Part Five:
How to Handle Gaps in Employment
So far in this series on
crafting your resume, we have just concerned ourselves with how you can present
yourself best if you have been working steadily for years. Today we will address writing a resume
when you have significant gaps of time in your employment. Whether it is because you took time off
to care for aging parents, to raise a family, or for some other reason there
are some things you can do to make your resume more current, interesting and
engaging. And we will also show
you a sample resume so you can see one way to position yourself well after a
few years out of the workplace.
Show that you were busy during your off-years
• Did you take any classes? List any courses you have taken during that time, show that
you have some personal projects that you are currently working on, and sign up
for some classes now to show that you are committed to re-joining the
workforce.
• Did you volunteer during
your time off? List any volunteer
positions that are relevant to the job you are seeking, or ones that highlight
your leadership and interpersonal skills.
• Did you do some
consulting work? If so, make an
umbrella to highlight all of your consulting activity during the past
years. You can list beginning and
ending dates of all consulting jobs combined (instead of listing each
one). Definitely only list those
significant projects that you are interested in discussing. If these projects are relevant for the
job you are seeking, you most likely will not be asked for the specific dates
for each one.
• Emphasize the positive:
that you did something during that time, gained some knowledge and experience
relevant to the job you are seeking, and that you are very excited to re-enter
the workforce.
An Example of a Resume Used to Re-enter the
Workplace
Here is an example of what
a solid resume can look like, even after several years out of the workplace:
Summary
· Motivated professional with solid analytical and
programming skills
· Committed, hard-working person focused on
thorough comprehensive research and development
· Fast and efficient self-learner
· Uncompromising worker aiming at on-time delivery
and clear meaningful results
Technical skills
· Languages: SQL, PL/SQL, Java
· Databases: Oracle, MySQL
· Environment: Eclipse, Git, Unix, Windows, Tomcat
· Other: Excel, C, JavaScript…
Education
·
Stanford
University courses:
-
Machine
Learning: Linear and logistic regression, neural networks, SVM, clustering,
recommender systems and general ML system design and evaluation methods;
programming in Octave
-
Introduction
to Databases: Relational design theory, SQL (basic, constraints and triggers,
indexes, transactions, views, authorization and recursion), XML, Xpath, Xquery,
XSLT, UML, OLAP and NoSQL
·
Web
Intelligence and Big Data (online IIT Delhi course): classification and
prediction principles and approaches
·
Statistics:
Making Sense of Data (online University of Toronto course): descriptive and
inferential statistics, programming in R
·
M.S. in
Mathematics, …
Experience
January 2013 – current: Personal projects
-
competing in
machine learning challenges at Kaggle.com
-
exploring
AWS EC2/S3/EBS/EMR
Concise list of previous positions held
A Few More Little Things You Can Do
• Don’t mention why you
were out of work on your resume.
It can be discussed during an interview if necessary.
• If you held a position
for several years, just list the years (ex: from 2001-2004) on your resume,
instead of including the months.
• You can use your cover
letter as an opportunity to explain long gaps (taking care of an aged parent,
raising children, etc.)
• Make sure to mention
awards earned in any competition that highlight your problem solving capabilities
or any other skills relevant for the job you are seeking – even if they are
from a long time ago.
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