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Explaining the Employment Gap

How to Handle a Lapse of Employment on a Resume

Feb 18, 2009 Pamela DeLoatch

Whether it's a sliver or a chasm, people sometimes have a gap in their job history. Learn how to effectively handle that absence of employment in a resume.

Whether it is to start an entrepreneurial venture, begin a family, take care of a sick parent, recover from an illness or pursue a hobby, employees occasionally have gaps in their employment history. When getting back into the work force, it is important to come up with a confident way to explain that blank period.

Lapse of Employment – an Employer’s View

For employers, an unexplained gap on a resume raises a red flag. When years are not accounted for, the employer may wonder what the applicant is attempting to hide. However, an employment gap is not uncommon, and with a troubled economy, periods of unemployment are not a surprise. Ignoring the gap won’t help, but there are some ways to handle it professionally.

Respect the Gap

For whatever reason, at the time, it was necessary or made sense to stop working. Continue to respect that reason without feeling apologetic. This means that in an interview, potential employees should be able to explain the gap as a positive move that provided them with development opportunities in some way.

It is important not to lie about the gap, but it is also important to downplay it so it doesn’t limit your chances before you even get in the door.

Disguise the Gap

The lack of employment does not need to be a gaping ravine in the middle of the resume. Rather than make the gap the center of attention, employees can minimize the gap through the type of resume used.

A chronological resume lists employment by date, so any lapse is noticeable. A functional resume, on the other hand, highlights the skills the employee has. These skills may be grouped together, i.e. sales, customer service, public speaking, as skills gained from the person’s total experience. The actual listing of employment dates is added at the bottom of the resume.

Susan Ireland, author of Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Perfect Resume [Alpha, 2003] suggests on her website that candidates with a lapse of employment use years instead of months for dates. This can make a gap of less than two years less obvious.

Fill the Gap

Although a person may have been unemployed, chances are that time was well used. If that time was spent volunteering at school, describe that as a community volunteer, and list all of the planning and team building activities involved. If that time was spent care-taking, describe the coordination, coaching, health care management and communication skills used.

With unemployment rates climbing, more and more people may have to explain their own employment gaps. While it’s essential to tell the truth about the job history, it’s also important to make the time that you have worked be more important than the time you haven’t.

The copyright of the article Explaining the Employment Gap in Career Advice is owned by Pamela DeLoatch. Permission to republish Explaining the Employment Gap in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Employment Gap