LinkedIn To Add 'stay-at-home Mom' As Job Title To Help Normalise Employment Gaps
In an interesting move, professional social networking platform LinkedIn has decided to add ‘stay-at-home mom' and other job titles to enable parents and caretakers to describe their gaps in employment more accurately.
‘Stay-at-home mom’, ‘stay-at-home dad’ and ‘stay-at-home parent’ are among new titles LinkedIn has introduced to its English-language users this week as part of a larger undertaking by the Microsoft-owned networking site to better allow people to detail months or years away from the paid workforce. ‘Caretaker’, ‘homemaker’ or simply ‘mom” or “dad” are now options as well.
This means that parents caring for their children and managing households full-time can now make those jobs official on their online résumés. As a more nuanced way to explain résumé gaps, the news is welcome by many parents, and moms in particular, amid the pandemic.
According to a report by Statista, India saw an unemployment rate of over 6 percent in January 2021. A damaging impact on an economy as large as India’s caused due a total lockdown was imminent. Unemployment went up to nearly 24 percent in April 2020. This was possibly a result of a decrease in demand as well as the disruption of workforce faced by companies.
As told to media outlets, LinkedIn in the coming months will be implementing other changes, such as letting users specify the type of hiatus they've taken, including ‘parental leave’, ‘family care leave’, or ‘sabbatical’.
Also read: These Companies are Winning Hearts With Their Policies for Working Mothers
In a blog post on March 30, LinkedIn announced some new features – Cover Story, Creator Mode, Pronoun Fields, and Service Pages – allowing users to specify their pronouns in a field that will be enabled at the top of the Profile, near the user's name.
"70 percent of job seekers believe it's important that recruiters and hiring managers know their gender pronouns, and 72 percent of hiring managers agree and believe it shows respect," the platform said in the post.
(Edited by Amrita Ghosh)
