Negosentro.com | How to Address Gaps in Your Resume Without Making a Bad Impression | One of the most common problems people have in their resumes is presence of gaps between qualifications and work experiences. Sometimes, there might be a genuine reason behind a resume gap and at other times, there may not be. Inability to stay employed at all times might be the biggest contributor to resume gaps.

A gap in a resume is of course a missing chunk of time where anyone has not been working on a job or studying for that particular time. When applying for professional jobs, these gaps can be a bit of a consideration. During interviews, these can be hard to explain to the interviewer. Too many gaps in any given resume can lead to an overlooked job application.

Yet, with some smart answers and tactics, these gaps can still be addressed efficiently. Here are some tactics used by professionals to cover resume gaps without making a bad impression:

Covering Employment Resume Gaps with Qualifications

One of the best ways to address gaps in resumes is to not really have any. This is exactly what you can achieve with careful career planning. Whenever you find yourself out of a skill matched job, it is best to get some relevant certifications and degrees. 

This not only removes the unwanted gaps in any resume but also sharpens skills at the same time. qualifications and certifications are never bad for any resume. When in an interview, you can easily highlight your employment missing time as qualification or certification gained.

It is actually quite easy to make a bad impression about your resume with any kind of gaps in it. The best Career Advice anyone would give you is to actually not have any gaps at all. Even then, there are some tactics that can be used in order to address gaps in resume.

Why Are Gaps in a Resume!

Quite often, people find their resumes having a gap or two. There can be many different reasons as to why these gaps exist. Some of these include:

• Had a newborn in the family and were busy caring for him/her
• Had to take time off to care for a sick family member
• Took time off for your own health issues
• Relocated to a new city and didn’t get employed for some time
• Went back to school to pursue further education and/or professional training
• Took time off to travel the world or lived with a parent in some other country
• Took time off trying to develop your own business or did some freelancing
• Got laid off by your previous company for downsizing and looked for a new job
• Simply couldn’t find a job for any given period of time

It can be quite hard to Find a Job after getting laid off or taking some time off. This is largely due to employment gaps in your resume that are considered by recruiters. Here are a few ways to make resume gaps much less obvious:

How to Make Employment Gaps Less Obvious in Your Resume?

If you cannot eliminate gaps in your resume, you can surely make them less obvious. A resume is used to highlight certain features about yourself. Not highlighting some to make gaps less obvious is a great technique.

Cover Up Gaps by Carefully Manipulating Dates

Although not recommended and also certainly on the wrong side of ethics, date manipulation can still be the last resort. If you absolutely cannot do anything else, manipulating dates can cover up gaps in your resume. 

Say your work experience for a previous company and the one after that was like this:

Assistant to CEO, ABC Company

January 2010 – March 2013

Office Admin Manager, XYZ Company

November 2013 – August 2017

There is a gap between March 2013 and November 2013. A date manipulation can work like moving the March 2013 date to say July 2013 and joining for next job November 2013 to August 2013. This way, both dates will get changed by a few months and no one will notice any gap there at all.

Change Your Resume Format

Resumes are usually tailored to highlight work experiences along with their dates and other attributes. However, when there is a gap in your work experience, choosing a different format may work great. A format that has a smaller font in non-bold style for dates against work experiences will be a good fit.

When looking to Tailor Resume with minimal highlight on work experience gaps, hiding dates in plain sight is great tactic. This way, you will not be lying at all and will put the highlight on what you want as well. Be sure to check out resume formats at Carmen you will find one that works great for every need.

Omit Couple of Jobs from Your Resume

Not every job you have worked on or every company you have worked for needs to go on your resume. Depending on the nature of your new applied job, some previous work experiences can simply be taken off your resume. Be careful on what experiences you take off though. Some will be more useful.

Omitting couple of jobs from your resume altogether take the highlight off from all the dates. No one will mind this as well. When interviewed, you can simply tell them that you took couple of your job experiences off your resume.

Mention Other Activities, Whatever They Might Be

Quite often, reasons for having gaps in resumes is because you wanted to start your own business. Freelancers would often have gaps in their resumes as well. Simply, whatever work you have been involved in during the time of the resume gap, mention it and explain during interview.

• Have you been doing voluntary work?
• Have you been trying to setup you own business?
• Did you find some freelance projects?
• Did you work on any solo project?
• Did you take a career sabbatical?
• Did you travel or took some other personal projects?

Mention all of these in your resume and also explain during the interview. This way, whatever reason might be for your work experience gap, your interviewers will know about it in the best way possible.