Career
How to present a gap in your employment history
A gap is a question, not a disqualification, and the way it is presented changes what kind of question it is.
Gaps are common enough that recruiters encounter them constantly — caregiving, illness, study, redundancy, immigration, incarceration. What creates difficulty is not the gap but an unexplained one, because an unexplained gap invites the reader to supply an explanation themselves.
Listing years rather than months on a résumé closes short gaps without misleading anyone, and is standard practice. For a longer period, naming it plainly with a short factual description is more effective than leaving a hole, and far better than disguising it.
What the gap was spent on is worth a line if it is relevant: study, volunteering, contract work, caring responsibilities that involved coordination and budgeting. This is not about inflating it into a job; it is about the reader not having to guess.
In interview, a brief factual account followed by a return to the work is the version that lands. Interviewers are generally looking for a straightforward answer, not an extended one.
What to do next. Name the period plainly, in one factual line, rather than leaving an unexplained gap in the dates.
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between academic years. This is written to help you read the official sources, not to
stand in front of them. Start there.
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