Introduction
If you’ve got employment gaps on your resume, it’s easy to feel a little stressed—especially if you are in the process of looking for a new job, transitioning to a new career, or reentering the professional world after a long time away.
You know that potential employers might see those periods of unemployment and think twice about hiring you or may even hesitate to call you in for an interview at all.
Are you curious about how to best address your gaps? Look through our strategies for explaining and making up for employment gaps in a Salesforce resume.
Do you need to mention gaps in your Salesforce resume?
There is no requirement that you include all your experience in a Salesforce resume. That’s especially true if you’ve been in the workforce for many years. If you are looking for a mid-career position, an entry level role from decades ago is probably not very relevant.
However, if you have just taken a gap and you wanted to find the next job, you should be able to plan it carefully to mention your gap and ensure a smooth return to the workforce.
Top 5 tips to explain an Employment Gap in your Salesforce resume
Recruiters and hiring managers are trained to look for gaps in candidates’ resumes and ask questions about them. After all, gaps can sometimes indicate a candidate could be a risky hire.
Let’s take a look at the top 5 tips to explain an employment gap in your Salesforce resume!
Choose your resume format carefully
On the resume itself, you may not be comfortable addressing the gap at all, or there may not be a brief enough way to describe it in a “Career Break” entry.
In this case, deflect from the actual chronology of your employment history by using a combination (or hybrid or chrono-functional) resume format. It groups accomplishments by skill. It shows the manager you’ve done the work, even if you haven’t held the job title.
A combination resume includes:
- Contact Information
- Resume Summary
- Skills Summary
- Additional Skills
- Work Experience
- Education
- Other Accomplishments
Be honest about your employment gaps
While it might be tempting to cover up resume gaps in employment by altering dates or otherwise attempting to hide the fact that you were out of work, honesty is generally the best policy.
Think about it. The first person to look at your resume and application is likely to be a human resources representative or someone at a staffing agency. These are people who spend a substantial amount of time reviewing resumes. They are skilled at spotting errors and inaccuracies, and often have tools at their disposal to cross-check the dates that you provide in your resume.
All that it takes is a call to a former employer to determine whether or not you have lied. In addition to reflecting terribly on you during the interview process, lying on your resumé can be grounds for dismissal in the future if it is uncovered.
Make your skills outstanding
Be sure to mention any volunteer work, classes, certifications, or even conferences you attended during your employment gap. If none of those options are relevant, know you probably picked up a new soft skill.
General soft skills include communication, adaptability, problem solving, and critical observation. Remember to show, not tell. Offer concrete examples and situations that show how you learned to better communicate or how you became more comfortable adapting to unexpected situations.
Being able to show you’ve grown during your employment gap is respectable, so don’t forget to highlight it.
Don’t overshare or mention the negatives
If not properly prepared, your employment gap may reveal way too much information.
Does the Employer or the Hiring Manager want to hear every detail of your medical leave? Does he or she need to know how you got over it? Probably not. Nor does the hiring manager want to know the details of your travelling journey or your parental leave.
It’s equally important to stay away from negativity. Remember, you want to be positive. Your potential employer doesn’t care how your personal tragedy disrupts your life and sends you off in search of new things or your previous company makes you a period of unemployment.
All the hiring manager wants to know is what you’ve done since then to make yourself a worthy addition to their company.
Re-organize your cover letter to speak to the gaps
Nobody likes writing cover letters, but they play an incredibly important role in the job application process. Your cover letter is a tool that you can use to explain information that is not easily conveyed in a resumé or job application.
If you’ve got a substantial gap in your employment history, consider speaking to that gap in your cover letter. Identify the time period in question, and in one or two sentences explain what caused the break in employment. Also mention anything that you did during that time period that could be construed as career development—for example, furthering your education or starting a business.
Here, brevity is key. Offer your explanation, and then use the rest of your cover letter to explain the value that you would bring to the company and why you are perfect for the role. If the employer wants further details, they can ask you during any followup interviews that occur.
Types of Employment gaps and how to handle them in your Salesforce resume
There are always ways to adjust the presentation of your Salesforce resume to emphasise certain elements of your experience. Focus on the strongest points, but don’t be afraid to fill in the gaps in between.
Unemployment
Long periods of unemployment can be very difficult. And it can be just as difficult explaining these career gaps on a CV without raising questions about why you were unable to find a job.
Again, show other experiences which shows you were using this time for things other than job hunting.
And when explaining the career gap, make it sound like you were being selective in your job search and waiting for the right fit, rather than your other applications being unsuccessful.
Mental illness
When explaining your employment gap due to illness, you’re not required to disclose the nature of it. It’s at your discretion how much you tell the employer. In the same way you would speak of a physical illness, you can phrase it as ‘a period of illness’.
If you want to speak about your mental health, the potential employer doesn’t need full details. You should then show that you’re out of the woods and that you’re now ready to work.
Bring the focus back on the job and what you can bring to it, and if applicable focus on things you might have done during your mental health career gap.
Travelling
Being well travelled can actually be a big bonus on a resume, as travelling implies you’ll have work-related skills such as being organised and a good time keeper, as well as personal traits like confidence and adaptability.
You should relate the skills you gained from travelling back to the job description. For example, write about how you successfully planned a full itinerary with multiple stops as an example of how organised you are.
Finish up by saying how you’re ready to settle down and stay in one place for a while so that the employer won’t worry you’ll be ready to jet off again after a few months.
Conclusion
Gaps in your Salesforce resume don’t have to be the end of the world. Be honest, proactive and positive to give your resume the best chance of success.
If you have any further difficulty in organizing your employment gaps, it can be helpful to receive guidance from a trained career coach. Cloud Talent 360 members receive exclusive access to our career coaching and resume review services at a discounted rate. Our career coaches can walk you through your unique situation to help you find a way to address career gaps on your resume.