Are you concerned about an Employment Gap

Are you worried about any gaps in your employment on your resume? One year? Six months? One month?

Clients come to me nervous because they have some kind of awkward space in their resume from when they were between jobs. The reasons vary.

I worked with a scientist who had a 10-year gap from raising her kids. But she had so many accomplishments in her past positions, and her expertise was so obvious in the resume, that the 10-year gap didn’t really cause a problem.

I worked with a financial investment executive who took off 10 years to professionally sail. He still landed a new leadership position within 4 months.

Any flaws that you think you have in your resume can be reduced by addressing the company’s needs and using your impact and results to prove why the company should hire you. Downplay the break in your career timeline by demonstrating how you contributed to making a company better.

If your resume contains information about how you:

• Solved a difficult problem
• Influenced an important change or decision
• Improved teamwork
• Established, updated, or enforced policy
• Used data to improve a process

Then the recruiter and hiring team will want to discuss the opportunity with you, and they will pay less attention to specific dates. Your impact and results are so important that they will probably overshadow any issues that you think detract from your application.

A lot of your colleagues and competition have employment gaps, for one reason or another. For the years 2020-2025, most recruiters and hiring teams will ignore a non-linear timeline because they know a lot of people were sick or were caring for other sick person during the COVID pandemic. And they are aware that there have been mass layoffs for years.

Some of my esteemed colleagues tell their clients who have an in-between time period to put in a simple statement about why they were out of work:

• Raising children
• Caring for the elderly
• Research project
• Upskilling / Training & Certification

And you can do that. These are all perfectly acceptable reasons for missing work. However, how would you feel if you didn’t have to acknowledge these at all? How would you feel if employment gap questions never came up during the hiring process?

It’s none of their business. And if your resume addresses their needs and shows plenty of impact and results that prove why they should talk to you, they will not care one lick about your self-perceived flaws.

My boyfriend is a finance executive for three companies, with more opportunities coming in every day. Do you think that any of these companies care about the times when he’s not working? I assure you they do not give a hoot.

If you’re worried about your employment gap, make it go away. Address the company’s needs with your title, summary, and skills section and emphasize all your impact and results before and after your pause, and then your accomplishments will be more important than the calendar.

For additional information or questions on how you can effectively address an employment gap on your resume, to maximize your chances of landing your dream job, please email coach@maximizeu.life

Live, Work & Lead with greater Freedom, Power & Peace of Mind.

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