to a career and life you'll truly enjoy. And in today's video, I'm going to teach

you two key strategies on how to handle explaining gaps of unemployment on your

resume.

There are many reasons why some of us may have gaps on our resume you might

have taken time off to be a stay-at-home mom or dad you might have taken time off

to study to travel or you may just have a gap simply because you've been looking

for a job that whole time but you still haven't been successful the way to

handle your gaps is dependent on when they occurred and I'm going to give you

specific guidance and give you two key strategies depending on the situation

there are two situations on when you have gaps in your resume situation

number one you have gaps in the past but you're currently employed so let's say

that you are currently working right now and you've been in your role for at

least a year or longer and you're ready to find a new position but at the same

time you have gaps in your past before you took on this role that means that

there isn't much need for you to truly explain those previous gaps because the

emphasis for the employer when they read your resume is to look at your most

recent position so your strategy is going to be to emphasize in detail the

duties tasks and responsibilities that you've been performing in this most

recent position and the achievements that you've been able to accomplish

because that is actually what the employer is going to be paying attention

to employers tend to focus on the most recent roles that you've held and if you

can explain your most current position in a really detailed and compelling

attractive way then the previous gaps might may not actually be minded as much

now that's not to say that they're not going to ask you about those previous

gaps in the interview but you want to leave it to the interview to be able to

explain and not try to explain it on your resume the reason for this is

because I've personally seen resumes where people have explained in detail

why they left every single position and what they were doing in between and

truthfully that just clutters up the resume you want to leave that for the

interview you want to have your story outlined in the interview and explain it

then situation number two you have a current gap right now as we speak and

it's actually been longer than year so then if that's your situation

the big question to ask yourself here is have you been doing any work have you

been helping anybody out organizations people as a consultant helping with

ad-hoc projects with tasks that you can say are relevant to the role that you

want to apply to if yes then it's important to include it I've heard of so

many people and so many people have told me that yes I've been on this

unemployment break for a while I haven't been able to find a job but at the same

time I've been doing some consulting on the side and they don't include that on

their resume whatever you have included because it's important to show that

you've done something rather than nothing or if you've been doing some

higher education getting an extra diploma or doing your MBA you definitely

want to include that as well if that's where you've been spending your time

studying and just a one-liner is enough to explain that or if you've been

volunteering and you've been performing some work-related tasks in your

volunteer work then include that as well again it's better to put something

rather than nothing now if you've truly been up to nothing

this whole time for this past year and a bit

for whatever reason then I would say simply go to the most recent position

that you have held and emphasize that as much as possible and when I say

emphasize I mean include five to eight solid bullet points of tasks

responsibilities and key duties that you've been performing in your most

recent roles and lining them up to the position that you want to apply to you

as much as possible and don't forget to also include your achievements it's not

worth it to really put something that's personal on your resume I mean in my

opinion to say been searching for the last year and a half and haven't been

successful I mean it doesn't really look good

I'd rather that you would just focus on your most recent opportunities the ones

that you've recently held and focus in and hone in on the key tasks and

responsibilities there and from there you're gonna have to really work on your

job search networking strategy to make sure that the employers or the

recruiters or the my majors that you get in touch with

fully understand your situation and are willing and ready to read your resume

review your resume and hopefully get you in for an interview so there you have it

my two key strategies on how to deal with unemployment gaps on your resume

now of course this is only scratching the surface when it comes to developing

a truly attractive compelling impressive resume to send out to employers if you

want more tips then feel free to download my free copy of my ten ultimate

resume hacks that will land you more interviews and job offers which is

located in the description box below or otherwise if you are truly ready to

revamp your resume take it to the next level and truly go through a deep dive

and understand how to develop a strong Top Notch Resume from beginning to

finish then feel free to check out my course Top Notch Resume it's an online

self-study course where just within a few hours you'll be able to be taken

step-by-step through the whole process of rewriting a brand new top-notch

resume that you can send out to employers you can click on the link down

in the description box for more details now if you are someone who has been

searching for a position for a while now and you're realizing that you don't know

how to sell yourself or you're struggling in landing those interviews

and you're ready to get one-on-one personalized guidance then feel free to

reach out to me head on over to lindaraynier.com/standoutgethired feel

free to read the page fill out the application form and if I think that we

are a potential match then I will reach out to you and we will discuss

accordingly if you'd like this video then please give it a thumbs up

subscribe to share it with your friends thank you so much for watching and I

will see you in the next video.