My biggest resume gap was a 6 month gap. I was laid off (technically “my position was eliminated”) and immediately started looking, but opportunities were slim.
I knew the gap may not look good, even if I was searching the whole time, so I enrolled in a few classes at the local community college when the new semester began.
As it happened, a few weeks after my layoff, my grandfather fell ill as well and it turned out to be a relief for the whole family that I was able to pull the overnight shifts caring for him at my grandparents’ home in the last month and a half of his life.
Though my stretch of unemployment lasted long after he passed, the few times I’ve been asked about this gap in an interview, my response has usually been “I was caring for my dying grandfather” with no elaboration.
At that point, the majority of interviews who asked either let it go and move on or express sympathy and continue. The one interview I’ve been in where that wasn’t enough and they tried to get into specifics, I wrote off that position mentally in that moment and it was just going through the motions until I could get out of there. I figured any place that would pry for details in that situation to see if they felt it was justified was the type of place that would feel justified prying into my private life if I were employed there.
Good answer, because whoever interviewed you probably won’t ask that question to someone else now.
Give an answer that casts just a little bit of tension into the room, just enough to make the interviewer question what the hell they hoped to learn from asking it.
My biggest resume gap was a 6 month gap. I was laid off (technically “my position was eliminated”) and immediately started looking, but opportunities were slim.
I knew the gap may not look good, even if I was searching the whole time, so I enrolled in a few classes at the local community college when the new semester began.
As it happened, a few weeks after my layoff, my grandfather fell ill as well and it turned out to be a relief for the whole family that I was able to pull the overnight shifts caring for him at my grandparents’ home in the last month and a half of his life.
Though my stretch of unemployment lasted long after he passed, the few times I’ve been asked about this gap in an interview, my response has usually been “I was caring for my dying grandfather” with no elaboration.
At that point, the majority of interviews who asked either let it go and move on or express sympathy and continue. The one interview I’ve been in where that wasn’t enough and they tried to get into specifics, I wrote off that position mentally in that moment and it was just going through the motions until I could get out of there. I figured any place that would pry for details in that situation to see if they felt it was justified was the type of place that would feel justified prying into my private life if I were employed there.
Good answer, because whoever interviewed you probably won’t ask that question to someone else now.
Give an answer that casts just a little bit of tension into the room, just enough to make the interviewer question what the hell they hoped to learn from asking it.