Why YSK: Interviewers like to weed out people who have gaps in their employment history for myriad nonsensical reasons. If you remember that this is all just a game to the employer, you can play to win.
Fill the gaps with a story about a failed foray into entrepreneurship in a related field.
I had a massive gap and this worked gangbusters after six months of constant rejection. The gap was caused by my mother’s health rapidly deteriorating, and my sense of responsibility to care for her - which became a full time job until she passed.
After that, I went through the dehumanizing experience of dozens of interviews where I was asked about the gap. Describing why I took the time out of the workforce was hard enough - adding insult to injury was the homogenous reactions among all interviewers. You could watch them mentally write me off in real time, and then go through the motions before sending me off to wait for a “the organization has interviewed several great candidates” email.
It occurred to me that instead of baring my pain for callous interviewers, what they’d rather hear about was a “go-getter” whose spirit has been broken enough to come crawling back to the rat race. So I concocted a story about a failed attempt at being an entrepreneur in their industry.
Lo, and behold - After I stopped telling the truth and started telling people about Vandelay Industries` mighty struggle to remain solvent due to market forces, I found myself with three offers in the same number of weeks.
The difference in interviewers` whole demeanor between “took care of dying mother,” and “had to see if I could get Vandelay Industries off the ground while I was young enough to be able to recover from a failure” was night and day.
Read about failed startups. Rehearse.
Everybody lies in the corpo-world. Lie better.
Appreciate your idealism, but this is the ugly new reality in the US if you’re not adequately situated to tell them to pound sand.
There are very few people in that position, and they gotta eat. The economy is bad, but it’s trending toward perpetual dogshit for an overwhelming majority.
The bigger the company, the more I find that they rely on desperation to keep costs low because they can take it a bit further than they used to.
Believe me… I once had the opportunity to take a year off. It was glorious, and I’lL f’N dO iT aGaIn.
I don’t advocate telling to pound sand and I know the US, and not only the US, is a wage-slavery hellscape.
What I meant was just a tiny mindset shift to work around companies trying to belittle a worker. No need to gtfo in that situation (though I appreciate anyone with the privilege to do so).