Resume Gaps? Own Them!

A frequent question and lament I see by job seekers on LinkedIn is that they took time off from their career to do something (usually something good) and now they have a gap in their resume which causes problems with their job search.

There is no doubt that a gap in the dates on your resume is begging the question, "what happened during this time period?" In fact, some recruiters and HR personnel automatically either disqualify or discount applicants with gaps in their resumes.

If you have a gap in the dates of your resume you have four choices.

1. Do nothing. Keeping the status quo is always an option. It may not be a good option since doing the same thing and expecting different results is Einstein's definition of insanity. However, you can leave the dates with their unexplained gaps just as they are in your resume and hope for the best.
2. You can lie. I absolutely, positively do not recommend this under any circumstances. If I weren't interested in honestly stating all your alternatives, I wouldn't even mention this because when you lie on your resume you are pulling the pin on a hand grenade, throwing away the pin, and hoping the grenade will never go off. It will always go off. It make take minutes, or years. When it explodes, not if, it will probably utterly destroy your career and could destroy your family as a side effect. It will forever label you as a liar.
3. You can remove the dates from your resume. This is not uncommon and is often used by those either with gaps or who don't want the resume to be the first to announce that the candidate is, like me, threescore years and counting. It is a tool to fight ageism. In this instance you list the number of years and months in each role, but not the dates. Doing this, allows you to have a conversation when a recruiter calls you and asks about the dates. You can verbally fill in the gaps and spin them as best you can in a conversation. I don't recommend this approach either, as you will see, because what I recommend can often kill the questions while this just puts them into a conversation.
4. You can own them. The rest of this article is about the fourth option.

Before we jump in, I need to make a few assumptions clear.

Assumption #1: The gap in your resume isn't because you were hospitalized or in a coma for that whole time. If being unconscious is the cause of your gap, my strategy probably won't help.

Assumption #2: You weren't incarcerated. Although I am assuming that the gap in your resume isn't because of spending time behind bars, even if it is, you may still be able to use my advice.

Assumption #3: During this gap time(s) you were doing something important to you, even if it was looking for a new job.

STEP #1

When you took time off from your career, whatever you did during that time probably required you to learn some new skills. Perhaps your break was expressly because you wanted to learn new skills and went off to school? Regardless, the first thing is to write down what you did, why you did it, who you did it for, what were the outcomes, and what were the dates you did it.

That is the easy part of this quiz. In the middle part, it gets a bit harder.

STEP #2

Write down what you learned during this break. Don't write this for a future employer to read. Write this to yourself. What did you learn about yourself? What was hard for you? What was easy for you? What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them? Were you able to apply old skills in a new way? Explain what they were and how you applied them. Were you able to learn and apply new skills? List what they are, how you learned them, and how you applied them.

What else did you do and learn? For instance, while caring for your dying loved one, did you do volunteer work as well? Did you build a patio or deck? Did you make travel arrangements? Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And what did you have to learn to do all that? 

Yes, this is a really big essay question test. Get over it. Unfortunately for all of us who hated word problems in math class, life is almost nothing but word problems.

STEP #3

Now that you have given some quality thought and writing time to explain what you did, who you did it for, why you did it, what the outcomes were, and what you learned we get to the hard part.

Name your break.

I am old enough to remember when the game show hosts switched from referring to many of their women contestants as a "housewife" to being a "homemaker." Shakespeare asked, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet." While that is a wonderful sentiment, names carry weight and meaning. Consider my example. A housewife can be construed to mean a woman who is married to a house. A homemaker, in contrast, is all about making any house into a home and a home is someplace where we feel welcomed, safe, and cared for. That is really a pretty substantial difference in meaning and reflects a rather different slant on the many of the same activities.

If you were a manager, required to hire someone to do all that you did during your break, what would you call that position? Were you a care-giver, a home-maker, a researcher? Whatever you did, if someone else hasn't already given it an appropriate name, this is your chance to coin a new job title.

STEP #4

Put it into your resume. Ok, don't put all of it into your resume. Put the job title you came up with and the dates, which now fill the gap. And only put in the accomplishments or responsibilities which align with and support your professional direction. By the way, that last sentence is true of all your past jobs. If you have a resume filled with responsiblities and accomplishments that don't point toward your excellence in your chosen profession, then take them out.

I am a project manager who specializes in leading financial services projects that have budgets of $10,000,000 or more in support of US banks, finance, and insurance companies. No one looking to hire me cares that I also hold a Class III FCC broadcaster's license and worked as an "on-air personality" and news director for a radio station more than 20 years ago. If any employer requires my full employment history as a condition of my employment I can certainly give them all that, and more back to when I first entered the work force at age 12. But none of that appears anywhere on my resume. And, now you know at least two things about me that most of my employers never have, or will.

A resume is not a full disclosure of everything you have ever done. It is a selective, personal marketing piece intended to show your relevant experience to your best advantage. Anyone who wants full disclosure should ask for a curriculm vitae (CV) and be careful what they ask for. Except for newbies it will never be just two pages. If you want to read more about resumes and CVs, see my LinkeIn article "Kill all the CV Writers."

Rinse and Repeat.

If you have more than one gap in your resume which you need to fill, then repeat steps 1 thorugh 4 for each gap. Once you have done that, you should have a gap-free resume.

Final Notes

I eat my own cooking. My resume has a gap I own from 11/2008 to 5/2014. My resume also has an even bigger gap no one asks me about. The dates on my resume start in 1998. That is no where near the start of my employment history. None of my experience before I got into banking appears there, even though much of my accomplishments are relevant.

This last note is for those whose gap is right now and is because they are looking for a job right now. If you are not learning new things during this employment break, then shame on you. There is much you can be learning and doing which can both benefit your job search, your life, and your next employer. Don't waste this valuable break time. Make the most of it while you have it. Use it as a time to grow!

(C) Copyright 2019 Thomas K Sheppard and A+ Results, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Tom Sheppard, The Skillful PM (TM) & author of The Art of Project Management, specializes in leading large ($10mm+), high-risk, high-profile projects for US financial services companies.

Tom Sheppard's Author Page

Career Management Books from Tom Sheppard

Strategic Career Management: Get and Keep the Job You Want

Don't let your career be a victim. Get and keep the job you want, today.

Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying, “by failing to prepare, you prepare to fail.” Strategic Career Planning is the ultimate form of career preparation. It will help you to navigate your career to the level of success you may only be dreaming about right now. To help you prepare, in this book I am going to teach you how to use a powerful process that many companies have used to survive and prosper in both good times and bad. Applying it to managing your career will require you to apply a proven effective business management tool to your career management. If you cannot conceive of how the skills needed to run a business can help your career and you are a quitter, then stop reading now and give this book to someone who has the will and imagination to succeed. For any of what follows to help you, you will need to change the narrow way you have thought of yourself, your job, and your career. It may be a bit uncomfortable, and it may not seem like a perfect fit at first, but if you will give it real effort, it will produce amazing results for you, and for anyone who applies these lessons. Read it now to get and keep the job you want.

Fire Yourself: Get the Job You Want a No BS Guide - DON’T READ THIS BOOK unless you want to TAKE CONTROL of your career, DOUBLE YOUR INCOME, and LIVE THE LIFE YOU WANT.

Career Insurance reveals how important education is to a successful career. Learn what you need to know to get and keep the job you want regardless of what is happening in the job market. The author successfully used these techniques to go through layoffs, mergers, and acquisitions while growing his paycheck and not suffering from a single day of unemployment for more than 25 years.

Tips for Effective Job Searches: Get and Keep the Job You Want Vol 1 How to use the resources available to you to find the job you want.

Tips for Effective Resumes: Get and Keep the Job You Want Vol 2 Having a resume that succeeds in getting interviews for you doesn't happen by accident. It takes both excellent content and presentation to help you get the job you want.

Tips for Effective Cover Letters: Get and Keep the Job You Want Vol 3 Now that you have found a job you want to go for, don't send your resume to school naked. Add a powerful cover letter to let your prospective employer know which job you want and how you can deliver results for them.

Tips for Effective Interviews: Get and Keep the Job You Want Vol 4 Nailing the interview so that you can get the job offer begins before you walk in the door and doesn't end until long after you have left the building. Your interview will either get you an offer, or it won't. Don't leave that up to chance. Do what it takes to get the job you want.

The Job Hunter’s Primer: Get and Keep the Job You Want Vol 5 Covering tips for effective job searches, resumes, cover letters, interviews.

Interview Like the President: Master the Video Job Interview by Learning from US Presidents You won't want to skip this essential on how to prepare for and succeed with video interviews. (ebook only)

Your Career - Your Business: Using Small Business Tactics to Successfully Manage Your Career - If you want to get and keep the job you want, you need to change how you think about your career and your job. This article (approx. 4,000 words) will change how you think about your career. Instead of relying on others or just thinking about your career as a series of jobs, it will teach you how to look at yourself as a 1 person business and to use small business tools to boost your career to where you want it to go. (ebook only)

Come Out On Top: Goals To Live By (article) - Setting written goals magnifies your performance. This article (about 3,500 words) will help you learn how to set challenging, but attainable goals that will change your life. (ebook only)

Acres of Diamonds (Annotated) - discover the fortune in opportunity in your own neighborhood or town. (ebook only)

Building Success and Self Confidence - You want to be happy. You deserve happiness. And you can be happy, but not if you feel like a failure. Success, some kind of real, tangible, recognizable success is necessary for you to feel happy.

Now, with a Foreword by renowned author Raymond Aaron, this book is totally rewritten since it was first published in 2014. Included for the first time ever is an entire chapter on failure and how you can use failure to succeed. Tom has experienced both success and failure and learned that among all the ingredients necessary for real success and self-esteem, failure may be the most important. Self-esteem without victory over failure is an illusion.

In addition to teaching you how to use failure to succeed, this book will teach you

• How to Define Success for You
• Motivational Factors Affecting Success
• Goal Setting
• Stress Management
• Time Management
• Maximizing Your Potential
• Work-Life Balance
• Overcoming Self-Belief-Imposed Obstacles
• Dealing with Challenges
• How Education Impacts Your Success
• Choosing Role Models

... And Much More ...

If you feel that the success you want has eluded you, read this book and learn how you succeed again and again.

#management #executivesandmanagement #emotionalintelligence #hiring #jobopportunity #jobopening #jobhunt #linkedin