We do not recommend explaining away your employment gaps, even when they are being perceived as blemishes and raise red flags for potential employers. While this may seem ludicrous and unreasonable, many recruiters, either overwhelmed with applications or lacking competence, often use gaps as a convenient filter.
Instead, it is always better to lie about your job status or extending the dates, instead of providing excuses.
Explaining your Gap with Excuses
The problem is that most career advice and interview help assumes recruiters are intellectuals, who are analyzing each candidate, weighing pros/cons, and carefully considering how that candidate fits into the organization. Now ask yourself this – of all the recruiters you’ve met, how many strike you as intellectuals and “professional culture fit” analyzers?
If you decide to use an excuse (which we don’t recommend) – you want to spend as little time talking about it as possible. The more time you spend on it, the more of a red flag in a recruiter’s mind. Just give a one or two sentence explanation about your gap, and then move on to something relevant to the job.
The standard template for your answer could be: “I [reason you were not employed]. During that time, [what you did during the gap]. Returning to work was top of mind during that period, and I’m ready to do that now.”
Some other excuses you can use:
- Provided assistance to an unwell family member
- Opted to remain at home to nurture your child or children
- Encountered health or medical challenges
- Engaged in additional education or professional development
- Journeyed or relocated to a different area
- Experienced termination or dismissal from employment
- Actively sought new employment opportunities without encountering the ideal match
Recruiters (and human beings in general) assume that the longer someone talks about an excuse, the more guilty or embarrassed they feel about it. It’s idiotic, it defies logic, but like everything else we advise – don’t get mad about human nature, instead leverage it. Use recruiters’ poor judgment and tendencies against them, by keeping your excuse short, to the point, and stated with confidence; and in exchange, the recruiter will usually just move on to the next question.
The problem with the excuse approach is that it assumes you get past the 23 year old resume screener, and get an interview to begin with. Remember – in the interview process, you have to get past 90% stupidity before you even get to the 10% that analyzes your ability to perform in the role.
Extending your Employment Dates (Lie!)
We highly recommend extending your employment dates so that there is no gap whatsoever. Here is what magically gets solved for you when you lie about your dates:
- No need to ever admit you were fired or laid off – you simply left for a better opportunity
- No need to make any excuses or practice a speech about your gap
- Employers are less likely to think that the candidate is unemployable – “Why did this candidate have to wait so long to get employment – what have others seen that I have not?”
- Hiring managers less likely to require reference checks (they will sometimes pop the reference question when they have concerns about your candidacy, even if their concerns are idiotic)
- No need to address a perceived lack of commitment to working, skills obsolescence, and other stigmas
Want to make resume screeners, junior recruiters, and hiring executives think that you are highly sought after, eager to work, and one of the best applicant fits they have ever interviewed? Then you need to embrace your self-interest for the betterment of your career, and lie where you need to. Senior executives do this all the time, such as this recent NFL example.
In order to extend your employment dates and still pass the background / reference check, you just need a 3rd party to pose as a staffing company, and then use that reference to cover for your extended dates. Fabricating education is completely different, see our advice here.