Why YSK: Interviewers like to weed out people who have gaps in their employment history for myriad nonsensical reasons. If you remember that this is all just a game to the employer, you can play to win.
Fill the gaps with a story about a failed foray into entrepreneurship in a related field.
I had a massive gap and this worked gangbusters after six months of constant rejection. The gap was caused by my mother’s health rapidly deteriorating, and my sense of responsibility to care for her - which became a full time job until she passed.
After that, I went through the dehumanizing experience of dozens of interviews where I was asked about the gap. Describing why I took the time out of the workforce was hard enough - adding insult to injury was the homogenous reactions among all interviewers. You could watch them mentally write me off in real time, and then go through the motions before sending me off to wait for a “the organization has interviewed several great candidates” email.
It occurred to me that instead of baring my pain for callous interviewers, what they’d rather hear about was a “go-getter” whose spirit has been broken enough to come crawling back to the rat race. So I concocted a story about a failed attempt at being an entrepreneur in their industry.
Lo, and behold - After I stopped telling the truth and started telling people about Vandelay Industries` mighty struggle to remain solvent due to market forces, I found myself with three offers in the same number of weeks.
The difference in interviewers` whole demeanor between “took care of dying mother,” and “had to see if I could get Vandelay Industries off the ground while I was young enough to be able to recover from a failure” was night and day.
Read about failed startups. Rehearse.
Everybody lies in the corpo-world. Lie better.
I had to lie to get jobs too. I left home at 16 and worked full time through high school/college to support myself. After getting my degree, I watched as all my classmates got good paying jobs while I didn’t. Eventually after 20 or so interviews I lost my cool and asked why I was getting turned down. “Well, we don’t want a laborer handling our accounting records. Maybe work as a receptionist or executive assistant for a few years to prove you’re capable of office work?”.
So I started lying. I took all of my previous work history off my resume and advertised myself as a fresh college grad. It worked… At first. Once I started talking about basic work things in the interview they knew I was lying and wouldn’t go further. So I took a different tactic: lie about my unofficial title being higher than what a background check would say, but “admitting” that I couldn’t get promoted because I was a nepo hire.
Oddly enough that worked REALLY well. Everyone loved the idea that I got jobs through connections instead of my own hard work. They loved that I walked, talked, and dressed like someone who breezed through life. My only guess is that I came off as one of the “popular kids” and they wanted me at their table. In just a month I had a dozen offers across the industry.
I absolutely agree with you. If you’re trying to dig yourself out of unemployment or poverty, lie, lie LIE! Interviews are notoriously bad at determining whether or not you’re a good employee. Do everything you can to play into people’s biases and let them fill in the blanks.