Hey Ambitious Professionals! It's Linda Raynier of lindaraynier.com guiding you
to a career and life you'll truly enjoy. And in today's video, I'm going to teach
you two key strategies on how to handle explaining gaps of unemployment on your
resume.
There are many reasons why some of us may have gaps on our resume you might
have taken time off to be a stay-at-home mom or dad you might have taken time off
to study to travel or you may just have a gap simply because you've been looking
for a job that whole time but you still haven't been successful the way to
handle your gaps is dependent on when they occurred and I'm going to give you
specific guidance and give you two key strategies depending on the situation
there are two situations on when you have gaps in your resume situation
number one you have gaps in the past but you're currently employed so let's say
that you are currently working right now and you've been in your role for at
least a year or longer and you're ready to find a new position but at the same
time you have gaps in your past before you took on this role that means that
there isn't much need for you to truly explain those previous gaps because the
emphasis for the employer when they read your resume is to look at your most
recent position so your strategy is going to be to emphasize in detail the
duties tasks and responsibilities that you've been performing in this most
recent position and the achievements that you've been able to accomplish
because that is actually what the employer is going to be paying attention
to employers tend to focus on the most recent roles that you've held and if you
can explain your most current position in a really detailed and compelling
attractive way then the previous gaps might may not actually be minded as much
now that's not to say that they're not going to ask you about those previous
gaps in the interview but you want to leave it to the interview to be able to
explain and not try to explain it on your resume the reason for this is
because I've personally seen resumes where people have explained in detail
why they left every single position and what they were doing in between and
truthfully that just clutters up the resume you want to leave that for the
interview you want to have your story outlined in the interview and explain it
then situation number two you have a current gap right now as we speak and
it's actually been longer than year so then if that's your situation
the big question to ask yourself here is have you been doing any work have you
been helping anybody out organizations people as a consultant helping with
ad-hoc projects with tasks that you can say are relevant to the role that you
want to apply to if yes then it's important to include it I've heard of so
many people and so many people have told me that yes I've been on this
unemployment break for a while I haven't been able to find a job but at the same
time I've been doing some consulting on the side and they don't include that on
their resume whatever you have included because it's important to show that
you've done something rather than nothing or if you've been doing some
higher education getting an extra diploma or doing your MBA you definitely
want to include that as well if that's where you've been spending your time
studying and just a one-liner is enough to explain that or if you've been
volunteering and you've been performing some work-related tasks in your
volunteer work then include that as well again it's better to put something
rather than nothing now if you've truly been up to nothing
this whole time for this past year and a bit
for whatever reason then I would say simply go to the most recent position
that you have held and emphasize that as much as possible and when I say
emphasize I mean include five to eight solid bullet points of tasks
responsibilities and key duties that you've been performing in your most
recent roles and lining them up to the position that you want to apply to you
as much as possible and don't forget to also include your achievements it's not
worth it to really put something that's personal on your resume I mean in my
opinion to say been searching for the last year and a half and haven't been
successful I mean it doesn't really look good
I'd rather that you would just focus on your most recent opportunities the ones
that you've recently held and focus in and hone in on the key tasks and
responsibilities there and from there you're gonna have to really work on your
job search networking strategy to make sure that the employers or the
recruiters or the my majors that you get in touch with
fully understand your situation and are willing and ready to read your resume
review your resume and hopefully get you in for an interview so there you have it
my two key strategies on how to deal with unemployment gaps on your resume
now of course this is only scratching the surface when it comes to developing
a truly attractive compelling impressive resume to send out to employers if you
want more tips then feel free to download my free copy of my ten ultimate
resume hacks that will land you more interviews and job offers which is
located in the description box below or otherwise if you are truly ready to
revamp your resume take it to the next level and truly go through a deep dive
and understand how to develop a strong Top Notch Resume from beginning to
finish then feel free to check out my course Top Notch Resume it's an online
self-study course where just within a few hours you'll be able to be taken
step-by-step through the whole process of rewriting a brand new top-notch
resume that you can send out to employers you can click on the link down
in the description box for more details now if you are someone who has been
searching for a position for a while now and you're realizing that you don't know
how to sell yourself or you're struggling in landing those interviews
and you're ready to get one-on-one personalized guidance then feel free to
reach out to me head on over to lindaraynier.com/standoutgethired feel
free to read the page fill out the application form and if I think that we
are a potential match then I will reach out to you and we will discuss
accordingly if you'd like this video then please give it a thumbs up
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will see you in the next video.