I often tell people that your professional engineering resume is your first and only opportunity to make a great impression on a perspective employer. Recruiters in today’s job market can get hundreds of resumes and will scan your resume for seconds to see if you’ve mentioned that you have the right skills for the job.

The bottom line is your resume needs to be easy on the eye and stand out. It's crucial that it's well-written with no grammatical errors and highlight your skills to make that great first impression.

Today, I want to tell you about justifying a gap in professional experience during an interview can be tricky. The best approach is usually to approach the subject directly and without detours. If the reason why you were not working was voluntary, it offers a clear explanation (for example if you were taking care of a family member or had a child) and makes it very clear that the reason why you had to stop working will not be for the future .

 If the reason you were away from work was a cut of staff, the best way to justify it is by providing information of your good work at that time. Without a doubt, it will help enormously in justifying this situation, being able to count on the support of former clients, work colleagues or even bosses. If possible, have this information reflected in your linkedin profile.

 If you lost your job for other reasons, such as performance problems or with other colleagues, it will be harder to justify a gap in the professional experience in the interview, but what you should never do is to speak ill of your former colleagues, boss or employer.

Having good references and recommendations from your previous work will help you a lot, we recommend you take advantage of this functionality of linkedin and exploit it to the fullest. It is also highly recommended to have your resume linked to your profile in linkedin.

Always highlights the positive

Always highlight all the positive things you did while you were unemployed, such as volunteering, courses, seminars, etc., and do not forget to mention the enormous desire you have to rejoin the world of work and the reasons why you are the ideal candidate for the job. since they want to cover.

It's not easy to get in front of an interviewer when it's been a while since you've had a job because we're afraid you'll be discarded. We must not allow our attitude to take us away from the position we are looking for and we must show great optimism and make it clear that we have been without work, but we have not been idly watching TV, we have been evolving professionally and personally using other channels.

Have you had to justify a gap in the professional experience in the interview?

What strategy did you use?

How did it go?

What tips could you share?