What is the best approach for gaps in your resume?
Life happens. Sometimes people have gaps in their career chronologies. It can happen when a person is unemployed, or is taking care of a child, or a parent, or herself. Sometimes a person just wants to take a year off and travel. Or earn a new degree.
What is the best approach for handling these gaps? Do we even need to?
In a nutshell, addressing gaps in your resume will be an advantage to your resume. Employers in the U.S. seem to have antipathy to any resume gap, so we need to account for every year, at least the last 10 or 15 years, on our resume.
The best approach for tackling a gap is to always present it in a positive light. So here are some examples.
GAPS CAUSED BY UNEMPLOYMENT
First, make sure that the dates on your resume include just years, not months and years. That way, if you were laid off in 2010, but found a new job in 2011, you really have no gap.
If however, you were laid off in 2010 and have not yet found a job, you need a different tactic. The employer needs to know what you've been doing since 2010. Because we've all heard about employers who only want to hire the employed because they feel the unemployed have lost all their sense and skills, you need to turn your time out of work into something good.
So on your resume, instead of where you would normally put a company name, put instead SABBATICAL, 2010 - Present. Now you can demonstrate your value to the employer by describing your accomplishments during this time. Perhaps you volunteered at a nonprofit and you organized an event. Or you might have taken this time to to write some thought leadership blog entries or articles in your field (attesting that you are still fullly engaged in your profession). Maybe you traveled during this time, developing cross-cultural awareness or learning a new language. Try to portray your activities during your time of unemployment as something that could be valued by an employer.
GAPS CAUSED BY EDUCATION
Here, you write your resume under the same principles as the preceding paragraphs, but use EDUCATIONAL SABBATICAL as your description, and then demonstrate your value by indicating your new knowledge and how you are at the cutting edge of your field. If you mentored someone during this time, be sure to include this information.
GAPS CAUSED BY FAMILY MATTERS OR ILLNESS
Here you can call your sabbatical a PERSONAL SABBATICAL. If you were raising a family, go ahead and mention that but add any other activities you were also engaged in, such as volunteerism or organizing a parenting group. Illness is a red flag for employers, unfortunately. For anyone ill and not working for a significant period of time, you need to follow a job search strategy focused on personal contacts, and not worry so much about a gap.
Mary Schumacher
CareerFrames LLC
