This article discusses the options when you have a gap on your resume – and what not to do.
If you are concerned about an upcoming background check, review your options.
We do not recommend explaining away your employment gaps, even when they are legitimate, because it puts in you a position of perceived weakness, and can raise red flags for potential employers. While this may seem ludicrous and unreasonable, many recruiters, either overwhelmed with applications or lacking competence, will often use gaps as a convenient filter. You might not even get a chance to explain your gap in an interview, and if you do, you are already behind (especially in this job market).
Instead, it is better to lie about your job status or extending the dates, instead of providing excuses. The key is covering it, and there are options to help with that – i.e. passing the employment verification check later on. We will discuss why the excuse route hurts your job hunt, and why lying is the better option.
Explaining your Gap with Excuses
The problem is that most career advice and interview help assumes recruiters are intellectuals and reasonable individuals, 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? And how often are you being screened out without even being offered the chance to explain?
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.
How to Lie and Pass the Background Check
Once you’ve extended your employment dates, or fabricated an entirely new job history, you’ll need a way to pass the background check. We’ve written extensively on how to do this, but the summary is this – you tell the verifier that you worked for XYZ company, but through a staffing company, and then when they contact that staffing company, you redirect it to someone that you trust. This works for literally any employer that is not the Federal government – you can even claim you worked for a F500 company. And this completely covers you on the background check.
Here is more information on how this works. If you are concerned about the morality of pursuing your own self-interest in the job search, read about how we believe it is ethical to lie.
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.