for caring for health or for any other reason. We partner with forward thinking employers to design, promote, manage and support different types of returner hiring initiatives that align with their talent or their D and I strategies. And when I talk about returner hiring, I’m talking about programs which could be a cohort program, it could be bringing returners into the business throughout the year, it could be a returnship model, it could be supported hiring into permanent roles. Lots of different ways that we design and manage and support those programs.
04:27
Hazel Little
And alongside that, we run our global career returners community which has 10,000 members of people who are currently on a break and they want to return. And so with our community, we provide access to a huge amount of support, events, coaching sessions, advice, mentoring, tech up skilling through our Cisco Academy. And ultimately what we want to do is we want to empower individuals to move along their own journey through this support and also through that connection as well. And why we do what we do is that our big mission is to remove career break penalties and make sure that career breaks are a valued part and a recognized part of a lifetime career. And we want to make the working world fairer and more inclusive. So that’s what we’re all about.
05:21
Matt Alder
Absolutely. I mean, I think that lots of people listening will be able to kind of empathize with that in terms of, you know, how difficult it can be to get back into work after a career break. What are you sort of hearing from the sort of returners that you’re talking to right now about their job search experiences? Are things getting harder? What’s the, what’s the sort of situation out there at the moment?
05:44
Hazel Little
Yeah, things are getting harder, which is a difficult pill for us to swallow, in all honesty. So what we’re hearing at the moment is that the process is exhausting, that their CV is going into the big black hole, that those who do get through to interviews lose out to candidates with recent experience. Returners are often told that they need to start back at the entry level roles because of their gap despite having 5, 10, 15 years work experience prior to going off on their break. And we often hear that some returners actually want to give up on their professional careers. They often accept lower level, lower paid roles believing that’s all they can get or because financially they need to work. So overall they’re feeling disillusioned they’re frustrated and they are overwhelmed.
06:42
Hazel Little
You know, when we think about the barriers for this talent pool, you know, they are long standing. So we have structural barriers, we have personal barriers. So on the structural side, and this is through our research, which is our career returners indicator for this year, actually 46% of returners believe that the bias against their CEV gap is the biggest barrier in their return to work. But also there’s bias against age because returners tend to be a little bit more mature, but also bias against stereotypes, that perception that someone who has taken a career break is less ambitious or less committed to their career. Then on the personal side, we have the biggest barrier is that loss of professional confidence. What I mean by that, Matt, is the ability to really see yourself as that professional person that you were prior to your career break.
07:41
Hazel Little
You know, being out of the professional setting or the corporate setting, you lose your networks. Jargon has changed, tech has moved on. And so you question your ability and you question whether you’re too old. You question whether actually anyone is going to hire you as time goes on. And so all of those factors really impact how confident you feel about returning to work. And from our research, 89% of people told us that actually being on a career break has had a negative impact on their confidence. And you know, I just said, you know, this is difficult for us to hear. We’ve, we’ve been doing this for 11 years and we’ve made some excellent progress in terms of increasing the number of employers offering structured and supported pathways back to work.
08:33
Hazel Little
We’ve partnered with over 200 employers across sectors and we’ve been supporting our career returning community on those psychological barriers around their confidence and their self doubt. And it makes a really big difference to see people believing that it is possible that they can do it. But in terms of why it’s getting harder, it’s down to the current economic political landscape. You know, we’re in this current market where we’re dealing with restructures and redundancies and tighter budgets and the backlash on DNI initiatives. And you know, for returner programs, what we’re seeing is some organizations are deciding to pause their targeted programs until things settle down, until things become a bit more clearer around the D and I element. And what that means is the demand for returner programs is significantly higher than the supply.
09:35
Hazel Little
There just simply is not enough opportunities for everyone who wants one. And again, we know from our research that 94% of returners, they would prefer a supportive returner program. So. And actually, you Know, even in the job market where returners are applying alongside everyone else, those challenges are just compounded. So to bring that to life, if a line manager has one open headcount, it’s precious, right? So they want to hire as close to the brief as possible. They want a candidate that will tick every single box on that very lengthy job description. And more often than not, it’s a candidate who has recent experience. So I think all of those reasons are behind why it’s actually getting harder rather than easier for returners.
10:31
Matt Alder
Just to dig into that one a little bit. What is it that drives that bias.
10:36
Matt Alder
Towards recent experience and kind of against career gaps and what are employers missing out on by having that bias?
10:44
Hazel Little
So I actually think it’s rooted in outdated approaches to hiring along with a lack of understanding. So outdated approach. You know, the candidates must have recent experience that there’s a false perception that skills are lost during your career break. People who have 10, 15, 20 years experience, they’re not going to forget what they did. But it’s that perception that skills are lost. The assumption that returners are less committed because they’ve stepped out of their career. There is the assumption and bias around people thinking that all returners want a three day a week job. And sure, absolutely, some do, but many don’t. But I also think there’s an assumption there that, you know, people won’t get back up to speed or they will not be able to learn new tech because they’re older candidates.
11:42
Hazel Little
And I think all of those kind of outdated approaches and assumptions and ways of thinking is because there is a lack of understanding about the huge strength of the returner talent pool. What we know is that returners, they bring prior work experience, 5, 10, 15 years, they haven’t completely forgotten everything around their professional career. Sure, some of the details might be a little bit rusty, but it’s not completely forgotten. But they also bring cognitive diversity and this is a big topic at the moment around fresh perspectives, different ways of thinking. All of that lovely thought process helps with innovation and problem solving that benefits organizations. They bring maturity, they bring commitment, they bring loyalty, they want to come back into an employer who will support them and they want to stay with that organization.
12:43
Hazel Little
But also I think it’s important to mention that, you know, whilst people have been out, they have developed new skills, whether that’s problem solving or adaptability or negotiation. And that could be from caring for sure, but also through volunteering, you know, through setting up their own business. Those types of experiences are really rich in developing additional skills. And you know, again, through our creative returners community, we know that 7 to 8% of returners have upskilled ready for the return. So they have done some level of online training and you know, to bust the myth around part time. As I say, many returners do want part time, particularly, you know, to fit around young children, but actually also many want full time with flexibility. And 75% of people in our indicator reported that is exactly what they were looking for.
13:41
Hazel Little
Full time work with a degree of flexibility.
13:45
Matt Alder
That makes perfect sense. I think that skills thing is interesting as well because on the one hand, skills are probably evolving and changing and going out of date faster than they ever have. But at the same time, it’s never been easy to, you know, to learn new skills, to access kind of business education. Skills education is just kind of a different thing, which I think probably balances one balances the other out, doesn’t it?
14:07
Hazel Little
Absolutely. And you know, we know that skills in place at the moment are evolving so quickly, aren’t they? They’re moving at such a rate. And actually I was reading the LinkedIn Work Change Report this year 2025 report, and it was saying that 70% of the skills used most jobs today will have changed by 2030. That’s five years. So I was thinking about, well, is this good for returners? Is it not good? And I think it could go either way, depending on the employer. I think if an employer continues to double down on that recent experience because skills are evolving quickly and therefore they may believe that returners will not be able to catch up, let alone work at such pace, then clearly that’s a huge disadvantage.
15:01
Hazel Little
But if they recognize that skills are evolving faster than ever, and actually people in the workplace are constantly reskilling to keep up, then actually what that means is returners aren’t really that far behind. Everybody’s learning, it’s new for everybody. And so that’s a win, I think. And it’s funny, when we talk to our returners in our community, what we tell them on the tech side is that you don’t need to learn everything that’s been happening in tech over the last 10 years or however long they’ve been out. You just need to arm yourself with actually what’s happening at the moment, what’s the understanding with now, because it’s going to move on in six months and 12 months, whatever it is.
15:45
Hazel Little
We know from our experience that with the right support and the right structure, returners get back up to speed super quickly with our employer Partners. We deliver our career returner coaching program and we meet with the returners at that three month mark after they’ve been in. Honestly, by that point they are adding value, their confidence has grown and they’re really beginning to shed that return or cloak if you like. Again, it’s busting those myths that people can’t learn new skills. Of course they can and they’re doing it and they’re thriving and that’s fantastic.
16:23
Matt Alder
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17:33
Matt Alder
You mentioned this earlier, the thing about fresh perspectives, because I was talking to someone the other day who’s kind of, you know, back, you know, kind of back in the thick of things after 10 years away and you know, their technology is their thing and it’s the way that they can take a snapshot of how the industry was and how it is now. What’s changed, what’s not changed and what should have changed is a kind of unique, is a really unique perspective. One of the things that employers seem to be sort of particularly bad at is recognizing, assessing transferable skills. And we kind of see this a lot when people are sort of trying to move industry and you know, I think this is probably also the case with people sort of returning to work.
18:15
Matt Alder
How can recruiters and employers kind of better at recognizing the value of transferable skills or even recognizing what they are?
18:24
Hazel Little
Yeah, there’s a lot of chat at the moment, isn’t there, around skills based hiring. And so I think that is going to be so interesting to see actually how that pans out because I think done well, it could be brilliant. I think it’s a big shift not only in process but actually also in mindset. I think it’s often changing minds of hiring managers and recruiters is sometimes harder than actually just implementing the process to support it. What I’m hearing is A lot of organizations are still working out how to do it and how to do it well. But one of our clients, one of our employer partners, they do skills based hiring for their returner program and it works brilliantly, it works fantastically.
19:16
Hazel Little
And they’ve actually really brought in strong talent that they have told us they would never have been able to reach these people through their open channels, open recruitment channels. So I think in terms of what would beneficial and how organizations can look at this is ensuring that roles are mapped to core competencies, not just industry specific experience. I think using skill based assessments to evaluate capabilities and potential. And again, not just focusing on that recent experience, but something as simple as highlighting an openness to transferable skills and job descriptions. Be that communication, problem solving, stakeholder management, whatever it might be though that language will encourage returners to apply.
20:09
Hazel Little
But I also think there’s a training element to this in terms of recruiters training hiring managers to spot hidden strengths in that lifetime career and to recognize that skills that are gained outside traditional employment are as equally valuable. And it allows returners to draw upon a broader range of experiences at interviews. And I think that will be a game changer for sure. My slight caution I have to throw out here in terms of skills based hiring is will organizations simply shift the focus from current work experience to current skills and in which case we’re not in any kind of better position. Right, so that’s my concern with that.
20:54
Matt Alder
Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense, I suppose, give us some more thoughts around, you know, how the process itself can be more inclusive.
21:02
Hazel Little
So we actually we partnered with the Recruitment and Employment Confederation in the UK earlier this year. And what was really interesting from that research, first of all, was that recent experience was one of the top two factors, screening factors for recruiters when they were reviewing CVs for a role. And so it was very evident that is automatically screening out returner candidates. And so we actually worked with the REC and we developed fantastic career returner guidance for recruiters. So a few things that I would pull out from that is education. So learning about returners, understanding what are their challenges, what are their motivations, what are their preferences, recognizing and learning about the business case and the benefits to hiring this talent.
22:00
Hazel Little
So the experience that they bring their diversity in thinking, but also understanding the social rationale that actually this is a really good thing to do for society, for people, it is changing lives. And I get that sounds really cheesy and corny, but actually it is again, with clients that we work with often they’ll tell us that this is the favorite part of their job because they’re really seeing that tangible difference that it’s making to somebody’s life. So I think the education piece for sure. I think reducing advertising bias, screening bias, interview bias. Don’t ask for recent experience in a job description unless it is crucial, really necessary. I think also checking that your ATS isn’t automatically filtering out candidates. You know those killer questions that set returners up to fail. Adapting your interview process. So think about how you’re framing your questions.
23:03
Hazel Little
Are you allowing those examples outside of work or are your interviewers confusing? Perhaps a lack of detail because the example that the candidate is given is 10 years old with a lack of ability to do the job. So I think really kind of absolutely reviewing and adapting your recruitment process. But I also think promoting returners is a strong talent pool. And I think recruiters have an enormous impact when they’re talking to hiring managers either at the point of workforce planning or even at BAU recruitment where they have this education, they can talk to their hiring managers around. Have you considered someone coming back from a career break? Could this role support someone re entering the workforce? I recognize that not every job is going to be suitable for a returner, but it opens that door to discussion.
24:08
Hazel Little
I really do believe that it positions the recruiter as a, a strategic partner by knowledgely talking about reaching different untapped talent pools, but also the strategic advantage that would bring to the organization as well. And then finally what I would say is, you know, talk about the success. You know, we’ve, we find this a brilliant way to build further internal engagement is to talk about the returners you’ve brought in, talk about the success and you’ll soon find other hiring managers will want to be involved. And in fact, I recall one of our clients told us that returner talent speaks for itself. And they had brought in a small number, a handful into their program. But through that success they were able to expand their program. They were able to bring returners throughout the year because the demand was there from the business.
25:03
Hazel Little
Once, once they had seen it and they had seen it works really well. So I think showcasing it, showcasing your role models and I just think it speaks volumes for your inclusive approach. So it’s, you know, for me it’s a no brainer, Matt. It’s a win. Win.
25:17
Matt Alder
Yeah, 100%.
25:18
Matt Alder
And do you think AI might make a difference here?
25:21
Matt Alder
We’re seeing sort of AI being used in recruitment in an ever increasing rate. Do you think that could help or could it hinder this kind of thing?
25:28
Hazel Little
Yeah, you know, I think if AI is trained on historical hiring data that reflects bias, then it’s a massive concern. We know through Harvard Business School research that actually quite often ETS systems will automatically reject someone who has a gap of six months or more on their cv. I think that’s a concern. I think for ATS systems rely on keywords or buzz phrases. If your CV doesn’t match those buzzwords or that description, then it’s automatically filtered out. So people with longer career breaks, they’re getting familiar with ATS systems, they’re getting familiar with how CVs now need to look and how they need to be tailored. But it’s a big adjustment. Right. So I think there are some elements in terms of AI and using technology and recruitment, which at the moment and how they’re sitting, don’t favor returner candidates.
26:34
Hazel Little
However, what I would say is, you know, we know it’s here to stay, right? And recruitment is constantly evolving and I think it’s about being ethical in how you use it. So when it’s designed well, I think it could really level the playing field by focusing on candidates capabilities and potential. But dare I say, I think we’ve got a long way to go before we reach it as a kind of standard approach across the board.
27:03
Matt Alder
Yeah, no, I agree.
27:04
Matt Alder
I think there is huge potential around the skills and the transferable skills that AI can kind of bridge that gap. But as you say, there are lots of kind of other issues, particularly in the short term. As a final question, what would you like the future to look like? I mean, what needs to happen for career breaks to be sort of truly normalized by employers?
27:27
Hazel Little
I think the future is slowly shifting for career breaks that are viewed as a stigma to becoming a strategic advantage. But I do, you know, they’re not normalized. We’ve got a long way to go. So I think we need to see a cultural shift which recognizes that the benefits that a career break can bring, both on a personal level, but also on the benefits that people who are returning from a career break can bring into the business so that the fact that they are seen as a fundamental fantastic pool of experienced professionals. I think we need to see AI and recruitment support returning talent through inclusive algorithms, through matching candidates with capability and potential, and again, moving away from that focus on recent experience.
28:16
Hazel Little
And I think we need to see more organizations embrace returner focused initiatives while the barriers continue to exist through normal or open recruitment. And I think if we fail to normalize career breaks it doesn’t just impact the individuals, which in itself is huge, but it holds back all of those lovely benefits around innovation and problem solving and inclusion. But it’s also a huge waste of talent sitting there waiting to get back into the workforce. As we live longer and we work longer, people will want and they will need to take time out, right, for childcare, for elder care, for health, or actually just a break because it’s going to be a 60 year career that people are working in.
29:05
Hazel Little
And you know, I don’t know about you, Matt, but I have kids and they’re the driving force for me is I actually want to create this change now for them. I want them to have that choice that if they want to step out of their careers, if they need to, that they are not sitting there on the sideline just outside that tick box, feeling the same frustration and being disillusioned and overwhelmed that returners are feeling now. So that’s the change that we need and that we want to see.
29:37
Matt Alder
Hazel, thank you very much for talking to me.
29:40
Hazel Little
Thank you very much for having me.
29:43
Matt Alder
My thanks to Hazel. Don’t forget, if you haven’t already, you can benchmark your talent acquisition capability quickly and easily by completing the free Fit for the Future assessment. Just head over to mattalder.me/podcast. It only takes a few minutes and you’ll receive valuable insights straight away. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast and get the inside track on everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
