How to explain the gap in your resume

Steal these reasons for the gaps in your CV

Photo by João Ferrão on Unsplash

Do you have a gap in your resume? A break in your CV? Is it for 6 months or more without a reason? Your resume might be being rejected before a human gets to read it.

The Verge and Harvard Business School published a study this week at how the hiring system is broken in the US — and much of it is broken thanks to bots scanning resumes:

For example, some systems automatically reject candidates with gaps of longer than six months in their employment history, without ever asking the cause of this absence. It might be due to a pregnancy, because they were caring for an ill family member, or simply because of difficulty finding a job in a recession.

— The Verge

This doesn’t mean you should lie or not talk about the gap — especially with the increasingly cheap use of referencing companies globally.

So let’s take a look at some of the reasons you can borrow for explaining gaps in your resume:

How to explain a resume gap of 1 month:

It’s worth remembering that where there is a rough overlap of a month between switching jobs, you shouldn’t worry about that gap too much — it will look natural. Where dates are…