Downplaying Gaps in Your Employment History

If you find that you really need to switch jobs in a rough market or worse, you’re coming from being ill or raising children, you will need to downplay the gaps in your employment history.

If you’re looking for work right now, chances are good that you’re truly in good company. That’s because the market is definitely uncertain and jobs are getting harder and harder to come by. With unemployment rates on the rise, it’s time to start thinking about all of the avenues to a better job. If you find that you really need to switch jobs in a rough market or worse, you’re coming from being ill or raising children, you will need to downplay the gaps in your employment history.

Now, you might assume that we’re trying to be dishonest at first, and that’s not what we’re trying to say here. For starters, your employer is going to realize that there are gaps in your resume. There’s no getting around that. They will fill in the blanks themselves. You will need to make sure that you have a reasonable explanation for why you’re missing work history.

The best way to do this is writing a cover letter for a job. You should always be sending a cover letter with your resume, but a lot of people get lazy. Now is not the time to get lazy; there are always people who are willing to go the extra mile when you won’t. Would you really want to be aware that the only reason that you didn’t get a job is because they didn’t feel that you could pay attention to detail? Believe it or not, employers are always looking for these types of things. So, the best thing that you can do is figure out how to make sense of the time that you spent out of the workforce.

However, you might not have to make too much of an excuse pattern. You see, if you really think about it, you can actually move into more of a holding pattern thanks to the stuff that you did do while you were gone. If you decided to take care of a sick parent or another family member, that actually shows a lot of take-charge attitude on your part. It’s not easy balancing your needs while taking care of someone, so if you can do that and make it, that’s definitely going to catch a lot of attention.

What if you decided to volunteer your time overseas or even domestically? You will still need to make sure that you add that into your resume, or at least your cover letter. That’s because volunteering is still considered work. You might not have profited from it in terms of financials, but you still managed to make an impact. Don’t think about leaving that off. Employers like knowing that you contribute more to life than just sitting at home watching American Idol, which is what the assumption would be if you just had a big gap on your resume with no explanation. Employers know that the job market is uncertain, but that doesn’t mean that you have to despair – mix things up!

There’s nothing like honesty, and if you can get an employer to focus on what you offer, they’re a lot less likely to focus on the things that you don’t have to offer. You see, the fact remains that you have to still convince them that you’re the best person for the job. If you decide to press forward, you should definitely press forward with confidence. You’ve got the experience, you’ve got the skill, and you’ve got the attitude to impress the interviewer and get the job. Why not look at it from this point of view? There’s just nothing to be gained from being negative!