Ask HN: How do you get a job after a 2-year gap in your work history? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you get a job after a 2-year gap in your work history?

40 pointsthrowaway1927z42 comments

Imagine you haven't worked at all since the pandemic started. How would you deal with that in your resume and in interviews?

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Long-time manager here.

1. Leave it blank on your CV. In discussion, say, "Then I took a break to help family during covid." That's all you need. Resist the urge to try to explain or justify it.

2. Explain what you did to "stay sharp": played with a side project, read a book, took a course, etc. Be prepared to answer questions on it just like you would if it were a job. If you didn't do squat, at least say "I kept up on the literature" and be prepared to cite some blogs or essays you found informative.

3. The reference from your last job is absolutely critical, make sure you have good ones lined up. Contact them to ask if they would be a good reference and remind them who you are and of good stuff you did, and then ping them again to say, "You should be getting a reference check from ABCorp soon, please emphasize my skills with [leadership, architecture, whatever]".

Good luck!

I would tell the truth.

Not sure if that's the best approach since the more I learn about the world the more I see it for the piece of shit that it is. Truth isn't valued and is often punished.

Better learn earlier than later..

I usually "patch" my gaps in my resume by adding a period in which "I learned new tech, while doing a contract". The tech learned was React, Tessel.io microcontrollers, etc.

In interviews, that "contract was remote", and you can glide over it explaining "why you took some time off to learn these new techs, and how their were needed to expand your knowledge. Hope this helps :)

By "taking time off", i mean you put aside a full time job to make more room for learning with a contract.

This is not going to cover 2 years, and I don't think I've ever been part of a hiring pipeline where this would actually pass by unnoticed. The fact they appear to let you glide over it, doesn't mean no one is going to bring it back up on it on the backend of things... but by then you won't be around to clarify and people are sometimes liable to assume the worst.

You're better off coming up with an upfront answer. And I'll be realistic... even if that means you have to lie.

In an ideal world you could just be honest and no one would ever discriminate. And if someone did discriminate and it cost you a job you'd say "well I dodged a bullet".

But in the real world people have bills to pay. So even if you're going to lie, figure it out deeply. Have something to show for it, or be very prepared to explain why you don't have anything to show for it.

Also on a more personal level, if I'm in a hiring pipeline and someone has a large absence, I don't really care. That being said the biggest thing they can do based on my experience is ask good questions.

Ask questions that make it clear you're ready to work there. Ask questions like you already got hired for that matter: "what are the difficult things about our job" "what are some domain specific challenges" "does the commute suck" etc.

I have no good advice for OP. I'm in a similar position having been umeployed since Q2 of 2020 after suffering from burnout. I didn't do anything to develop technical skills or networking-wise during long bouts of depression. I'm only now recovered enough to think about entering the workforce again.

My current plan is to get a simple job in the food industry or public health services and then use what remains of the day to attain book knowledge in programming, project management and negotiation. Starting to build a portfolio from now on and trying to make contacts within the industry, hoping that perhaps in a year from now, I will find a 'real' job in the tech sector. Not an easy feat at 41.

What kind of work did you do before?

I actually had a 6 year gap in my work history before, but I got lucky, found some freelance work through on an old freelancer site, and then 6 months later ended up getting hired at a proper salaried job. It took some effort to massage the resume to fill in the gap though.

Now I've repeated a gap, but only 2 years, so hopefully not as painful to rectify.

I'm also unemployable yet able to program computers.

Trying to find ways to get compensation for solo coding.

With the odds of any payoff objectively so low and so distant, it's very hard even to motivate long-term persistent effort.

Realistically it makes little difference whether one tries long-shots vs. just passively wait for something to change about the environment.

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If I had no worse problem than a 2 year gap, I'd simply lie. Make up a 2 year job during that time period. Get some real programmer friends to serve as references at a fake company. Pay them good money for their service so they take it seriously.

You just have to be able to explain it, that's all. If you want to be vague: "I was dealing with health problems that have now been addressed, and I'm excited to rejoin the workforce!"

I feel like that's the only honest answer. Unfortunately this makes you totally dependent on the interviewer being magnanimous.

Just lie. Seriously, I am not saying you need to say you worked for X or Y when you didnt,but if you worked 4 years for X company and you have now a 2 year gap , say you worked for 5 years, and you have now 1 year as a freelancer or something to that effect. Dont play naive with the companies when they are willing to deceive you all the way.

Start movement: everyone drop pandemic work history from resumes in solidarity with those excluded from economic participation by resume gaps.

Worker solidarity between employable workers and gap-scarred unemployable workers.

https://reddit.com/r/antiwork

Just be honest. There's more to life than work. Fuck any notion that you need to be in continuous employment.

1. Don't lie to the employer

2. It's an employee's market, so don't shy from applying

3. Don't lie to yourself - if there are strong underlying causes which will affect your work performance, perhaps you're not ready to re-enter the workforce

>perhaps you're not ready to re-enter the workforce

I'd wager most people are dependent on money to pay for rent and food.

Besides, you don't become _more_ "ready to re-enter the workforce" as your life quality and health deteriorate from poverty.

If you say don't lie to your employer because it's morally wrong, I can get on board with that.

But if it's, don't lie to your employer because they will find out, well, that's entirely dependent on the nature of the lie and the circumstances surrounding it.

Be honest, as simple as that :) I got laid off start of pandemic March 2020 and could not start a job until Fall 2021 due to visa issues. My daughter was only 7 months old at that time. The first line on my resume is Full Time Parent and then I described in short that I took time off to raise her and worked on side projects and what I learned/implemented.

Many recruiters/managers appreciated the honesty and shared their own experiences, others completely ignored the time I was not working and directly talked about my experience before layoff, a few never got back due to long gap I am assuming.

I have long gaps between pretty much every single position in my resume. The only time I can recall anyone asking about any of them was over 15 years ago when applying for my third job. I told them I spent the time traveling, and that was the end of it.

My most recent gap was 3 years. The next job didn't ask, but if they had, my plan was to tell them I was retired but considering their gig anyway because I was getting bored and it looked like fun.

Easy. Tell a story how you tried to start a company.

That's a big lie to tell and even harder to prove (unless you actually tried to start a company). Even failed companies leave some kind of electronic or trademark footprint.

Imagine your qualifications checking out and failing the interview for being caught in a web of lies.

Lots of startups never get to the launch stage. Much less trademarks or other paperwork stages.

That's an interview, not a deposition. If an HR asks you oddly specific questions, just say "I need to discuss this with my business partners before I can answer this question."

Unless you're trying to leverage this story to get some high rank role, it's not really a lie.

I think we need more information in order to provide useful advice. What non-work things have you done with your time in the past two years?

spent 6 months at part-time language school.

spent 1-2 months learning a new technology.

That's only 1/4 of the gap. You gotta tell us the whole story if you want help spinning it.

Off topic, but did you find that the part time language school helped move the needle on your progress? I think about that sometimes.

I had a 3 year gap in my employment. What I did: Do substantive work for a volunteer organization, be valuable, and become an officer there. Put that on your CV. A lot of recruiters won't parse your CV enough to see the difference in that entry. If you're a coder, then that's enough for you to get a "just a job" job.

That's easy, you only have to invent a time-machine first. You weren't actually "out of work" if you instead did extensive charity work.

I'm in a similar position as OP: 2-year gap due to burnout and deep depression. I couldn't do anything beyond not killing myself, I was unable to get anything new into my brain, I touched no projects, I had burned all bridges and basically all my technical and social skills atrophied during the pandemic.

I'm no liar though, I wouldn't dare to pad my CV with stuff which I haven't actually done. I wouldn't even lie in an interview, only that I don't get any interviews at all, which I assume is because of the obvious red flag of the employment gap.

Only my savings kept my afloat until today.

Tell them that you had significant burnout but enough savings that you could take a break and renew yourself. No need to include specific medical details and nature of the burnout.

Also, start reading and updating your skills immediately. Then you can honestly say that during the down time you have been doing so. They aren't going to ask if you started working on keeping your skills updated from day 1 of your break.

> > I don't get any interviews at all

> Tell them that you [...]

Read better!

"Tell them" can also mean, put it on your resume.

Read less literally!

I mean, is that actually what you meant (because it doesn't look plausible), or...

> I'm no liar though, I wouldn't dare to pad my CV with stuff which I haven't actually done.

I'm also not a liar, not out of fear but out of pride. I don't want to lie. It degrades me to lie. But these people demand lies. They demand you promise you've always been the perfectly reliable workhorse they want. You must simply comply and give them what they demand.

> I don't get any interviews at all

Fear this more than lying!

Make up a startup project that failed.

That's a good one, yes! Here's the story: Code an App that you tried to make mainstream, and you shut it down. Take snapshots of it, and fill the gap with that portfolio.

Snapshots of past projects are gold. In interviews, i mention the period and also offer to send them pics of the App: an image will fill for 1000 words.

I've done it a few times (family obligations etc) and it hasn't been much of an issue as far as I can tell. I've done enough interesting stuff in the past to get a conversation and that lets the person satisfy themselves that I know what I'm doing.

If you’re talking about programming jobs in the US, and you’re a good programmer, no one will give a shit. They probably won’t ask but if they do you could say you were working on personal projects / studying some stuff you’d always wanted to study.

Without asking directly how you’ve occupied your time, and assuming you’re in a tech field:

Have you contributed towards any projects, be it your own or others’? What about schooling? Either can provide a partial explanation to your original question.

At one point I had an 18 month gap. I dealt with it my applying to jobs which were almost an exact match to jobs I had done before. They asked me more about those jobs than about my gap.

If you did volunteer work, pursued education or were a full-time parent, say so. That will help them understand what you were doing during that time.

I took a 10-month long vacations between jobs. Not quite 2 years but people had no problem with that on interviews.

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