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Addressing Employment Gap on Your Résumé

Whatever the reason, addressing the gap appropriately in the résumé will make it easier for you to get a new job and continue advancing your career.

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Whatever the reason, addressing the gap appropriately in the résumé will make it easier for you to get a new job and continue advancing your career.

If you have been in the employment field for quite some time, there are chances that you may have experienced an employment gap. Most people usually wonder how they can best explain employment gaps in their résumé. Basically, this is largely dependent on the circumstance and whatever they were doing while not employed.

Here are some ideas on how you can address such gaps so that they do not make your résumé questionable.

1. Add the experiences attained during the gap

Whether you engaged in volunteer work, participated in a gap year experience, attended classes, or freelanced, include them in the experience section of your résumé. Outline them like the other career experiences, including dates of employment, job description, name of the organization, and job title.

2. Overlook one or a few jobs on the résumé

It is not mandatory to detail all your experience more so for people who have worked for a long period of time. There is no problem limiting the years of experience you include on your resume to one and a half decades if you are pursuing a managerial job and just one decade when pursuing lower positions.

3. Adjust the format of your résumé

Formatting the résumé with the idea of minimizing the prominence of the employment gaps is yet another way of dealing with the problem. You may, for instance, use smaller or plain fonts for the dates.

4. Cleverly conceal the gap using dates

In case you have served in a given position for more than one year or for several years, you can avoid including the months. For instance, you can indicate 2016 – 2018 instead of April 2016 – November 2018.

It is acceptable to have employment gaps in your resume. You might have been be forced to take time off from work for the purposes of furthering education, attending to a sick loved one, raising an infant, or traveling. In some instances, you might have been fired or suspended for a while. Whatever the reason, addressing the gap appropriately in the résumé will make it easier for you to get a new job and continue advancing your career.

Written by

Kelvin Mokaya


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