- Not sure how to address that employment gap
on your resume?
When you follow the tips I'm about to share,
you are going to be landing job interviews
and offers in no time, just like my clients do.
Welcome back.
And if you're new to this channel,
I'm Annie Little,
I'm an ICF certified coach and a former lawyer.
I created this channel for lawyers who are looking
for practical guidance on how to land, lead
and succeed in the legal profession and beyond.
Now, I know how helpful it can be
to hear about someone else's success
when they were in the same situation you were in.
So, on this video,
I'm going to be sharing a case study
from one of my clients,
about how she went from being unemployed
to landing her ideal job in just three months.
So, I'm going to call her Erin
and Erin's story starts six months,
before she landed her ideal job.
So, Erin had gotten her first job,
since graduating law school.
And everyone thought it was probably
a pretty toxic work environment,
but Erin was so determined to succeed
or as she put it to "not fail"
in her first job out of law school.
So, she just ignored it,
kept her head down
and was trying to make the most out of it
and gain as much experience as possible,
plus she really wanted to avoid that dreaded resume gap
that we're about to talk about.
But then in the midst of 2020,
during the COVID pandemic,
she was laid off.
Her family were relieved.
She was not, and she had a really hard time processing
what had happened.
And so, she wasn't ready to just dive right back into
or dive into in the first place,
looking for a new job.
She took stock of herself and was like,
it's the middle of the pandemic,
I've got a toddler with me all the time at home.
I was in a really tough work situation before
and I need to prioritize my mental health right now.
So, she got a therapist,
she also happened to follow me on LinkedIn.
And so over the next few months,
Erin focused on herself and getting
to a place where she felt like,
she was ready to get back into the workforce.
Once Erin was starting to feel on the up and up,
she started to explore what opportunities were out there.
So, she hopped onto the job boards.
She was talking to people in her network
and then she joined my program,
Make Your Next Move.
So, Erin joined,
she dove head first into the curriculum
and other aspects of the program.
And she was so excited to get started
and she was already applying to jobs on her own.
And she kept doing that after she started the program.
Less than two months into the program,
Erin got a call for a job interview
at a job she had applied to,
before we started working together
and it was her ideal job.
It was at a prosecutor's office.
So, the first interview happened to be on the same day
as one of the group coaching calls in my program.
We had it on a Friday,
like at noon and her interview was in a couple hours.
And so Erin came to the coaching call and she got,
she requested coaching on how to address the employment gap
that was on her resume,
because she was pretty certain
they were going to bring it up.
And at this point,
she had been unemployed for probably four or five months.
In the process of coaching Erin,
we got to a place
where we talked about the importance of self confidence
when we're talking about our experience in a job interview.
And of course we all kind of have a sense of that, right?
Like, yes we want to come off as confident
and exude that sort of confidence
that make people feel like we're capable, right?
But what's trickier is to figure out how to get yourself
to that place of self-confidence.
I shared with Erin,
what I have found to be the quickest route
to self-confidence
and it involves a combination
of honesty and self-compassion.
And so, to get her into that head space
where she could consider what that was for her,
I asked her what is the truest
and most generous explanation
for why you were unemployed over the last few months.
Erin took a few moments
to consider what that was for her.
And so what Erin came back with was that,
she was laid off along with other employees,
because of the pandemic,
the employer couldn't keep the business open
in the same capacity.
And then for her,
it felt good to share that the combination of being laid off
in the midst of a global pandemic,
while being home with her husband and toddler,
it was just too much of an emotional toll
to hop into the job search right away.
And then she would say,
and once I felt like I was feeling better,
I jumped feet first into the job search.
And I was so excited that when I first started looking,
I found the job posting for this position.
So, there is no cookie cutter answer, right?
But I think the question is what's really important
and understanding that if you're feeling nervous,
about how you're going to something in an interview
and you don't feel comfortable
with how you're going to answer it,
that's what you need to work on before an interview.
You need to think about,
"Okay, how am I going to be able to answer this question
"from a place of confidence?
"So, I don't look nervous
"or like I'm hiding something or being disingenuous."
Remember combination of honesty and self compassion,
ask yourself what's the truest and most generous explanation
for what I've got going on here.
Off Erin went to her interview,
she said she felt a whole lot better.
And she was really excited to do it.
Fast forward to a week,
she sent me an email and I'll just read it for you here.
I just wanted to let you know
that the interview I had last Friday went super well.
I felt so prepared for it,
because I came to our group session
and everyone's advice
and encouragement helped me beyond
what I could have imagined.
Thank you for creating a safe space for me to be candid
and ask all the questions I needed.
They called me back this Tuesday and offered me the job,
I accepted.
My family told me that Zoom call alone
was probably worth the entire class's fee.
So, you can see that Erin was unemployed
for six months from the time that she got laid off,
during COVID and got hired for the prosecutor's job.
But she did not do any job searching
for the first three months of her unemployment,
because she did what she needed to take care of herself,
because for her,
that was more important than finding a job right away.
And by checking in with herself
and remembering why she took that extra time,
she was able to explain that gap in the interview
when it came up, no problem.
So, here's the big takeaway.
How you feel when you explain your resume gap
is at least as important,
if not more important than what the words are saying.
And if you don't feel comfortable,
explaining your resume gap,
employers are going to wonder,
"Why are they so nervous?
"Why do they seem like they're hedging?
"Are they hiding something from us?"
And of course you're not,
you're understandably nervous.
You're in a job interview
and you feel like this is a really tricky question,
but that's the way it's going to come off.
So, when you find yourself in that situation
or you anticipate yourself being in that situation,
just follow my little recipe of honesty and self compassion
and come from that place
when you're thinking about how you want to explain
your resume gap.
Now, I mentioned my group coaching program,
Make Your Next Move.
That's the program that Erin joined
to help her to find and land her ideal job.
And if you're curious about what that entails,
I'm popping a link in the description,
so you can check it out and you have any questions about it.
Let me know and when you're ready to make your next move,
I really hope to see you there.