How do I explain the gap on my CV after a career break?

‘How do I explain the gap on my CV?’ is one of the most frequent questions we get asked. It’s a good question and one that causes many of our returners considerable angst. But, not anymore... 

Victoria McLean, CEO of City CV, ran a fantastic session on this topic at our Women Returners conference last year. And, we’re delighted she’s agreed to come back this year. The session is really interactive and packed with expert tips and insider knowledge of the recruitment market – it’s definitely not to be missed.

As a taste of what’s to come, we asked Victoria to give us her top tips for writing your return to work CV and making the most of LinkedIn. Here’s what she had to say:

Top Tip #1: Never undersell yourself on your CV 

I feel a lot of people, women returners in particular, undersell themselves on their CV. It’s not about bragging, but a stand-out CV really needs to demonstrate the benefits you’ll bring to an employer. Your added-value needs to sing out from every line. Most people find that a bit daunting at first, especially after a career break when so many women forget just how great they are. My advice is – don’t panic, we’ll cover loads of ideas in the conference session.

There are several ways to turn a gap on your CV into a positive selling point - make sure to include all the relevant skills and experience you've acquired. I'll talk about this in more depth at the conference. We’ll also be looking at how to hone in on those key strengths and skills. And, how to optimise your CV with key words to get past the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). 

Top Tip #2: LinkedIn is a valuable tool

When it comes to LinkedIn, I feel very few people are really making the most of it. That’s a shame because it’s a valuable tool. Around 99% of recruiters use it to search for suitable candidates and to check you out before inviting you to interview.

It’s really worth investing in your LinkedIn profile because it’s not enough to just copy and paste your CV. LinkedIn requires a different approach; it’s less formal and more dynamic than a CV. And, as you’d expect from a search engine run by algorithms, key words play a massive role. Your LinkedIn summary is the most important part of your profile and it should set out your business case with keywords and using all of the 2,000 characters available. It's really important to get the first two or three lines just right so recruiters are motivated to click 'see more'. 

Even if you’re completely new to LinkedIn, don’t worry. The conference session will boost your confidence and get you going in the right direction. If you’ve already got a LinkedIn profile but feel you could be doing more with it, we’ve got some ideas for that too.

Thank you, Victoria. We’re looking forward to learning more at your session. 

Victoria McLean, CEO of City CV, will be running a conference session on how to write a compelling, impressive CV and Linkedin profile, including how to position your career break. She will also be running a breakout session on Interview Skills.

Where & When? 

The 2020 Women Returners London Conference is on:

Monday 12 October 2020: 9.00am to 5.30pm (rescheduled)

Venue: 10 Union Street, London Bridge, London, SE1 1SZ – just a few minutes walk from London Bridge station.

This is our fourth annual London Conference especially for professional woman interested in returning to work after a career break. It’s a highly motivational and inspiring day packed with expert speakers, panels and workshops. 

This conference is for everyone looking to return to work after a break. It doesn’t matter what your professional background is or whether your career break has been 18 months or 18 years. Join us for the opportunity to meet informally with other like-minded women and our returner employer sponsors, including Amazon Web Services, Bloomberg, Credit Suisse, FDM Group, J.P. Morgan, O2 and St. James’s Place Academy.

Early Bird offer

Our Early Bird ticket offer is available. Book your ticket now to secure your place.

Five tips for writing your back-to-work CV

The end of the holidays and the new school year will be with us in a few weeks. If that’s got you thinking about re-igniting your own career Victoria McLean, Founder and CEO of career consultancy City CV, has some tips to get your CV in great shape.

Returning to professional life can be daunting. But a career break should never hold you back. The first step in your back-to-work plan is to make sure you have a professional, targeted and compelling CV that highlights your relevant strengths, achievements and skills.

Here are my top tips for creating a CV that will convince prospective employers of your value to them:

1. Tailor your CV to your target role

Think about what the employer really needs. What skills are they looking for? Why would they pick you over potentially hundreds of other candidates? Be positive and make a list of your skills and achievements from previous roles and personal experiences that demonstrate you have what it takes to match their requirements.

2. Get up to speed on Applicant Tracking Systems

If you’ve been out of the job market for a while, you may not know about Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). These work like a search engine – scanning CVs for key words. If your CV is to get past the ATS and onto the desk of a real human, you need to identify the key words from the job description – and then use them.

3. Don’t start with a gap

Mention your career break, but keep it simple and lean. Include a short ‘Career Break’ section under your work experience, with dates, including any professionally-relevant activities such as skilled volunteering or a home-based business.

4. Cherry pick

It can be a challenge to distil a long or varied career into two pages. But, it is possible if you highlight exceptional projects, skills and experience that align with your target role. Facts and figures are a great way to reinforce your results and achievements.

5. Don’t forget about the six-second test

On average, recruiters take just six seconds to decide whether to reject a CV or read on – so it needs to be compelling. Would your current CV pass this test? If you’re not sure, sign up for our next CV webinar below.


‘The Perfect CV’ FREE webinar with Women Returners and Victoria McLean, founder and CEO, City CV
As founder and CEO of City CV, Victoria has reviewed over 50,000 CVs over the course of her career and many of our clients have benefited from her workshops at the Women Returners annual conference. In this webinar, Victoria shares her knowledge on how to market yourself and build an effective business case on your CV. She’ll be talking about how to create a personal career story that showcases your most relevant achievements and helps you open that door to the job interview. We’ll also delve into the details of CV writing, with lots of practical tips.

Sign up to the webinar here

When: Thursday 26 September 2019

Time: 12.30pm to 1.30pm

Advice from Employers to Returners - How to Make Yourself Stand Out in CVs and Interviews

At our 2019 Women Returners 'Back to Your Future' Conference, Claire Cohen, Women's Editor of The Telegraph, interviewed five of our employer sponsors who have experience of running successful returner programmes: Bloomberg, Credit Suisse, FDM Group, Fidelity International and O2.

Read some of the highlights on CV and interview advice from the panel's responses below (and see our previous post on recognising your value too).

How can you write a great CV for a returner programme? “Make sure you bring out your career break on your CV - the experience that you’ve had and what you've done, the skills that you've learned. Some people leave this out and just put the dates in instead of explaining what they've done during that period."

“Most people have amazing backgrounds. Demonstrate the skills you want the employer to see, bring those out with some real-life examples on your CV."

“What I really look for is experience - make sure this is fully explained on your CV and at the interview as well, because the experience you bring is so different from other candidates and that’s what really sets you apart."

“Put your career break front and centre of your CV. There’s no point in trying to hide it - why should you? It’s absolutely part of who you are and the experience you're bringing to the role so draw that out at the beginning."

“If you want an employer to give your CV time, to give you time, you need to put the time in yourself. Before you press the send button read it a second, third time and just make sure that it makes sense."

How can you present yourself well during an interview?

“It’s very important to come to the table with what you are bringing to the organisation and not to focus on what you may not have, such as technical/digital skills.”

“Be prepared. When you go to that interview know your CV, know your skills and don’t dismiss the soft skills."

“Articulate what your top strengths are - this can be powerful in an interview.” (see What's your Unique Strengths Combination)

“Don’t define yourself by what you’ve done before. Think about transferable skills. Break down what you’ve done into elements that will help an employer understand what you bring to the table."

“Try to be succinct. Articulate exactly what skills you bring."
 
"Don’t undersell what you’ve been doing - a lot of people undersell what they’ve done during their supposed 'time out'."

Sign up to our free network for more advice, support and job opportunities. You’ll find much more help and advice on our website.

How to write your New Year return-to-work action plan

Is Returning to Work one of your New Year Resolutions? 

How do you make sure you don't let this fall by the wayside like New Year resolutions tend to do? Shift your thinking to make Returning to Work a goal, with a clear, specific and motivating personal action plan. Here are some of our suggestions on actions to include.  

Action Steps to Get Back to Work

1. Clarify what you want from work 

Start by considering what your motivations are for returning to work. Do you need, or want, to earn your own money? Are you looking for the status a professional job brings? Do you want to be a role model for your children? Returning to work after a career break is a great opportunity to think about what you really want to do, so consider what kind of working life and job you would find most fulfilling and enjoyable. Think about what you most enjoyed about past roles and whether or not you need flexibility. You may prefer a corporate employed role, to work as a freelancer or to set up your own business. 

Identifying your strengths can help you decide which career direction to take. And read our tips if you feel you have too many return-to-work options or too few. Don't over-analyse at this stage - the 'what shall I do with my life?' career questions can rarely be solved just by brain-power. Move to action using a Test and Learn approach.

2. Fill the gaps in your work experience/skillset
Once you're clearer on the broad direction you want to take, it’s time to identify any gaps in your experience and any new skills you will need. Get up to date with your old industry, or learn about a new one, by taking professional courses through industry associations, attending conferences, seminars or webinars, signing up to relevant newsletters and meeting up with ex-colleagues. Find courses locally through Floodlight and look at the free online MOOCs (Massive Online Courses). If you're worried about your IT skills being out of date, take a course before you get back to work. Strategic volunteering can build your skills and experience and may even provide a route back to work.

3. Craft your return-to-work story
Talking about your career break and how it fits into your professional story can be tricky. Use our ‘Career Break Sandwich’ method so that you don't fall into the trap of focusing solely on your career break (and neglecting your professional background) in response to the classic questions "what do you do?" or "tell me about your background?".

4. Rebuild your work confidence
A loss of professional confidence can be a key factor in preventing you from making a successful return to work. Don't let this hamper you - read our blogs on Re-establishing Your Confidence and addressing the Confidence Gap.

5. Re-write your CV and develop your LinkedIn profile

If you’ve been out of the workplace for any length of time it’s likely to be many years since you last wrote your CV. We have lots of CV information in the Advice Hub section of our website including How to Write Your Post-Break CV and the use of Action Words. A strong LinkedIn profile is also important - read our blog on how to make the most of your profile.

6. Select potential routes back to work 

There are many routes back to work such as returnships, networking and creative crafting of a role. Consider which ones would work best for you.

7. Prepare for interviews 

Facing your first interview for many years can be daunting, and we have lots of advice on our website to help you prepare. Six Essential Steps for Successful Interviewing is a good place to start. We have advice on how to prepare for competency-based interviews, informational interviews and telephone interviews. You can also read how to respond if an interviewer tells you you're overqualified for the role and what to wear to interviews.

8. Maintain your motivation

Our motivation to achieve our goals inevitably fades after a while. Learn from psychology research about how to stay motivated longer-term. 

You’ll find much more help and advice on our website.

Make your CV stand out: Use Action Verbs

If you’ve taken a long career break it could be many years, and possibly even decades, since you last wrote a CV. Don't just redo an old version, as CVs are now written in a very different way (see How to Write Your Post-Break CV).

One of the major changes is the shift from talking about your past responsibilities to highlighting your achievements. Gone are the days when simply describing your previous roles was enough to secure an interview. Now you need to explain what you achieved in previous jobs which made you stand out. 

We suggest you aim for 3-5 bullet points for each of your previous roles (and for your career break if you have done any work/volunteering/studying or developed skills in other ways such as relocation). 

Beginning your bullet point with an action verb is a great way to start off.


What are action verbs?

These are some examples:

achieved     completed     conducted     implemented    improved     negotiated

produced     secured        created         established       launched     developed

organised    revitalised     evaluated      restructured     simplified    drove

Why are action verbs important in your CV?

• Action verbs describe your past achievements in a compelling way that highlights your strengths and suitability for the role you’re applying for. 
• Action verbs keep bullet points short - particularly important if you have lots of past experience and are trying to keep your CV to the recommended maximum two sides of A4. For example, ‘Delivered XYZ project on time and within budget’, reads better than ‘I was responsible for delivering XYZ project on time and within budget.’
• Action verbs have more impact. They are specific, strong and powerful. If a recruiter has lots of CVs to sift through, action verbs make your achievements stand out. They also help if employers use applicant tracking software programmed to look for specific words to describe the experience needed for a role. 
• Action verbs help you to be specific in describing what the results of your actions were and how you achieved them.
• Action verbs can highlight your relevant skills/competencies (see below)

Which action verbs should you use? 

• Scan the job advert and job description, similar job ads in the same industry, and the company's website to see which verbs they use. Describing your past experiences using these words will give you the best chance of making your CV fit the bill. 
• Look at this action verb list which groups action words by skills group. Think about which skills you want to demonstrate - again, matching this back to the skills/competencies asked for on the job advert
• Don't use the same action verb more than twice. Use an online thesaurus or the action verb list to avoid repetition and keep the recruiter's interest.

Do read our other blogs How to Write Your Post-Break CV and Return to Work CV Tips for other advice on writing your back-to-work CV.


Sign up to our free network for more advice, support and job opportunities.

You’ll find much more help and advice on our website.

How to be a Successful Returner Candidate

There are many reasons why employers want to attract those returning to the workplace after an extended break. Returning professionals offer a wealth of experience, maturity and a fresh perspective. Employers are now starting to recognise this and other positives of bringing returners into their organisation. By hiring returners an employer is able to tackle skills shortages, improve gender and age diversity, tap into a high-calibre talent pool, and improve their organisation’s attractiveness to potential employees in general.

But what do employers look for in individual candidates and how can you make the most of your skills and experience when you apply for a returner programme or any open role?

Here are our five top tips:

1. Don’t try to hide your break on your CV or make excuses for it in the interview. If you're applying for a returner programme, it is especially important to mention that you have been on a career break, including the length of your break at the time the programme starts. You risk being excluded from these opportunities if you try to cover up your break. If it’s been a while since you updated your CV and cover letter, read our blogs How to Write Your Post-Break CV and How to Write a Back-To-Work Cover Letter.
   
2. Don’t undersell yourself. Learn to tell your story. Make sure you’re aware of, and appreciate, all the skills, experience and perspective that you can bring to an organisation. It’s likely that you will return to the workplace recharged, refreshed and enthusiastic to take on the challenge with new skills developed during your break. Make the most of this in interviews. This is the time to blow your own trumpet!
   
3. Low professional confidence is common in women who have taken a career break. If you feel this is an issue for you, take steps to build your confidence back up again so that you believe in yourself and in your skills and experience. And don’t forget to read the success stories on our website for proof that, no matter how long your break, you can get back into a great job.
   
4. Research and prepare thoroughly for interviews. Consider why you are a great fit for the organisation/role and articulate what sets you apart. Develop detailed examples of your competencies and skills - including transferrable ones - and prepare answers to typical questions.
   
5. Show your enthusiasm and positivity. How you behave and the way in which you communicate is just as important as what you say in an interview. Make sure the interviewer can see the energy and motivation you'll bring to their organisation!

Remember that employers aren't doing you a favour. They have sound business reasons for encouraging returners back into the workplace to take on stimulating and rewarding roles. Taking the time to prepare yourself to make the most of this will put you in a strong position to resume a successful career.

Make sure you have signed up to our free network for more advice, support and job opportunities.

How to Write your Post-Break CV

When you're launching yourself back into the job market after a long career break, updating your CV can feel daunting. However, this is your chance to convince a prospective employer that you would be a good investment for their company and so it's worth taking the time and effort to get it right. Bear in mind that employers can receive hundreds of CVs for every advertised job, so you need to make sure that yours stands out (for all the right reasons!)

Some returners think that a skills-based CV would be a good idea to try to 'hide' the career break. However, we wouldn’t advise this approach as we find that recruiters usually find it irritating to have to piece together your work history. It’s also worth noting that if you’re applying to a returner programmes, your application may be passed over if you cover up your career break.

We recommend sticking with a clear structure, such as this:

• Heading: personal & contact details 
• Profile 
• Key skills (optional) 
• Career history 
• Education / training
• Languages (if fluent) 
• Interests (optional) 

Heading

• Don’t use the heading “Curriculum Vitae”, as the sifting software typically used in recruitment these days may think that this is your name!
• Instead put your name as the central heading, with your contact details (email/phone) underneath. 
• Don’t include a photo or your date of birth, age, gender, marital status or details about your children as these have become inappropriate on CVs following discrimination legislation.

Profile

• Open with a profile statement, describing in 2-3 sentences the highlights from your background and qualifications, adapting this to the job opportunity as much as possible. 
• State you are returning to work after a career break. 
• If you are shifting sector/role, you can also state that you are looking for opportunities in [target sector]. Otherwise you don't need an objective. 

Key Skills (optional)

• For each job application, tailor your skills to fit the requirements set out in the job description. Try to use their key criteria words, as the first CV screen may be performed automatically by keyword sifting software. It also means that the recruiter does not have to work as hard to understand why you would be right for the role. 
• Avoid a laundry list of generic skills (strong team player, highly-motivated, etc.) as this won't impress anyone! Use specific skills such as strategic planning & implementation, procurement, digital media marketing, etc.

Career History

• In this section, list your experience in reverse date order
• For each job, give 3-5 bullet points for specific achievements and contributions, not just your responsibilities. Quantify achievements if possible.
• If you have a long career history, it's fine just to list early career role titles.
• Include your "Career Break" as a section with dates. You can include a reason for your break (e.g. parental career break; career break for caring responsibilities) but you don't have to. 
• Include any work you have done during your career break, including running a business (no matter how small!) and freelance projects. Also include any skilled volunteering roles you held during that time (e.g. School Governor, Charity Treasurer). A LinkedIn study from 2011 found that 41% of hiring managers consider volunteer work to be equally as valuable as paid work, so don’t hide this experience in a voluntary work section at the end.

Education / training

• In addition to your highest-level qualifications, include any relevant training you have completed during your career break, even where this was a short and/or online course.
• If you don't have recent work experience, but your break has included significant further education or professional qualifications, you may like to put this section before your career history.
• There is no need to include your A-Levels, GCSEs (or O-levels) or school (unless specifically requested to do so)

Interests

• Don’t list bland interests (e.g. reading, cinema, etc.). Only include those that are relevant, unusual or impressive (e.g. society memberships, triathlons, etc.), otherwise there’s no need to include an interests section at all.

Final words of advice

• Appearance: Use font size 10-12 and write in the third person with no pronouns, for example: “Reduced the month-end accounting timetable by 3 days”.
• Length: Keep your CV to 2 sides and aim for about 1,000 words. This means you need to include only the most important pieces of information, so prioritise and leave the rest out.
• Format: Make sure the CV looks good on the page and that the formatting is perfect. When emailing your CV, it is best practice to send it as a pdf to avoid any ‘format jumps’ that can result from viewing an editable document (such as a Word document) on a different device.
• References: It’s no longer necessary to give details of references or to say "references available on request", so leave this out.
• Grammar / spelling: Check that there are no spelling or grammatical mistakes and that you have been consistent in tense with all your verbs. When you are happy, ask a friend to look over it for you with a fresh pair of eyes for any errors you may have missed.

Once you’ve perfected your CV, it’s time to think about your cover letter. Read our how-to guide to get started!

For further advice and support in your return-to-work journey, you can sign up to our free network here. 

Note: Original post from 2014; updated in May 2018