Explaining a career gap on your CV: Watch Now

Don’t ignore a career break

If you’ve got a career gap there is no point in ignoring it.

People want to know what you have been doing in that time, particularly as well, if you are going to be working for a financial institution, they’re going to have to run checks so that they can account for what you’ve been doing during that time. So if you just if you are on a career break, if you are raising a family or you are caring for somebody, note that down in your CV, it will not go against you, but hiding away from it, it will go against you.

Because if recruiters are really busy, they’re seeing big career gaps, they won’t want to phone you and find out why they just want to see it written down. So make sure that you are explaining the career gap again, just with the dates, career break, bringing up a family or caring for a person.

Put down other activities

And you can provide a short description. So you can say that you, you know all the different things you’ve been doing. Also, if you have been out of, if you have been bringing up a family for quite some time, I had somebody that we worked with they had been bringing up a family for nine years. But during that time, they’d also been very active. They had been attending a speaker’s club, they had also then become – even though it was a voluntary position – become the secretary for that place, and also had done some volunteering work.

Put that down as experience. It doesn’t have to go exactly under career but it can go down as work experience. Although you weren’t being paid for that it’s still relevant experience that you can bring to an employer.

Acknowledge it on LinkedIn

The same goes on LinkedIn, there is no harm in putting career break and acknowledging that gap, providing an explanation of what you’ve been doing during that time. As I said, as long as you can account for it and talk about it, it should be no problem at all to employers.

Emma Alkirwi is the Managing Director of the CV Guru, a leading service provider of professionally written CVs, LinkedIn Profiles, cover letters in the UK and they also provide specialist consultancy services.  Emma has over 10 years experience in recruitment and employment related services covering a wealth of industries.

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