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Writing your resume is a difficult task,
what with having to prepare a powerful Career Objective,
a Profile that sells your skills, and an accurate but
positive summary of your
work experience,
qualifications and education.
However, it can be even more difficult if you have gaps in your work history. The problem
is that you can not simply ignore such gaps - you must address them directly - as otherwise
employers may make incorrect, and even negative, assumptions about such gaps.
Here are a few tips for dealing with gaps in your work history:
- Any gaps shorter than about 90 days do not need to be explain. It is not at all uncommon
to take a break between jobs, and employers generally don't notice or care about such short gaps
in a candidate's resume. However, longer gaps must be addressed
directly in your cover letter, or the
resume itself. A forthright and honest explanation of any large gaps
in your work history, whether such gaps were because of professional or personal reasons, is much better
than allowing an employer to make negative assumptions.
- One common trick that some candidates try when applying for jobs is try to cover them up. For example,
they might pretend one job ended later, or another job started later. Aside from the ethical qualms that this
approach raises, it's a poor approach from a purely practical perspective too. The problem with
dishonesty is that there is always a risk of being found out - the job application process is stressful
enough without worrying about what an employer may discover through a background check,
contacting your references, or by a surprise question during
an interview.
- Don't create gaps! Some people omit jobs from their resume if they don't fit with
their Career Objective. It's much better to simply list
the job, and explain the professional or personal reason why you took it.
- Don't apologize! There are all kinds of reasons why people take time away from work, and many of
them are good reasons. If you have had time away from work, there's no reason to be apologetic
about it - it's much better to be positive. It may even be that your time away from work
may actually benefited from your career - for example if you studied, took an educational course,
or perhaps did some volunteer/community work,
Related Links:
- CareerAssist
We offer affordable, easy-to-use cover letter and resume builder software and resume and cover letter critique services
- Post Your Resume for FREE at HotResumes.com
- Resume and Cover Letter Secrets Revealed
"This do-it-yourself manual makes writing your own resume and cover letter a breeze... even for someone who's never written them before!"
- Resume Rabbit
This site INSTANTLY submits a customers resume and job requirements on up to 75 top job sites including Monster, Job.com, CareerBuilder, Net-Temps, Dice and more! Once finished our customers can be seen by over 1.5 million employers and recruiters daily. It takes customers ONLY 5 minutes & saves them over 60 hours of research and data entry. Best of all, its easy to use and produces REAL results! Since January 2001 ResumeRabbit has performed 1,000,000's of resume submissions for loads of happy customers. And the site has great testimonials to prove it!
- Sample Resumes
Resume and Cover Letter Samples Package.
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