Gaps in Employment. How to Deal with Gaps on Your Resume & in Interviews - VIDEO PODCAST

Employment Gaps. How to deal with Gaps in Employment on your resume and in interviews.

Throughout this short video we’ll provide you with valuable resources, interesting thoughts and insights. Bernie and Bart converse for listeners in Canada, the USA and around the world. The subject matter is applicable to job seekers who are in and looking for or thinking of moving to Canada, the U.S. and other western nations.

Bart Zych is a Certified Resume Strategist who holds an MBA and teaches business. Ideal for people looking for Jobs in Canada, the discussion about employment gaps, reasons that are acceptable for employment gaps and how to answer questions about your gaps in employment are all discussed.

Here is the transcript of the video:

00:02 employment gaps

00:03 how to deal with them in job
interviews

00:05 and on your resume

00:07 welcome to bernie chats with
Bart Zyck, certified resume strategist

00:12 throughout this short video
we’ll

00:13 provide you with valuable
resources and insights

00:16 now let’s get started

00:25 Bart if somebody does have a gap
in employment what’s the best way for them to handle that on their
resume and when they’re interviewing

00:32 how do they get beyond that
because a big part of it in my mind too, I think of it as old
thinking. I think of it as the way that our grandfathers thought,
because now it’s very you know it’s we’re privileged in Canada and
it’s pretty common for somebody to say oh you know i’m going to take
a bit of a sabbatical paid or not I’m going to take some time in
between jobs. I am no longer working at that company and I got a
package, so in other words I got some money and I think i’m going to
take that trip around Europe or wherever; to Thailand, that i haven’t
had a chance to do till now but now I have not only the time and but
i have the money and in my experience usually you don’t get both
those two at the same time very often. Usually you either have time
and no money, or you have money and no time

01:21 That’s right, so if people find
themselves in that situation, uh, to me it’s proactive and smart of
them from a life perspective to say okay you know I think i’m going
to smell the roses for a few months or a year and do something that
I’ve always wanted, to do maybe write a book, right so how do you
suggest people get over that?

01:47 I did take time to travel when I
was in the past in between jobs right and travel you know it’s it’s
all perspective it’s it’s how you present it. It’s how you sell it to
the hiring manager and travel for the sake of travel if you say, I
traveled because uh I was mentally overwhelmed and I needed time off
that’s the wrong answer right but if you say, you know, I travelled
because I wanted to immerse myself in different cultures to be able
to interact with different people in a more meaningful and
understanding way that’s the correct answer especially in a country
like Canada where when you join any type of organization it’s
guaranteed almost guaranteed to be multicultural so that’s one of the
correct answers one of the correct answers another um correct answer
is, “well during that time I learned new skills or I got a new
certificate or I studied and learned this” and now as you mentioned
you know travel time and money rarely come together to form that
perfect opportunity but with education it’s a little bit different
especially with online education.

3:12 One of the videos that I have up
on my YouTube channel talks just about that. How can you get skills
for free? and you know many different cities and I know cities like
Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, many cities in the USA, that I looked at
like Chicago San Francisco, Los Angeles, if you get a library card
from that library system in a city you have access,for example, us in
vancouver, we have access with a library card card to Linkedin
Learning which used to be called Lynda.com.

3:45 Oh is that right I didn’t; I
wasn’t aware of that I think it acquired Linda there you go, I knew
they acquired it but I didn’t know that we had access to it through
our library card!

03:50 Absolutely so oh that’s awesome!
Library

03:53 Your city library, your public
library is a treasure trove of useful things that you don’t have to
pay for but most people don’t explore it. So again, this relates to
newcomers, right! ‘Get a library card’ this should be one of your top
five things you should do because it allows you access to just
wonderful online resources, periodicals, company databases that you
can find out the names of hiring managers and department managers and
directors and c-level executives.

04:26 Those are the people that make
the hiring decisions, not hr or recruiters so just like we say in
sales. you know. go for the decision maker. Same thing with being
proactive about your job search, go for the decision maker and I
think there’s a good distinction to be made there between, recruiters
and hiring managers absolutely, to my understanding is that the
recruiter will often do the task of sourcing talent and going through
the process but then they will ultimately do it based on a request
from a hiring manager and then bring the candidates to the hiring
manager to present the candidates whether they’re an internal
recruiter or an external recruiter.

05:07 and you can think of a recruiter
in sales terms as a gatekeeper. Yes this is the person why don’t we
take a take a bit of a break because we’re gonna have to get cut off
here and then we’ll reconvene and we’ll pick it up there okay?

05:21 so we’re back for part two of our discussion Bernie Chats with Bart Zyck, the founder and operator of K.I.S.S.S. Career Coaching, and so when we left off we were talking about gaps in employment and the best ways for people, job seekers, to handle those and perhaps the perspective from employers so do you have anything you want to add about that?

05:44 I think another one that um many
people don’t talk about or mention is caring for a friend or family
member. Yes, so caring for somebody who’s sick or unwell or in some
sort of a situation where they need assistance, that is also a good
explanation of a gap on the resume.

06:06 And I think a lot of people can
appreciate too, that grieving is also another one

06:09 Oh absolutely. Not necessarily
that it took you six months or a year to grieve, but there’s often a
lot of work that has to be done with an estate. Selling the property
um, you know, dealing with various affairs of somebody who’s
gonna06:23pass away right06:25absolutely if you have a parent that
passes away then, uh, it could be quite understandable that it took
you, you know, three months or a year to deal with it all you know

06:35 absolutely absolutely that’s a
slightly uh difference, it could be a different situation because
typically people will not resign because of this but they may get
bereavement leave. However, if that bereavement leave is not
sufficient enough, then they might need to be compelled to resign and
that’s where that explanation is very valid

06:58 or they might just happen to be
out of work and looking for a job at the time and instead of finding
that job within a couple of weeks, they said; ‘You know, what i’m
going to deal with this.

07:10 You know, I’ve run into people
who you know had quite the estates to deal with maybe not i have no
idea if they were monetarily huge, but imagine if you have a 3 000
square foot house that your parents live in and it’s full of stuff?

07:24 And you have to sort through and
figure out what’s valuable what’s not. Anyway, we’re getting on a
tangent with that one.

07:29 Bart, can you tell us a little bit more about where people can find you and learn more about what you do and some of the services that you’re offering?

07:37 Sure so um, I guess you can find
me on many places. I would suggest perhaps the most useful place for
anybody to who is writing their resume, in a job search, looking to
grow their career, is to start with the youtube channel that I, that
I, have which is K.I.S.S.S. Coaching.

08:03 K-i-s-s-s, three S’s, Coaching,
uh and start with and K.I.S.S.S like I said stands for ‘Keep it
Short, Simple and Specific’ so the tips are very focused. So, my
website, uh, is my first and last name b-a-r-t, Bart Zick, z-y-c-h.
There is a link to the YouTube channel you can find some of the
services I provide.

08:32 I run an online training school
as well, which is called kisss.academy. That’s the actual website
address, kisss.academy and there’s a lot of free resources, um, that
people can take advantage of and get benefit from.

08:52 Yeah, when I looked at your
videos they were really good and I really like how they’re
digestible. They have great information about resumes and jobs, job
finding and I like how you pace out the speaking voice to make it
easily understandable for people that have English as a second
language.

09:07 So it’s very good, Very
digestible, and some great tips in there so I encourage everybody to
hop onto Bart’s YouTube channel and check out his information

09:17 I’m sure there’ll be lots of
value for you there and I talked about many of the topics that09:23we
started to touch on. Uh, in our conversation here, I go into more
detail on the youtube channel with actual examples that you can uh
take.

09:34 I have examples on the on
microsoft word that I use, uh I give you specific sentence structure
tips that you can just take and use for yourself, um, a lot of
immediately usable stuff there

09:49 Awesome! Well, that’s great Bart.
Thanks very much! Great job! Thanks for all the valuable information!