Hey cultivator. Welcome back to the cultivate, your career channel,
where every Thursday, we dish out a new video on job search tips, mindset,
hats, productivity tools, and career advice.
So if you have not yet hit subscribe and hit the belts, be notified,
be sure to do that.
And let's dive into today's video around employment gaps.
We're going to discuss all things, employment gaps,
because I know after coaching thousands of job seekers,
these are really scary for us, whether it's,
we're afraid to put it on their resume,
because we're worried about the judgment that an employer's going to make on why
we were voluntarily or involuntarily let go,
or we're worried about it during the interview stage,
when they start to probe about why did you leave? Why did you leave?
Why did you leave this position?
So the good news is that employment gaps aren't as bad as you think
they are. And I'll explain more of that in this video today,
but I just want to share that I myself have employment gaps on my background.
And again,
it's not something that I shine a light on and put the emphasis and focus on,
but it is there and I have good reasons and explanations for each one of
them.
And so that's really the point of this video today is helping you understand
from a recruiter and the hiring manager's perspective on how you can address
this so that it doesn't send red flags,
but instead you can utilize what your situation is to your
advantage. With that being said, let's dive into this week's video.
Employment gaps are not really that big of a deal unless you have a lot of
them, meaning that there's a pattern of you joining a company,
let's say for a year to two years,
and then you have a break and then you have another one from one to two years,
and then you have another break. And then one to two years at another break,
and it's like this continuous cycle or pattern that's when generally yes,
employers are going to start questioning, like, what is this pattern about?
And you better have a good reason and explanation for that.
But generally speaking, if it's really, you know, you were laid off,
you had a merger and acquisition that major position
redundant, um, you moved to another state,
you decided to go back to school or you took some time off for personal
sabbatical to take care of somebody in your family, et cetera,
whatever that personal reason may be.
It's okay to have like an end date and then have some time in
between before you started a new job. We understand as recruiters,
that job searching takes time.
We understand that life happens and not everybody has this long
succession of employment and that's okay.
It's completely okay. But again, if there is a pattern and it's really evident,
then that's when I would recommend that you maybe take off the month and just
leave the years as recruiters,
we do have kind of a red flag of like, what is this person hiding?
And so again, in the interview,
you'll have a chance to explain what that's all about,
but at least on the resume,
it will be good for you to kind of get through to that stage of interviewing,
to be able to have the opportunity to explain. Now,
if your employment gaps are a minority versus the majority in this
bigger picture of your employment history,
then you can absolutely include the month and the year to the month and the year
for your employment history.
And you might even want to put in parentheses your reason for leaving,
unless it was involuntary,
meaning that you had performance issues that you were fired for misconduct
and so forth. But if your reason for leaving was, again,
any of those voluntary reasons,
including getting a severance package or being laid off or being redundant in
the workforce, then you can go ahead and include that as a reason.
And it's not going to raise a red flag.
Now let's talk about the interview question. When asked,
why did you leave these positions and what were you doing during this time?
So what we're really looking for here is a positive response.
So whether you were taking personal time off and how did that end on a positive
of note or what were you doing during this time that allowed you to further your
skills, your experience and your knowledge. So for instance,
if your reason for voluntarily resigning was because you needed to take care of
an elder family member, you can state that.
And the positive you would add to that is letting them know that yeah,
that that matter has since been resolved.
And here's what you've been doing to get your foot back into the workforce.
And you are very much ready for this next chapter. Now,
if you were let go because of redundancy in the workforce
or just the company was dissolving, for instance,
you can absolutely share what you've been working on in the interim.
So you could share, for instance, when this happened,
I really took some time to assess what I'm looking for in my next chapter.
And again,
you want to align yourself to the position and the company that you're
interviewing for right now. Uh,
but still maybe sprinkle in some of the skills that you've been learning or
brushing up on,
or the courses that you've been taking or the books and the podcasts you've been
reading to get yourself really familiar with any of the latest
updates and the regulations, the industry knowledge, the landscape, um,
as it has changed since your last employment,
the bottom line here is that employment gaps really are not a big deal unless
you make them a big deal.
The most important thing is to really highlight and focus on the positives.
And if for any reason you were let go in voluntarily
because it was performance related, it was, um, misconduct,
et cetera.
You just really want to take ownership of that situation and you
might want to state it without going into all the details,
just that had a high level overview of what occurred and what you learned from
it and what you're looking for next employers let's know at the end of the day,
how you have positively showed up for yourself,
what is that positive attitude that you can bring to the table?
How is it that you've demonstrated you've maximized and utilized that time
period wisely to continue forth to where you are today
and where you want to be in the future.
I want to end this video by sharing that I've worked with job seekers in the
past, who have had, you know, one year unemployment gaps, two years,
unemployment gaps, including currently,
and yet they are able to land their dream positions.
And a lot of them actually jumped into senior roles that were
higher than the position that they previously left and even doubled their
salaries.
So don't worry about something that's happened in the past and just think like
this is my past or present circumstance, whatever your goals are in the future,
you can work towards that.
And you can obtain that regardless of what is in your employment
history or written on your resume. Currently,
this is really the power and the beauty of being able to reinvent yourself and
have your story ready, have your personal branding ready,
and really being able to connect and align yourself to that future
position. If you at all are interested by the way,
and learning more about jobs or strategies and just getting comprehensive
holistic support,
we'll go ahead and link down the programs down below to guide you through the
entire process and take out the guesswork,
because I truly believe that everybody has the potential to land their dream
jobs.
We just might need a reframe in our mindsets and we might need a new
strategy and approach. If you enjoy this video, please like comment,
share and subscribe because I really think this video next week,
and I can't wait for you to continue cultivating your life and your career.