Addressing gaps in your resume

Addressing gaps in your resume1

Oliwia

Global Executive Recruiter

Let’s start with being very clear, career gaps are normal and

almost everyone in their employment history has at least one

career gap in some part of their life. Depending on the

retirement age in your country, our professional lives can usually

last for about 40 to 50 years. One has to be extremely lucky to

have a perfect continuity of work experiences throughout those

years. Career gaps and sabbatical leave are the new norm and

the good news is that the perception of your career gap is fully

manageable with how you do your resume and how you explain

those gaps during an interview.

Be Transparent

While career gaps are common these days, we have to be as

transparent as we can during the interview, instead of feeling

ashamed and not willing to elaborate more when asked. The

basic ask of any interviewer is for their candidate to be truthful

on what is written on the resume. You may be later accused of

stating false information and lose the employment if you tried to

hide them. Remember, many companies conduct background

screening processes of every new hire, so it is highly probable,

that someone will verify the periods of employment carefully at

a later stage of the recruitment process. Your first to-do is to

clearly note down all career gaps and be very specific about the

start and end of an employment history. The timeline should be

well-aligned between every employment or unemployment

period. For example, if you have finished your contract with

company A in June 2018, be precise what has been your

professional status from July 2018 onwards.

Provide a brief explanation to each gap

Having noted down the career gaps and the period when they

have occurred, think what was the context behind each gap.

Have you been taking care of your family or have you spent a few

months surfing in Australia? Have you been made redundant and

struggling to find a new job? Or maybe you decided to simply

Addressing gaps in your resume

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take some time off and focus on a side project? Each reason is

equally fine, as long as it’s true. Crafting your resume, explain

briefly the reason behind each gap. There is no need to be more

specific than giving a general statement. No one has the right to

assess your life decisions, but equally no one is really interested

in digging too deep when conducting a general review of your

resume. A line of brief explanation is perfectly fine!

Attention, we have a “job hopper”

It may happen, that the recruiter or hiring manager will try to

understand a broader context behind your career gaps. Don’t

take it personally, as they are not trying to assess your life

decisions - they are just trying to understand whether you are a

so-called “job hopper”. Job hoppers are people who change jobs

way too frequently and do it without any significant reason.

While there is no good answer to how long an employment period

should be and there are plenty of justified reasons for leaving a

job, you may already have a colleague who jumps between jobs

without any plan or because they lack clear aspirations or the

strength to withhold during a challenging project.

Typical “job hoppers” are a rare phenomenon, but companies are

trying to keep safe from hiring these people. There are two major

reasons for this, if you wonder. The first one is that every hire is

a significant cost for the company, including the costs of a

recruitment process, the costs of onboarding, training and

resources etc. The second reason is that employment is a two

way relationship – you get upskilled and gain new experiences,

but the company also requires you to perform to help them

reach their business goals. If someone stays in a role for a very

short period of time, the investment made will not be beneficial

to the organization. To make sure you are not classified as a “job

hopper”, focus on transparency and frankness in explaining the

general reasons for the career gaps in your resume.

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