The best way for an unemployed worker to combat the experience gap, she and other experts said, is to remain as active as possible in his or her field of expertise. "Keeping the momentum is very important," Zucker said. John Challenger, the chief executive of the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas in Chicago, agreed.
"The most important thing a person can do is get really heavily engaged in organizations and volunteer activities in your industry, or in your field," he said.
"As people are out of work they tend to become marginalized," he added. "As they move out of the mainstream, they become less involved in not only the flow of meeting and developing relationships in business, but even outside of business in the civic and community sphere. They shouldn't do that, but a lot of people go and hide. Making good transitions is really important, but many people get really stuck.
"I don't want to make it seem so heavy an obstacle that it can't be worked around," Challenger added. "People do it all the time."
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