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fab823 · Newbie Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 2 Career Advice: +0/-0

Hello there,

I've been reading a whole bunch of articles about how to cover employment gaps but i'm still not convinced on what is the best way to approach it on my CV or covering letter.

Here's my situation :

I finished all the courses of my MSc Information Technology in 2004, and then started on the dissertation. This didnt go well, as i couldnt find motivation sitting in front of a computer at home, I needed something more concrete to get motivated. I started looking for a proper job in IT and ended up with a 5 month contract in customer data quality - basically an office job where you just need to be computer litterate and have good attention to details to do the job - none of my IT skills were put to use and at the end of the contract in september 2005 i was back to square one. The university put me on "time off" as i wanted to get employment first to focus my disseration in a topic directly related to my future job/employer.

I decided to give the dissertation a second chance, with slow progress, and early 2006 i started to have back problems. This sound ridiculous on paper but i was in a lot of pain, the situation became worse and worse and my GP kept giving me stronger and strong pain killers, telling me that the problem should fix itself with time. Due to the strong pain medication i was simply unable to do any kind of work for most of 2006 - I was pretty much out of it. Several months passed when i finally found a specialist and things started getting better, but because i was left not properly treated for so long, it took a few more month and a lot of sessions to be fully recovered.

The end result is i have a big employment gap from september 2005 till now... Now how would i go about explaining that in my CV or covering letter without putting off potential employers and facing instant rejection ? its hard enough to find a job when you have less than two years of experience and this employment gap is clearly not helping. I wouldnt have any problems explaining my situation during an interview but the problem here is to actually get to the interview...

Also, i havent been totally inactive for that long period of time. I've been keeping my skills up while being in a video game modification team (composed of a group of hobbyists) - a lot of the skills are transferable, but i'm not sure how to present that on my CV without sounding like i either spent all that time on my hobbies or that i'm more interested in video games than having a proper IT job...

Any advice would be greatly appreciated,

cheers

Fab.

[edit] In this article they suggest to address the problem in the CV itself :

C_Vaughan · Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 1:09 am Post subject:

Fab,

I don't know how things are handled in the UK so much, but in the US, the gap is often explained in a cover letter. In your case, you were also learning during some of this time, so incorporating that into your resume could be as simple as listing the dates you worked on your tech skills in the gaming industry in an "Other Experience" section.

~C. Vaughan

fab823 · Newbie Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 2 Career Advice: +0/-0

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