6+ YOE with 2 resume gaps - how to frame to recruiters and hiring managers?
Posted by Ok-Fishing5675@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 7 comments
Hello all, I have about 6 YOE and I'm trying to find a new role in this current market. My first resume gap was almost a year from a layoff. I have no way of sugarcoating it, I just struggled to find a role mainly because I was struggling in interviews. It was my first time being in the job market since college and I admittedly did not stay up to date with my interview skills as much as I should have. My second gap is this past year, I was laid off again (no fault of my own again) and was going to find a new role right after. Long story short, a close relative had a long illness and passed away and I'm pretty much the only one left in my immediate family and had to deal with the fallout. My mind was not on finding a new role or doing personal projects during this time at all.
How do I handle this in my resume and in introductions to hiring managers? External recruiters seem to make a big deal about it, and I'm not sure how much hiring managers/internal recruiters dismiss my resume when they see the 2 gaps. The hiring managers that do give me a chance in interviews don't seem to mind when I give them the explanation in person, but I'm more concerned about getting past the initial resume screens/recruiters.
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evanthx@reddit
The second one is easy - tell the truth. Anyone that doesn’t accept that is someone you don’t want to work for.
Ok-Fishing5675@reddit (OP)
That's what I've been doing and most people have been understanding of that. I'm wondering if I should mention at all in my resume though?
Which-World-6533@reddit
Yes, put that on the Resume. It's always better to tell someone something rather than let people start thinking up things for themselves.
_Heathcliff_@reddit
For what it’s worth I’ve done plenty of interviews and if anyone had an experience gap on their resume, I didn’t even notice.
After my last layoff, I shifted to freelance work. I posted on LinkedIn a ton, dug through posts on upwork and other places, and found a couple places willing to pay me a few bucks to build stuff for them. I made a couple grand over the course of months — nowhere near enough — but it slowed the bleeding, kept me busy, and let me add something to my resume.
So see what you can find to work on that doesn’t necessarily require an actual full time job. As far as interview skills go, I would lean on Claude. Pass it job postings and ask it to put you through rounds of interviews as both a hiring manager and a technical panel. That’ll help you quickly determine where your shortcomings are.
Lastly, if someone asks, it’s completely valid to say you had a family emergency. A very close family member of mine passed away a couple weeks after I graduated, and I stopped job hunting for some time to process that. When recruiters asked about that gap, I told them the truth. Any decent person is going to recognize that life is complicated, and not hold it against you.
Ok-Fishing5675@reddit (OP)
What platforms do you recommend for freelance work? I've been struggling to find a good one that's trustworthy and isn't a total scam. Also, I've been seeing in today's market that there is barely any freelance work for engineers.
_Heathcliff_@reddit
So I mentioned upwork and I have made connections through it, but the actual gigs I’ve gotten have been mostly through LinkedIn connections reaching out.
When I was last unemployed, my strategy was to post to LinkedIn a minimum of twice a week. On Monday I’d post with a couple goals for the week (usually one related to number of job applications, one technical, and one personal) and on Friday I’d follow up and post about how my goals went. As a side note — I found that scheduling posts for 12 eastern time worked best. East coast is going to lunch, west coast is just logging on, so you get more people zoned out and browsing.
I got two freelance gigs that way, and a third was kind of a fluke. I applied for a job, it turned out they were looking for a full time junior, but they had some problems that required someone senior to figure out, so they hired a junior and paid me hourly to handle the tougher problems.
Anyway it all comes down to connections. Make yourself extremely visible and people will start to reach out when they see opportunities.