You have a gap in your resume. You’re looking for a new job, but feeling insecure about the time you spent not working. Here’s how to deal with it…
Plain and simple: Decide what story to tell, then get comfortable with it.
This framework applies to nearly every area of life and comes in many variations: Decide, then pursue. Acknowledge, then accept. Recognize, then embrace. And when it comes to your relationship with your past (such as the gap in your resume), your best path forward is to know what story you’re going to tell, then get comfortable telling it.
Make a decision, then line up with it. To be clear, this is not an attempt to be deceptive, it’s an attempt to clear your mind around something that’s blocking you from moving forward. Your best path forward, is to know yourself and be comfortable with yourself. When it comes to the gap in your resume, if that’s because you took some “personal time” then be comfortable with that. Maybe you took time to “care for family” or “do some learning” or “get sober” or whatever it was, boil it down to what it meant to you and have confidence that you’re better now than you were before. If you made some mistakes, but you learned something, get comfortable with that. If you accomplished anything during that gap, highlight that in your memories.
Know your story, then share the important parts that move you forward. When it comes to your employer, your personal issues can be yours alone. You disclose what you need to disclose. If there are things that will interfere with your job performance, you should be up front about that. But if there are things that only interfere with your self-approval, deal with that personally & then disclose to your employer what you are capable of handling.
Knowing how to handle the gap in your resume, can be a very freeing experience. And often, people are able to move through it quickly, letting it teach them how to know themselves and conquer things that hold them back.
If you’re looking for more practical tips on crafting your resume to get the job you want, see here.