Gaps In Employment: Minimize Damage With These Simple Ideas

In an ideal world, people would have perfect resumes, which would start some time around their high school years, right through college, and lead into fruitful careers, with constant increases in responsibilities (and compensation), with no gaps, until retirement.

That is in an ideal world. In reality, however, things happen. These things include: kids, school, illness, unemployment, time off, etc. So, it is quite common that one’s resume has gaps. And nothing attracts recruiters’ attention more than gaps in employment.

Think about it from the hiring manager’s perspective. Here you have a candidate with about a year+ between jobs. Was there another job in the middle that the candidate decided to omit? Was the candidate out of work due to termination? Is the candidate not qualified enough – to have been out for so long? These and many other questions are valid, but none of them, if you notice, attempt to apply the infamous “presumption of innocence” principle towards the unlucky candidate.

Since you are that candidate, what are you to do? Well, for one, try to not emphasize these gaps. If you have a chronological resume, try formatting it such that the dates are not the first thing that draws attention. If attention is unavoidable, use fillers that make it look like you were doing something useful.

If, indeed, you were in school, indicate that as part your professional training. If you were traveling or taking the time off, think about things that you learned in the process and switch them around to add value to your resume, rather than just having gaps. It is possible that you were in between jobs, but were doing some volunteer work or freelance consulting. These are valid fillers – much more appreciated and welcome than just gaps in employment.

If your resume has months for start and end dates, you may get away with using years instead. For example, instead of showing:

Store Clerk, Some Store, 02/2009 – Present
Store Clerk, Some Other Store, 10/2007 – 04/2008

… with a gap in between, you can use a year-only format to get around the issue:

Store Clerk, Some Store, 2009 – Present
Store Clerk, Some Other Store, 2007 – 2008

If the gap is too wide to cover up with simple formatting tricks or changing resume type from chronological to functional, you can provide a brief explanation in the cover letter. This same short explanation can also be used in an interview if the question comes up again.

Whatever you do, you will have to be creative, but truthful – in filling in the gaps on the resume. You should also acknowledge the fact that you have these gaps in employment, and be ready to explain them, as this question is bound to come up.