How to explain job gaps on the resume?

A gap in your resume is called a sabbatical. You spent a year doing something else that's more important to you because you can afford it. Medical plus some recovery time is a great reason. But just playing around with some new tech, investing in your education, or even spending time on your other interests, work for charity, or see something of the world, are great reasons. Slacking off may not sound great, but many employers are unlikely to care that much about the gap, and if they do, there's always a more interesting way to phrase it.

As a person who's reviewed a lot of resumes, I don't actively look for job gaps, so I probably wouldn't notice. I'm more interested in what technologies you use (role), and what you've done in the past (experience). As long as you are sharp and know your stuff, you'll do fine.

Even if it is a red flag to some, I strongly believe software interviewing is a numbers game, due to randomness and bad interview processes. And once you do get a job and get back in the workforce, if you don't like it, you can switch again. And you at least won't be in the middle of a current gap.

I'd just definitely have a a go-to answer when you interview, and medical is a totally fine answer there. I don't think any competent hiring manager would ask past that due to legal risk (although there's always someone who asks illegal questions at interviews anyway).

Best of luck!

The things you do between roles define you as a person and make you interesting. Use them as such. Tell the truth: I was sick, had enough savings to heal up and take some time off, and now I'm fresh and ready for the fight. I also did X Y Z and A B C, had some fun. Play time's over, and I'm looking to work hard.

If they can't appreciate that, then they wouldn't appreciate you in general. A self-solving problem.

Those are rookie numbers. 12 months is nothing. Try an 8 year gap - after an initial 3 years experience working as a .NET dev.

I lived below US poverty level for 8 years with a CS degree and did the bare minimum of shitty contract jobs because I didn't want to be coding for someone else... eventually I realized I suck working for myself. (and now I have a normal 6 figure dev job)

The main thing you have to have is a story. I lied and said I enjoyed coding products in SecondLife and made tens of thousands of dollars coding inside a videogame, even though the truth was I only made a couple thousand. I also made my contract work sound more important, and went through the various startup ideas I tried and had a good story on why they failed. As long as story sounds plausible, it seems like you learned things related to the work, and you seem like a good person someone will give a shot as contract-to-hire even with an 8 year gap. So I think a one year gap won't be a problem at all, you shouldn't even need to do contract-to-hire.

Just tell the truth. Medical is a perfectly valid reason.

Tangent: What does it say about hiring culture that a gap of 3 months is a potential deal breaker? Like anybody who would ever deign to not be employed by choice is unhirable. God forbid that people are defined by anything other than having a career working for others. A person's worth is not defined by how much economic value they create.

I'd just tell the truth, I've taken off plenty of time and I generally just put it on my resume to save them having to ask: "took of some time for health related reasons and then decided to use my savings to spend some time with my passions" or whatever it is in your case. If this is a problem for a hiring manager, that's probably a red flag for you as well. I hope it doesn't end up being a problem for you; it's never been one for me, but every company is different. Best of luck!

I had a 5 years gap in my career - all medical. Recently, right after that gap, I was intervieweing with multiple companies - most of them didn't even ask me, even though I was worried as hell. In the end I got almost all job offers I wanted. The only notable exception that didn't even grant me a phone screen was Amazon, their recruiter told me that ML has advanced so much in those 5 years that all my prior experience is totally irrelevant to them anymore. Oh, really. Whatever. In the end I ended up joining Facebook.

So with your 12 months gap and your prior experience, I would say nothing to worry about.

I took nearly a year off in the 1990s, just "doing coffee shops and bookstores." I read a lot, did some recreational programming and a little travel. Basically took it easy after a number of years of high-hour, high-visibility projects (and a high-hour, low-visibility startup that essentially crashed).

Never had any trouble with that explanation.

If they don't like it, you probably don't want to work there anyway.

I can't speak for every company out there, but for us, we've discovered that resumes and whiteboard challenges are bad predictors of great engineers. So, we simply come up with a small project that's related to what we would have you work on if you were hired and give you around a week to finish it. You can use other people's code snippets online as well as any libraries you see fit. As long as the end result is good enough, we'd move you to the next step, which is to just test if you're a good culture fit. I know quite a few other startups are doing this as well, so maybe the method is becoming popular. I would recommend you research the companies a bit and see if it's even something they'd care about first. We wouldn't even ask you to explain a gap in the first place.

First of all, I've done plenty of hiring. You should not worry about a 12 month gap. It will have a minor negative impact on getting callbacks. You might have to work slightly harder at your applications to compensate. If you're already getting calls and interviews, you've already passed through the filter since a gap is most likely to hurt you while a HR recruiter is sorting through a large pile of resumes.

You can still do things with your resume to make it more likely to get through the resume pile filter. Did you do any personal projects, classes or open source that can show continues professional interest and passion? Try putting something on your resume about it. Or if you've really done nothing but relax(which is OK!), now can be a good time to start working on professional development, then you have something to speak to when asked what you've been doing with your time.

“Took some time off to explore projects. Exited to get back to work.”

No answer to this question will be cited by the hiring committee/etc as a reason to thumbs up a candidate; many answers will be cited as a “red flag.” Give the minimum amount of signal and move on.

The main thing would be to explain that it was medical, that it is over now and you are healthy again. The fact that it went on a few more months than necessary isn't really relevant, although saying that you took a few extra months off at the end just to refresh yourself does reassure that the health issues are, in fact, all over.

It might be worth practicing, alone in front of a mirror or something, explaining this. It may or may not get asked, but if it is you want to have your verbiage ready. But health issues are not rare, and wanting to take time off because you have the money to do so, is not something most people would have any problem understanding. I've known several people who did that, and they all got employed again later, without too much trouble.

"Family medical emergency".

It's not a lie (you are your own family) and they can't legally ask anything more.

I stopped putting months on my resume. Nobody cares what month you joined or left. A gap of less than 2 years won't even be noticed.

"Job X, 2000-2003; Job Y, 2004-2008." I guarantee no interviewer is ever going to say "So you left Job X on December 31st, 2003, and started Job Y on January 1st, 2004? I don't believe it. How long was this gap, really?"

Job hunting often takes months, and software engineers make enough money that they have enough saved to not need to work every day to make rent. If they give it any thought at all, interviewers are going to assume you quit in the fall, spent a few months on vacation, spent a few months on job hunting, and started again in the spring.

It's become an industry joke in my circles that software engineers never 'take vacation'. They work hard for 6 to 18 months until their startup goes bust (or their consulting contract is up), take a few months off, and jump in again.

I always wonder what the HR person would get all upset over a gap for? Can someone tell me about the time they rejected a candidate because they had a gap in their employment? lol :D

I mean why do they care. If I save up money and take a year off every few years? That just means if I get bored of them I'll walk out.

It sounds like the kinda thing people care about because they're told to, but they don't actually have a reason why.

1) Personally I don't think you need to explicitly address it on your resume. I personally know lots of tech people who have taken 6-24 month off to travel and had no problems getting interviews / jobs.

2) The main place I could imagine this gap coming into play is the sourcer stage (ie the recruiting person who reviews all of the incoming resumes), since most hiring managers doing resume reviews will mostly be looking for technologies / job experience. To avoid this you can lean on your network to see if you can get a referral to roles or look for head hunters who can skip you to the initial screen.

Good luck!

TBH, I'm in a similar situation but with three years since I worked in the industry. I burned out, moved out of the Valley to be close to family, and worked odd jobs, mostly IT.

The odd jobs are getting old, and I miss programming.

I did a sabbatical in 2014 and nobody cared.

I was 16 months without a job. Learned an instrument, tried to built a video game, studied a bit of CS.

Probably a question of how you frame it.

I echo folks in this thread who suggest being honest. In my opinion it says a lot about you and how you communicate, as well as a lot about how the org thinks about their employees. i mean, you essentially took a sabbatical (regardless of the reasons) after more than 5 years in your career. individuals may quibble about the length-before-break, but several companies have a sabbatical-like perk built into their comp plan.

Wow! I really didn't expect the topic would get that much traction.

Props to the commnunity.

I'd like to summarize the points that stood the most strong to myself and that were most common among the commenters.

The obvious:

* Don't lie. If you don't feel like being completely upfront just keep back.

* Build confidence. You should not feel guilty for taking a break.

* Don't put the hiatus at the top of your work experience on CV.

The not so obvious:

* If you have been on medical, think twice if coming up with this is worth the risk. You may get chewed.

* Sabbatical is always a safe bet. Elaborate if needed on the achievements, personal growth, projects that you've been up to.

* Be prepared to get lowballed if you have no other offers at your disposal.

* Express eagerness to get back into the game.

The impalpable:

* Don't bring the break into focus unless the hiring manager brings it up.

* Prepare a good answer if being asked on the nature of the gap. Don't overburden with details, be brief and concise.

Feel free to add points that i might've missed. And thanks again for the good advice.

Just be honest. Seems fine. As someone who speaks with many candidates a week, I'm more worried about people who average 1 year at various jobs across 5 years (such as someone working 4-6 jobs in a 5 year span) than someone who has a year gap that is likely more reasonably explained.

Gaps are fine, and normal. Things happen (personal medical, family health, kids, breaks, personal pivots, ...). Be prepared to talk briefly about them if asked so you do appear to be caught off guard. Just keep it simple, consistent, and move on with the conversation.

I wouldn't want to work for a company that frowned upon a gap in work experience based on a medical issue. If the topic comes up, tell the truth. If they balk, you should run fast and hard from that company.

Entrepreneur time. I explain the few gaps on my attempts to create something of my own. I don’t mind saying it didn’t work out as I hoped but I got bit by the bug of creativity and went for it. Glad I did.

"I required time off to provide care for a loved one". No further explanation beyond that is owed.

I once took almost 2 years off for no good reason. I traveled, visited friends and family, relaxed and generally did whatever I wanted. It was a great and memorable time in my life.

When I started looking for work again, I simply told them that in full honesty, and explained that I had enough money to do it.

Every interviewer reacted positively. Pretty much all of them said they would love to take a long time off like that and asked about my travels and about my projects.

> Now i feel completely healthy, refreshed, passionate and ready to rock again

What did you do to get refreshed again? And can you keep this up while working 40 hours a week?

I always just tell the truth. I'd rather work for a company that doesn't think it's bad that I chose not to work for 9 months. (I've even been asked by curious interviewers how I was able to take that much time off)

When I was last interviewing, I just said that I took time off to work on side projects and refresh my mind. I never had a problem. My work experience was just a little more than yours currently is.

I put my two year travelling gap at the top of my "work history" section. I listed the skills I learned during that time - I taught myself Spanish, handled tricky logistical situations (shipping vehicle from Panama to Colombia), & learned to think on my feet.

Nobody ever talked about it like it was a bad thing, they just wanted to hear stories from the road! I have no problem getting a Software Engineering job.

I recently took 2 years off, and it took a grand total of 2 weeks to interview at the company that I ended up getting an offer at and working for. I just told interviewers honestly that I had taken a sabbatical to fulfill one of my life goals of traveling the world. It didn't work against me as much as I'd expected it to. Of course I still had to pass the technical interview, which ultimately companies care most about anyways.

Most companies care primarily about your technical competence and don't really care about that other stuff. This "job gap" scare is vastly overrated (perhaps large corporations might be more anal about job gaps if they're just looking for obedient corporate drones, but there's plenty of work outside those kinds of companies).

But if you're really worried about the job gap thing, you could say that you were playing around with new technologies, working on your own side projects / startup, or freelancing. But if you have other experience, I don't think most employers really care so long as you're competent.

As a longtime hiring manager I have zero issues with a break for health reasons (or any other reasons). I will ask questions about the break to understand the circumstances. My concern is how likely it is to reoccur. If you can show that it’s unlikely to affect your work on our team, and your skills are otherwise impressive for the role, then it’s no issue at all.

Thanks very much for submitting this and to the commenters offering advice. I’m also trying to come back after a gap and finding it very discouraging. The positive comments here are really helpful to change my mindset and get back a positive energy to discuss the meaningful things that I’ve done, even if they weren’t paid full-time jobs.

I have had this happen, twice, due to medical.

I tell them that one was medical and the other was a sabbatical to take time to learn the latest technologies, as I do not want to scare them off with too many medical "vacations".

Yes, technically it's lying but it's the only real way I've found to properly navigate what is a ridiculous system.

If the company rejects you for the truth it should probably not have been your employer anyway. You can use it as a filter.

I hire and manage developers for a living.

Why on Earth would you not just say exactly what you said here?

I'm sure you could phrase it a little better but, "I had a medical problem for 9+ months and then took several more months to rest after that" is not going to be viewed unfavorably in any way if your skills are up to date.

I have a similar situation - although my gap is much smaller (~4 months) it still is big enough to raise questions. But it hasn't. In the last 3-4 months I've interviewed with over 10 companies (multiple stages) and not one hiring manager was interested in the gap.

However, that doesn't mean the recruiters who rejected my CV didn't care about it. And that's why, to avoid any confusion about the gap I added an item on my resume which indicates what I was up to. In my case, I travelled to India to do my yoga teachers training course. So I added the course certificate with the date clearly on my CV.

So to summarize: the best thing to do IMO is to remove the possibility of confusion by adding any descriptive piece of information on your resume.

Medical-triggered gap is joy a big deal. One thing I would worry about as a potential employer is if the candidate worked somewhere and is trying to hide that employer so that we can’t talk to them. But if you didn’t actually work, it’s not much of an issue in my book.

I would just be very honest with what happened. My personal opinion is that every experience, and this includes job gaps for any reasons, can shape your personnality for the best. If the guy in front of you don't see what's positive in there, then, it migth be a sign that you should look somewhere else. This job gap probably had a huge positive influance on your life, since you now feel healthy, refreshed and passionate. I personaly had a burnout and had to stop working for a couple of months. When I came back to work, my employer tried to convince me to leave the company. But when he realized I wouldn't, he finally abendoned the idea. That year, I surpassed all my goals! Good luck!

I mainly consult and contract, so 2-4months on the bench is normal.

Anyone who asks is just trying to get leverage.

I would tell them exactly what you've told us and not try to mitigate it. And emphasize that you feel rejuvenated. Having taken this break, you may be in a better spot now than many people who have been (formally) employed continuously for the same time.

I suggest a different route..find something new that you explored, if its reading up on something and compose a mini-thesis of what that subject can bring to the table as far as you applying it.

IE instead of excuse you are showing added value...much better position for you

If they don't hire you because you decided to take a year off then they're not worth working for. It's easy to be in the corporate mindset when you interview someone that this person must be somehow not a "team-player" or "go-getter" because he actually values life above working like a slave robot. Work for someone who understands the human element of life and doesn't treat another human being like an object or projects the reliability and uptime of computers to the human element.

There is a huge lack of empathy in corporate environments today which is incredibly dangerous, I think that's why work satisfaction is at an all-time low.

I wouldn’t mention it; I presume because you are posting here that you are working in technology and, compared to most people, make a lot of money.

One nice thing about that is, of course, that we don’t have to work all of the time to cover our expenses.

That seems obvious to most people working in our field, I think.

I wouldn’t worry about mitigating it. If they ask, I would say something along the lines of what the other commenters mentioned re: sabbatical, but I don’t really assume anyone will ask. It’s not the red flag that it would be for someone working closer to wage slavery (where a gap might mean something more dire due to the necessity of constant work).

Your real gap is max 4 month, not much of a gap. You can fill it in with personal project that you did some other time if you really don't want to have that gap, or just say the real reason, medical and that's it.

You just do it!

I took 3 years off between two jobs to burn through my savings. I just said "I took three years off to burn through my savings" to people and they were like "cool, fine, as long as you can still code".

Often times recruiters are not allowed to probe any further once you bring up a medical issue. The difficulty then becomes, being able to draw upon relevant and timely situations to answer questions in an interview.

There are two major issues employers have with employment gaps.

1. Were you in jail. 2. Did your skills decline.

As long as you weren't in jail and you can show in the interview that you still have the technical skills, you should be fine.

Also, it's none of your employer's business and you could tell a innocuous white lie. If you don't want your employer to know your business, just make something up. After you start the job, it won't ever come up again.

Something everyone should take to heart: Fake it, til you make it. Just get through the door however you can and then perform. That's all that matters.

I had a 12 year gap. Went back to school, did entry level internships and then got a grad level internship which later became a full time position. You need a story and also talk to what you did to get back. There will always be folks who see the gap before they see anything else, but there will be others who find your passion real. Also network a ton, find mentors. After every interview do a retrospective with self and ask yourself what went well and what didn’t. This helped me a lot to perfect my story to an elevator pitch under 2 minutes.

FWIW, in some places, even employment status is a protected category: https://www.foxrothschild.com/publications/new-york-city-now...

I remember my employer mentioning how questions can no longer ask what the candidate is working on, but can only ask the candidate's experience (no pointers about timeline of such experience).

I have a similar background as yours, a gap of 1 year, 5 years of experience and I joined a startup 2 days back. I dint really felt any difference in the way companies treat people with or without a break, if you are technically sound nothing else matters. But, a few companies might negotiate for salary as you don't have any offer in hand. It's always good to do small projects and upgrade your skill set during the break. Anyways you have medical reason, so it shouldn't be a problem.

One guy I hired just had it listed there as hiatus on his resume. His company was acquired and he took some time off after vesting. Didn't stop me. It didn't actually work out in that case, but I don't think it was because he took the time off.

EDIT for reply since I'm rate-limited:

> The period was slightly over a year. The resume described what he did which was roughly (without going into detail that would de-anonymize) "spend time in a tropical country relaxing". He described what he did to me verbally.

I personally don’t answer questions about this or salary. The discussion is about working together now into the future. Saying no and why is this question important to you (if it’s really of interest) seems the most ethical thing to do without more info. As I recall one State recently and finally made it illegal to ask about prior salary, and in Oakland about criminal record for housing. These one sided concerns are bad for the economy short and long term. Competition and focus drive innovation.

"Personal reasons" or "health reasons" - if they probe farther they get into questions they are not legally allowed to ask. Just remember that the law (at least in the US) protects you from answering details - if they have been briefed at all about how to interview legally they will instantly back off that line of questioning.

Try to stay at your next job for at least 2 years (5 is better) so your next resume can just show the year you started/stopped working there thus hide the gap.

Like a lot of the comments here most people don't even notice the gaps if they're less than a year. I've taken 9 months of due to significant other starting a grad program and 6 months off to live in another country. No one has ever asked me in an interview. Mind you this is over about 5 years so I've only worked about 3.6 of the 5. Since then I've done quite a large number of interviews (had a case of bad job fit about a year ago).

"That's classified."

If it's your only significant break then it should be ok.

You should try to be reasonably up front about it i.e. make it clear on your resume that the break was for medical reasons. You shouldn't need to get into details. It's conceivable that some recruiters may have issue with it, but they are just as likely (if not more so) to have issue with an unexplained gap.

If you're asked about it just be positive: you're completely healthy now and raring to go.

Be honest - just talk about what you did if they ask about the gap. Say you planned for it, saved a good amount of money, and took time off to improve yourself. It's becoming more common these days as sabbaticals or what not.

Be sure to also talk about what you learned during that period too though, specifically how you grew as an individual, etc. It doesn't need to be work related per se, but an improvement of some sort.

You can explain it either honestly with medical issue during an interview, phrase it as a sabbatical where you focused on something else or yourself for a year to figure out what you wanted, and did projects on the side instead of working.

Or a "fun" way is to claim you worked for any government agency who would never verify or deny that you ever worked for them. :P

Most will not even ask for liability reasons: interviewers at large companies are trained not to ask questions that can expose company to a lawsuit, which basically includes all personal questions, including medical, etc. I.e. most simple example, interviewer asks candidate about age, candidate doesn’t get hired, files lawsuit about age discrimination.

I don’t understand why people are concerned about this, why would a gap be interpreted negatively?

Are people just assuming that a gap means prison?

You could just say what you just told us - that you took a break for a medical reason, and then chose to take some extra time off. There is something to be said for not trying too hard, but focusing on going to interviews and enjoying the experience. Having 5+ years of work experience is said to be a huge advantage as well.

This sounds to me like the type of thing an employer would look for to have a reason not to hire. If potential employers are looking for this, something is already wrong. It could be market-driven (eg. too many people to choose from) or they already don't want to hire you, or something else.

If you feel it is really significant - invent a startup idea that you were exploring. It didn't work out. There are so many failed ideas in tech.

This gives you a way to put your outside learning in a "work" situation.

Don't overexplain. "The idea was X. We explored it until we determined the idea was not viable."

I'd just say I worked on personal projects for a year to learn new libraries/languages/frameworks.

I've recently gotten back into a programming job after 8 mo out of work and ten years before that doing desktop support instead of my original focus on coding.

Getting back into the flow is certainly doable.

Be honest about the basic situation, don't answer discriminatory questions, and the right companies will give you a shot.

A lot of interesting responses here. While I agree with being honest about it, one issue is that the resume might be overlooked because there is a gap and you never get a chance to explain it. I am basically having to solve the same problem currently so @jobgap if you'd like to discuss pm me.

Nobody has ever asked (then again perhaps someone has declined to talk to me for that reason?). In my cases the answer (had anyone asked) would have been easy: I took multi-year gaps to look after my kid. But it has literally not been an issue (note: my work experience is over 30 years).

Or you could just lie like companies lie about job responsibilities. Use your friend as a reference.

“I want to talk about something that some may say is a weakness. I took a Sab. But, I want to talk about my strengths and why I’m a good fit.. “

Always start with your weak points and finish strong. Setting the bar low early will make them think highly of you.

Make something up. Say you were traveling, pursuing some art project, a startup idea, etc.

Tell them you founded a job applicant filtering startup that ultimately failed because it couldn't parse whitespace. Then wait for them to laugh. Then if they don't laugh, get up and leave: I think we're done here.

If it was something like a 5 year gap I'd probably have some questions at least about what was going on in that time, a year or so and I probably wouldn't notice as long as everything else on the resume looked good.

Be honest about it. You’ve done nothing wrong, on the contrary. It’s perfectly fine to rest when you feel you need it.

To your employer it’s an asset, you’re full of energy and you can start work on short notice.

"Took 12 months off for self directed sabbatical"

I think gaps are not a big deal particularly for heath reasons. If you have some solid references from previous jobs it should alleviate any concerns.

If you don’t want to tell the truth (and why would you not?), tell them you were caring for a sick family member. Nobody’s going to question that!

1. Just shorted your dates worked from Month+Year to just Year. that'll hide gaps 2. Say you were working for yourself, consulting, etc.

How about a mother with a 10-year gap raising kids?

Don't leave gaps.

Add "consulting".

You may consult anyone for anything and as long as the reader could verify it (in case it gets to that) you're good.

Short term, follow the advice here.

Long term, work toward financial freedom so you don’t need to contort your life to appease some HR gatekeeper.

I spent a few months one summer just reading and perfecting my gin and tonic recipe. Nobody gave a rat's patootie.

Just tell the truth. You don't want to work somewhere that doesn't understand basic human stuff.

Just say exactly why you wrote above, I don't see why you need another thing to say

Just say you took a sabbatical.

When returning to the workplace, the issue quickly turns to references.

You resume will be tossed in the reject bin by the scoring algorithm.

> Even if it is a red flag

Why is it?

tell the truth but use hipster words like , restoration, elevation, inspiration ect.