An employment gap on a resume is any period when you were not in paid work. Gaps are common, and McKinsey research indicates most employees will have one at some point in their career. What matters to an Australian employer is rarely the gap itself. It is whether you can account for it clearly, briefly and without defensiveness.
If you have an employment gap and an accounting role you want to apply for, three things make the difference: how you format the dates on your resume, what you say about it in your cover letter, and how you answer the question in the interview. Each is covered below.
Imagine this. You discover an accounting career opportunity that aligns with your goals and priorities. But as you prepare to apply, you notice a gap in your work history.
How Long Does an Employment Gap Need to Be Before You Explain It?
What Is an Employment Gap on a Resume?
A resume gap is any period in an individual's career history where they were unemployed. If this is you, you are not alone, as McKinsey found that 62% of all employees will have a gap at some point in their professional history.
Gaps can be caused by career transitions, such as when you decide to leave an old accounting role and don't have a new opportunity lined up in advance. You might transition into a period of unemployment while pursuing personal development opportunities, taking 'time out' to travel the world or investing in your education.
Sometimes, resume gaps are because of family responsibilities (such as caring for children or relatives), health issues (physical or mental), and changes in priorities. For instance, you might leave a role to focus on a passion project or voluntary work.
There are plenty of instances where gaps in your career may not be something you could have predicted or prevented. Companies can close, lay off team members, and make employees redundant for various reasons, leading to unexpected career gaps.
Should You Explain an Employment Gap, or Leave It Out?
Whether the gap in your resume was caused by something inside your control or not, explaining it to a new employer can be anxiety-evoking. This is demonstrated by up to 53% of candidates in one study saying they'd feel more confident applying for roles if they didn't have to disclose the reasons behind their career gaps.
Remember that having a gap in your work history doesn't necessarily mean you'll have less chance of getting the role you want. Attitudes have shifted noticeably. LinkedIn's 2022 survey of 23,000 workers found that close to two thirds had taken some form of career break, and the platform added a dedicated Career Break field to member profiles the same year. When a hiring platform builds the gap into its own data model, it is a reasonable signal that gaps have stopped being treated as anomalies. When you confidently address the reason for the gap with your prospective employer, showing how it benefited you or contributed to your personal development, you'll seem more proactive and trustworthy to them.
Being clear and transparent about your career gap sets a positive tone for building a relationship with your employer. It shows integrity and self-awareness and allows you to control the narrative surrounding your career history.
How to Frame an Employment Gap Positively
Many candidates are concerned that resume gaps would make them seem noncommittal, flaky, or unreliable. However, how a hiring manager or employer perceives a career gap depends on how you frame it.
Even if the reason for your employment gap didn't directly contribute to your value as a candidate (like a year spent earning an unrelated certification), you could draw attention to how the gap benefited you.
Your unemployment period contributed to your adaptability and resilience, showing you how to adapt to new challenges and periods of potential uncertainty. You might have had a chance to try different interim roles, whether as a traditional employee, contractor, or volunteer, to help you uncover new insights and skills.
Think about how you can draw attention to the gap's positive results, even if it only helped you progress through a period of self-discovery.
How to Show Employment Gaps on Your Resume
If you're invited to an interview, you should have a chance to discuss your resume gap in more depth with your potential accounting employer. However, to improve your chances of getting to that stage, you must structure your resume correctly.
First, think about the format. Instead of using a chronological resume that lists all of your previous experiences in order, drawing more attention to gaps, highlight the experiences most relevant to the role you're applying for in order of importance.
Begin your resume with a strong summary or profile section that encapsulates your professional identity, spotlighting your unique characteristics and the strengths you'll bring to the potential employer. Instead of listing previous job titles, focus on tailoring your resume to draw attention to your achievements and accomplishments over the years.
If you notice a gap in your resume is pronounced, add bullet points explaining what you did during those periods. For instance, did you spend time volunteering, doing freelance work, seeking out courses, or travelling to expand your personal growth?
How to Explain an Employment Gap in a Cover Letter and Interview
Before you're invited to an interview, you can proactively use your cover letter to address a career gap. Don't go too in-depth with your explanation in the cover letter, but briefly describe why you weren't employed during this period, then redirect the focus back to the skills and experiences that make you suitable for the role.
When invited to an interview, prepare to provide a more in-depth explanation. Plan what you're going to draw attention to in advance, focusing on:
What you learned during the period: Did you develop any new specific skills or learn more about the industry, your priorities, and your strengths and weaknesses?
Valuable experiences: What experiences did you have during the gap that contributed to your value as an employee? For instance, did you develop more resilience and grit?
Relevance to the role: Are there any experiences you had during the gap that are particularly relevant to the role? For instance, did travelling help you better understand the priorities of different accounting customers or clients?
Take note of your tone and body language while responding to interview questions about the gap. Maintain an open posture and make eye contact.
Using a Career Break for Professional Development
All the strategies above will help you frame resume gaps more positively when you're applying for new roles. However, the best way to make explaining gaps feel less daunting is to proactively invest in constant professional development.
If you're committed to continually improving your skills and abilities, particularly during unemployment, you'll have a much easier time making gaps seem optimistic. During career transitions, look for ways to use your time effectively.
Take online courses and explore new certification opportunities. Learn about industry trends and experiment with the latest technology. Invest in networking and visit industry events. Consider freelance work, consulting, or voluntary accounting opportunities.
In your resume or cover letter, highlight these proactive personal development strategies and explain how they enhance your value as a candidate.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an employment gap on a resume?
An employment gap is any period when you were not in paid work. It might be three months between roles, or several years spent caring for family, studying or travelling. Most Australian employers now treat a gap as a question to be answered rather than a reason to set an application aside.
How long can an employment gap be before you need to explain it?
Gaps under three months rarely need explaining, and gaps more than five years old are usually passed over. The one most Australian hiring managers will ask about is a gap of six months or more that falls within the last five years, so prepare a short answer for that.
Should you explain an employment gap on your resume or leave it out?
Leave short gaps alone. For anything over six months, include a dated entry describing what you did, whether that was study, caring responsibilities or contract work. Omitting a long gap entirely invites the assumption that something is being concealed, which is harder to recover from than the gap itself.
What is a good reason to give for an employment gap?
The honest one. Redundancy, caring responsibilities, study, health, travel and a longer than expected search are all reasons Australian recruiters hear regularly and think nothing of. What separates a strong answer from a weak one is brevity and what you did with the time, not the reason itself.
How do you explain an employment gap in an interview?
State the reason in one sentence, say what you did during the period, then turn the answer back towards the role. Keep it under thirty seconds. Rehearsing it matters more than the exact wording, because hesitation tends to read as concealment even when there is nothing being concealed.
Don't Fear the Employment Gap
Gaps in a resume are becoming increasingly common, particularly as accounting employees pursue new priorities and explore non-linear paths to progression. Therefore, explaining periods of unemployment in your career history shouldn't fill you with panic.
Rethink how you look at these gaps and present them to potential employers. Suppose you can frame your career gaps as periods that enabled you to improve your skills or personal growth. In that case, it helped you become a more valuable prospective employee, enhancing your chances of getting the role.
Hedley Scott Recruitment offer complimentary and confidential career conversations. Contact one of our team here.