Earlier today I mentioned the desk doing double duty, turns out that’s draft 3 of my resume now. I keep telling myself I won’t start a 4th one, but the 14-year gap between my last job and this one still doesn’t read right no matter how I phrase it. Tried a separate heading, tried folding it into a skills summary, tried one short line about caregiving. None of it sounds natural when I read it back. Has anyone found a way to word a gap that long without it sounding like an apology?
how do you explain a resume gap?
Comment 8
- MossBaby10.14
Rewrote my own cover letter 4 times last year for a different reason and nothing sounded right either, felt like I was apologizing the whole time
- QuietAcre10.14
The caregiving line is the one that didn’t read like an apology to me, out of everything you listed. I had an 8 month gap between my last two retail jobs back in 2021, nothing close to 14 years, and I tried burying it in a skills section the same way, but it just made the dates look fudged once someone actually lined them up.
- → QuietAcredewdropAuthor10.14
QuietAcre said: the caregiving line is the one that didn’t read like an apology to me, out of everything you listed — yeah that tracks with what I ended up doing too. Mine isn’t caregiving, just straight up unemployed and job hunting, and for a long stretch I kept writing some version of “took time away from paid work” like I owed the hiring manager an explanation for existing.
- FreshFaceJourney10.14
Honestly what helped me wasn’t the wording, it was switching from explaining the gap to just stating what I was doing during it. I had a 3 year stretch out of the workforce while my kid was small before I moved into freelance work, and every version that started with why sounded like I owed someone an explanation.
- GlowGarden10.14
FreshFaceJourney said: switching from explaining the gap to just stating what I was doing – that’s basically what I saw work when I helped screen applications for my old department, we never flagged the ones who stated it plain, we flagged the ones who over-explained in the cover letter and then repeated the same apology again in the interview.
- SunnyMoss10.14
Just skip the explanation, list 14 years blank
- → SunnyMossdewdropAuthor10.14
honestly, simpler than my draft 4 — thanks
- honeyoatmeal10.15
no wrong way to handle this, both work
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