“Some of the best hires are people who’ve zig-zagged.”
— Nataly Kelly
It’s easy for hiring teams to get buried in resumes while searching for the so-called perfect candidate. However, this type of hiring practice, where you are seeking someone who checks every box, doesn’t always lead you to the person your team truly needs. Worse, it can screen out strong people simply because their path doesn’t look familiar.
In this month’s blog, we’ll bust the myth that nontraditional candidates should be overlooked because their resumes don’t follow a straight line.
Challenging the idea of the “perfect resume” can unlock an entire pool of overlooked talent. This is not about lowering the bar. It is about widening the lens to recognize transferable skills, non-linear career paths, and valuable experience gained across different industries and roles.
Many hiring processes are still built around an outdated picture of what a career should look like from entry level through to retirement. The old model assumed one ladder, one direction, always upward. But that is not the reality of today’s job market, so by overlooking these types of candidates, you are closing the door to capable people who could bring real value, loyalty, and perspective to your team.
By making a few changes to your company’s screening process, you can find strong candidates who may be hiding in plain sight.
We also have to acknowledge the changing workforce. Demographics have changed and workers are making different choices than their parents or grandparents did. Only 41% of talent say they want to follow the traditional career path, while 38% say they want something different. In many cases, these seemingly unconventional career choices are deliberate rather than the result of circumstances outside a worker’s control. Pursuing greater work-life balance, for example, may mean choosing a role with a different title, scope, or compensation level.
What Counts as a Non-linear Career?
Traditionally, people were expected to build their careers within one industry. And whether you stayed at the same company for your entire career, or moved around, the expectation was that each role would be a step up from the last.
Non-linear career paths happen for a whole host of reasons:
- Industry changes
- Layoffs
- Caring for children or aging parents
- Significant health challenges
- Reskilling and retraining (such as going back to school)
These experiences are increasingly common, but they are still not consistently considered during the hiring process. Fortunately, more employers are beginning to adopt skills-based hiring practices. Skills-based hiring is becoming more common: recent data shows adoption rose from 56% in 2022 to 73% in 2023 and later reached 81% in 2024.
The Talent Pool Is Bigger Than You Think
Today, many people build meaningful careers through interruptions, pivots, and reinvention. Applicants often express frustration when it comes to ensuring their resume gets through complex screening processes. Work is happening in many different ways now: side businesses, gig work, portfolio careers, contract roles, and multiple income streams. This shift has reshaped the modern workforce, and employers need to adapt as well.
If employers are looking at their pool of candidates using an outdated framework, of course it’s going to look smaller. And while tools such as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) help narrow down your list of candidates for the purpose of conducting interviews, how you use them might be eliminating talented people from consideration before you even have a human reviewing the resumes.
Stay-at-Home Parents Reentering Work
Though we already mentioned stay-at-home parents above, this group of nontraditional workers warrants a closer look.
While taking a break from your career to be a full-time parent is a choice that can be made by either parent, mothers represent the majority. Oftentimes couples make this decision based on the high cost of childcare, so one parent puts their career on pause to make the numbers work for their family. Others wish to spend more time with their kids in their younger years, and place their role as parent above their career at this phase of life. There are no right or wrong moves when it comes to leaving the workforce to care for your family. Eventually, many parents are ready and eager to re-enter the workforce.
Unfortunately, many mothers face bias when returning to work after a career break. Indeed’s survey of more than 1,000 stay-at-home moms found that 73% had already encountered bias in the hiring process, and 93% expected to face bias as they re-entered the workforce.
When employers start recognizing things such as transferable skills in addition to job history, parents returning to work are more clearly seen for what they are: capable, experienced, and valuable contributors.
Young Workers Disrupted by Economic Uncertainty
For younger workers, career disruption has become increasingly common.
Like stay-at-home parents, this segment of the workforce deserves closer examination. Many entered adulthood with the expectation that obtaining an education, working hard, and steadily building experience would lead to career success. However, economic recessions, a global health crisis, rising housing costs, inflation, and labour market instability have repeatedly altered that path.
As a result, many younger workers have had to pause, pivot, or completely rethink their careers. Some have taken temporary or “survival” jobs to make ends meet. Others have experienced layoffs, contract work, underemployment, or periods of unemployment through no fault of their own.
Although these career paths may look unconventional on paper, they often demonstrate adaptability, resilience, resourcefulness, and the ability to learn through uncertainty. Employers who overlook this experience may miss candidates who have already proven that they can navigate change and overcome challenges.
Candidates with Unrelated Backgrounds & Experience
It is understandable that employers often look for candidates with direct industry experience. However, focusing too narrowly on industry-specific backgrounds can mean overlooking talented individuals who bring valuable skills and fresh perspectives.
Candidates from unrelated industries frequently possess highly transferable skills, including communication, customer service, problem-solving, leadership, creativity, and diversity of thought. The latter point being very important, but often overlooked. When you are strictly hiring from the same industry, it can cause an echo chamber, as you are just trading employees with your competitors, and not injecting your teams with fresh ideas.
For example, someone transitioning from retail into an administrative role may have developed exceptional organizational and interpersonal skills and brings a fresh perspective to the role.. Likewise, a candidate moving from hospitality into sales may bring strong relationship-building abilities and experience working in fast-paced, customer-focused environments.
These candidates can offer a unique perspective precisely because they have worked in different settings and faced different challenges. Their experiences often allow them to approach problems in new ways and identify opportunities that others may miss.
This is where skills-based hiring becomes especially valuable. By focusing on what candidates can do rather than where they have worked, employers can access a much broader and more diverse talent pool. This isn’t about hiring unqualified people, but selecting competent, talented people with a different career background.
The Business Case
When viewed through a business lens, nontraditional hires can bring significant value to an organization.
They often contribute:
- Adaptability in the face of changing circumstances
- Resilience developed through overcoming challenges and setbacks
- Innovation through different experiences and ways of thinking
- Diversity of thought and perspective
- Strong motivation to learn, contribute, and grow within an organization
For employers struggling to find the right fit, the solution may not be narrowing the search further. Instead, it may be expanding the search to include candidates whose experience looks different from what has traditionally been expected.
Common Objections
Despite growing awareness of skills-based hiring, many nontraditional candidates still face barriers during the hiring process. Often, the issue is not a lack of capability, but lingering misconceptions about what a successful career path should look like.
Let’s address a few common concerns:
“They lack direct experience.”
Transferable skills are often more predictive of success than having held an identical job title in the past.
“There’s a gap in their resume.”
Career gaps can reflect caregiving responsibilities, education, health challenges, economic disruption, or other life circumstances that do not diminish a candidate’s value.
“They’ll require too much training.”
Many candidates with non-linear career paths are quick learners because they have repeatedly adapted to new environments, industries, and challenges.
Checklist: Expanding Your Hiring Lens
Organizations looking to access a broader talent pool can start with a few practical changes:
- Write skills-based job descriptions.
- Distinguish between required qualifications and preferred qualifications.
- Reduce unnecessary credential requirements where appropriate.
- Train hiring managers to identify transferable skills.
- Normalize career breaks and career changes during the interview process.
- Partner with staffing agencies, like Staff Shop, that can help identify qualified candidates beyond conventional resume screening methods.
Employers embracing skills-based hiring are already expanding access to talent while building more diverse, adaptable, and resilient workforces.
Join Us or Hire Us!
The best hires are not always the most linear ones. Often, they are the people who have adapted, rebuilt, learned, and grown through real-world challenges.
For candidates re-entering the workforce, temporary roles can provide an effective bridge to new opportunities. These positions offer a chance to gain current experience, rebuild confidence, expand professional networks, and find the right long-term fit.
For employers, partnering with Staff Shop provides access to a wider pool of capable, motivated candidates who are ready to contribute from day one.
Whether you’re looking to build your team or take the next step in your career, we’re here to help. Contact us today to get started.
“If you give people a chance, they shine.”
— Billy Connolly
