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.
The #1 red flag to an employer is “I don’t NEED a job.” before my VA pension got bumped to 100%, I was looking for a bs job to keep busy and you could see the switch in their head flip everytime when I’d explain “I’m retired, I’m not scrambling for money I’m looking for a good fit.”
Employers lose their gdamn minds if you aren’t exploitable. They know that means if I schedule time off for a trip or concert, I’m not going to cancel with two days notice to cover some shift. They know it means I’m not going to stand for 3 managers blaming my entry level ass for their mistakes and/or incompetence. It’s garbage and really speaks to the core of capitalism.
I don’t even put up with that BS when I need the job. With the current shortage in employees, more then enough work to do for whoever respects my private life.