Once college is over, however, we enter the realm of anecdotal evidence when it comes to first jobs. Parents worry that if their children take a gap year, they will appear wayward to employers, which may have more to do with the term than how that year was spent. “It suggests a hole,” said Abigail Falik, founder of Global Citizen Year, which has 115 people working in four countries. She prefers the term bridge year, with its implication of a deliberate connection between one stage of life and the next.

In fact, logic would suggest that many people who take a gap year get better jobs after college than people who don’t. If you were hiring entry-level employees, wouldn’t you rather employ the risk-taking 23-year-olds who found their way in the world for a while than the 22-year-olds who have not done much besides going to school?

There is no way to know for sure except by asking some of the people who have had the experience. Susie Steele took time off from the University of Vermont to teach disabled people to ski and eventually landed a plum full-time job at the Keystone Science School in Keystone, Colo. Now a middle-school biology teacher in Louisville, Colo., Ms. Steele, 44, figures her odds would have been quite long without the gap year.

Akiima Price took a break from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore to work with the Student Conservation Association in Nevada. The organization eventually hired her full time, and she has forged a career in and around environmental education and community work.

“Now, looking back on my résumé, all of the dots ended up connecting,” said Ms. Price, 44, who lives in Washington. “I would tell younger Akiima to trust the process.”