The perfect way to explain your employment gap

You have an employment gap in your work experience and here is exactly how to address it on your resume and in the job interview. It could be due to family illness, world situations like pandemics, recessions and the economy or graduation. We will walk through example answers for all of these so that you can be totally confident in telling your story. If you're new here, this is self made Millennial. I'm Madeline Mann, a human resources leader and job search strategist, featured on ab, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, and more. Be sure to subscribe to go from job seeking to job shopping Now I know how to spin a gap into gold. Take for example my client Claudia, who experienced a five year gap when she decided to be a stay at home mom for 12 months. She struggled to have employers get over this gap until I was able to work with her and reposition her past and skills and land two job offers in a completely new field as an HR leader within 90 days. I'll link her story below. So yeah, this stuff works and you can overcome any gap why do employers ask about employment gaps? This is important to understand in order to have the best possible answer. So an employment gap is a period of time when you were not working. In my personal opinion, as someone who has hired thousands of people, no one should work their entire career without gaps. What are we all expected to work every second of our lives without stopping? No way. Gaps are important. Gaps allow us to recharge, focus on things that are important like family or travel or health or re examine what we want in our next career step and gear up for that transition. If you are looking to make a significant career move, I'll link the registration to upgrade your career the five day masterclass. It is totally free and it will help you to set your job search strategy strategy with advanced approaches. If it's not running right now, be sure to get on the waitlist. I did run a poll on LinkedIn about employment gaps and the results were somewhat promising. The poll asked how gaps on someone's resume influenced a hiring manager's decision to interview the person. Most people were split between not caring about gaps at all or caring about gaps a little. What this says to me is learning how to talk about your gaps and is important and having a resume gap is not the death nail. Let's just do it right. Your fairy job mother is here to show you how. Now what you should know is that kernel of doubt that the company's feeling about your gap is the worry that possibly you were fired from your last role and haven't been able to get employed since because you are not a good hire. They're thinking if no one else wants to hire them, why would I want to? Meanwhile, they think the opposite about people who are employed and happy. They think that person is successful successful in their current role. Let's steal them away so that they can be successful here. I know that's a harsh judgment, but that is what's going through some of these hiring managers heads. They're also a bit nervous that you have been out of the game too long and may not be as sharp and up on new skills and industry trends. I am known for turning my clients from job seekers to job shoppers where companies start pitching you on their open roles even if you have a career gap. Such as Paola who took time off work to figure out what she wanted next in her career step after no longer being enchanted by being a relationship coach, she joined my private coaching program, uncovered that she wanted to work in customer success, and had companies who she hadn't even applied to contacting her with customer support positions before she even made that transition. She landed a manager level role which was so beyond what she thought was possible. So know that this is possible for you if you have the right strategy. Let's go over how to address your gap on your resume and in the job interview. First, addressing your gap on your resume. As you saw from the poll earlier, gaps raise doubts if they go unexplained and can be distracting to a hiring manager. That's why we are going to explain your gap in directly on your resume. Quick and snappy. Let's take for example taking time off for family. This could be focusing on taking care of an aging relative or a young child. You could include on your resume in small font between roles a short note with the dates of that gap to the tune of something like Took time to raise young child. Boom. Clear, done. Simple and incredibly understandable. Let's do another example. Let's say that you had a gap due to the economy or world conditions like a pandemic. Explain that that's what's happened again with the fewest number of words possible such as did career retraining after industry wide layoffs during economic downturn. Again, completely understandable and keeps the hiring manager from making up these stories in their noggin. Now you don't have to leave your career gaps blank either. There are many things you can fill these gaps with that will make the company interested in you. And no, I am not referring to degrees and certific if you want help to find the glory in your story for your resume, using my Proven Glory formula, I will link a free resume masterclass that gives you an overview of how to make your resume irresistible, even if you're an unconventional candidate. Let's move on to how to address your gaps in the job interview with word for word examples you can steal. It's reasonably likely that the hiring manager will ask you about your career gap, and if I'm being honest, you you want them to. The worst thing that can happen is for them to make assumptions about that gap and not ask you about it, and you're sitting there wondering why the heck the company went silent like a teen waiting for an invite to the sock hop on a Friday night. I know that reference is more dated than a Fig Newton, but heck, I just watched Grease the other night and I'm feeling like I'm back in Rydell High. If you're worried you won't get a chance to address the gap in the interview, address it right up top when you are likely going to be asked the question Tell me about yourself and I will link a free worksheet below to help you craft that answer. If your gap is due to being fired or laid off, I recommend watching my video on how to answer the question why did you leave your last job? You'll get a lot of examples of how to address this gracefully in the job interview, so I will link that below. Now let's walk through two examples of how to address your gap in in the job interview. Again, the approach here is to be hyper concise. This is not going to be the information that makes them fall in love with you and want to hire you on the spot. So let's try to waste as little time as possible on this. Also, be confident. Own your story. Don't cower or share shame or embarrassment about it. If you're confident in it, they will be too. For our first example, let's say your gap was due to graduating from a program. You could say something like I took some time off after graduation to travel, decompress after the rigor of writing my thesis, and also get clear on exactly my next career move. That answer is delicious. What is your reason for your gap? Put yours below in the comments and I can also do a future video where I can create examples for your situation. The next example is addressing being unwell, having mental illness, or a physical illness. Now this one was highly requested by you and I answered this with a bit of trepidation. The bottom line is you do not need to disclo your medical history to the company nor is it okay for them to ask about it in the United States. The most they can inquire is are you able to fulfill all of the duties of this role and if your illness would interfere with any of the duties you do need to be upfront with what your limitations are. Since this is all your own dang business, you could address your gap with a high level reason such as I really enjoyed working at that company but I left to take a much needed break to focus on personal well being and recharge for my next role. And then if they ask you more questions just tell them to ask Nunya and they'll say Nunya who? And you'll go Nunya business. So there you go. Be it on your resume or between your teeth, gaps are beautiful. Be sure to subscribe to this channel and like this video. You've got this wi fi high five.