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Texas ISD School Guide
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Resume and Interview Tips

Job Gap- Give a proper explanation about gaps in Work History on Resume
By:Ana Thames <annathames@yahoo.com>

The gap in your employment history section in your resume will certainly make a bad impact on the potential employer. If you are the person with large employment gap, you need to address it in your CV and explain the reason to the employers so that they consider you for the particular job. You may think “what is bad about gap in my work history? After all, everyone needs a break from work.” It is obvious that break is important in your professional life, but even then employers don’t like to see gaps in your work history. In this case, you have to give proper explanation to the employers regarding your unemployed time. You can provide the explanation about your job objective in some way or at least display your key strengths.

Why does job gap makes Bad impact on the employers?

The large employment gaps in your CV may cause employer to think that you are hiding something from them. They may also think that there were some problems or issues in your past employments due to which either you were forced to leave the job or you yourself left it. Whatever may be the reason for your unemployment, it certainly makes bad impact on the prospective employer.
In order to impress the employer despite of the gaps in your work history, you need to justify these gaps. Provide proper explanation to the employers as to why you were away from professional life, what was the reason, was it related to your personal life, etc.

No matter how hard working and attentive you are, you may find yourself out of work for some time period at some stage in your career. You will have to take a break from your professional life to let this time pass. When you apply for the job after this time gap, you must take proper care of not letting this gap affect your job search. You need to inform the employers the reason for gap in your employment and explain them how this gap has helped you recover from illness, stress, depression, accident, etc. and now you are ready and confident to achieve new heights in your career.

Just because you were unemployed, it doesn’t mean that you were sitting ideal. You must have kept yourself busy in some work and may be that you have earned some skills during this period. You can explain how these skills can prove beneficial in your professional life.
Some people take a gap for pursuing any job related course or certification. It is a lot easy for such people to return back to work as they are in touch with the knowledge of their field and keep their skills updated.

How to Avoid Employment Gaps in Resume?

There are many ways to hide the gaps in your work history. One way is to select the correct format for writing your details. You cannot use the chronological format, instead you can use the skill based format to group the relevant skills under one group.
You can fill these gaps by interesting phrases like travelled the world, raised children, self employed, etc. Such information in CV can go in your favor.

You can tell the employer that you developed certain set of skills while you were on a break rather than telling about the time you spent watching TV.

From the above discussion, it is clear that the break in your work history will make a bad impact on the potential employer. You can justify these gaps to the employers and convince them to hire you for the job position.

You can view example of resume here.





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