Easy questions have easy answers, right?
“I had to provide end of life care to a close relative.”
I have a big gap from a few years of depression and that’s my go to line. I have never ever heard a follow up question.
How big are we talking, I sometimes feel like taking a year off to fix my mental health, but I fear it will kill my career
I have a year of uni (unfinished), a year of an apprenticeship (unfinished) and then 1.5yrs of joblessness. Started at 20, I learned a trade in my mid twenties and have a solid career now. I just regret I was never able to finish uni.
I have a big gap from a few years of depression
It’s relieving to hear I’m not the only one, that shit was crippling. Glad we both made it through!
Fuck yeah. We survived!
I always put in “traveling overseas”
In my case this is actually true, but I’ve never had anyone question me taking 12 months off every few years
Me: “I was moving in silence or under a NDA.”
“That is the year when I was happy.”
“I cosplayed as a person who was free.”
Will this actually work?
It depends on the context if you say you had an NDA and can’t elaborate at all on the details that’s a clear red flag as most NDAs you can at least give the context of what it is about I.e. specific job processes, witnesses an event, etc.
If you say you worked for X company but can’t talk about the details of your work because of an NDA then that’s fine but they might call your old employer to verify you did really work there.
For the most part, yes. They only really ask the question because they automatically assume you were in jail if you have a gap over 2’ish weeks long. So they’re really just looking for some sort of explanation besides “I was just unemployed for no reason.” Because they assume “no reason” is really “I don’t want to admit that I was in jail.”
No NDA on earth prohibits giving a vague idea of what the duties and industry were. You may not be able to say the specific projects you worked on, or maybe even the name of the employer under extreme circumstances, but that would be like MI5 level rare, and those folks aren’t out applying for the jobs you are.
The real trick is having an LLC so you can just point to that and say you were consulting or self-employed during that time. Or have a friend with one.
A buddy of mine had an LLC and I hired him to write my cover letter. He then had me fill some review about my experience with his company for some position he was applying for. I never lied, but the whole thing just felt so weird. But at the same time, that’s just normal. It’s not like he wasn’t capable of the work or something. He did a good job on my cover letter. He was a good grant writer before that. I just have that lingering Christian guilt that’s like “omg you’re doing something wrong! This is your conscience! Behave!”
I also just think it’s human nature to see something like 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 10 and say “where are 8nand 9?” It’s not necessarily an accusation or something. I’m not saying that never happens, some places and interviewers are awful. But I think a lot of people are just making sure there isn’t a typo or something.
Wouldn’t any criminal record be public record? Couldn’t they just look it up?
You can have criminal records sealed, depending on what it is, etc.
Also, in many jurisdictions you can’t look up criminal history older than a certain number of years
2 weeks is barely enough to get an interview. Who thinks jail? lmao
HR plebs
Lol who tf actually thinks that. Ive hired and never thought that
yeah thats a wild assumption, maybe ppl just have enough money to survive for a while and dont want to work while they pursue hobbies, why is that not allowed, nah mustve been in jail
maybe ppl just have enough money to survive for a while and dont want to work while they pursue hobbies
The issue is that this is exactly what employers are trying to avoid. They want a good little worker bee who will show up every day and complete their tasks as assigned for 25 years straight. They don’t want someone who will just randomly decide to quit and focus on their hobbies. They want stability and predictability, because hiring new workers is a massive expense.
Because ppl expect/get more benefits and pay overtime
I thought it was worse to retain ppl long term and thats why they are constsntly firing ppl?
It’s almost never actually a good business decision in the long-term to lose an employee, unless that employee is actually causing losses. All the layoffs of the past 50ish years from corporate downsizing is thanks to the business philosophy of Jack Welch. When you stop paying a large group of people, it looks good in the next quarterly meeting because you can point at the money you’re saving. The bad part is that now the business A) has lost that productivity, and B) will likely need to spend more money hiring a replacement worker who won’t be as competent.
Man, you must live a privileged life if it didn’t even cross your mind that jobs might exist where that is a legitimate concern.
What if a small gap on their resume means jail?? What the fuck are you on about
Chill dude. I’m saying that there are jobs that employ people who often have a criminal history, and gaps in their employment record really often are because tey went to jail.
So, even though you may not interview very many former criminals in your line of work, surely you shouldn’t be at a loss to understand why anyone would ever think that.
Im saying the hiring managers that think that are brain dead
I give 'em the old “caring for a sick or dying family member.” Look sad that they brought it up. That usually shuts them up.
I believe this is the best answer.
I had a 6 month gap and I said I was taking a sabbatical (which was the truth). No one batted an eye.
I can’t tell you, I signed an NDA
Not even remotely.
Oh. I’m bookmarking this. Great idea.
I have a one year gap in mine and I can’t remember anyone asking about it.
I tried to get the US-Citizenship. But then came the Macarena…
My resume has a bigger gap than goatse
In principle they shouldn’t be allowed to ask that. if they seem to be giving too much weight to that they are just being lazy on trying to evaluate you and they will likely be bad employers who believe that taking time off for yourself is a red flag
i have never been asked this question and i actively remove positions that aren’t relevant to the job i send that particular resume to
Yes. I created the document in Google docs, and you opened it in Word.
That’s why you should provide PDF of you resume.
Nah just give them the
.texsource and let them deal with it.And let them figure out the bajillion packages it needs to render correctly
This is on you then. Providing finished documents in an editable format just feels wrong to me
Sharing a document in Google docs means sharing a link and in many cases with read-only access.
I created it in Word and opened it in Teams by accident once.
“Sorrry, I have an NDA”
NDAs generally prohibit you from stating that you are under NDA.
Better to be cryptic “I can’t really go into details due to my clearance”.
That doesn’t work either
They still want name of employer and dates
Lots of cleared applicants have probably applied there in the past
Big if true
It’s classified
[REDACTED]
If i have to explain the gap (which clearly means I was not employed), it means you are incompetent, you fail my interview, I don’t work with incompetent bosses.
