How to Explain Gaps in Your CV
An unexplained gap in your CV could leave employers and recruiters questioning your career timeline and experience levels. In this article, we address how best to explain gaps on a CV, and how you can frame them positively to showcase relevant skills and experience.
Gaps in your CV don’t automatically make you unemployable, but too many gaps can make you appear unreliable or dishonest. While you might wish to gloss over any employment gaps in your CV, it's usually better to address them, to avoid confusion and accusations of misleading the reader.
In this article, we'll cover:
- The different reasons you could have for a gap in your CV
- Tips for explaining gaps in your CV
- Examples of how to explain career gaps in your CV for a positive impact
What are gaps on a CV?
There are various reasons why you might have an employment gap on your CV. In most cases, it's worth mentioning the gap and providing a reason to justify it, so employers can understand why you have periods of your career when you weren't working.
Some genuine reasons for a CV gap include:
- Unemployment: Time between roles, gardening leave, redundancy or job hunting.
- Health issues: Short or long-term illness recovery, taking time to address mental health issues, undertaking treatment or convalescing after surgery.
- Parental leave: Taking time off to have children, or to look after them.
- Travel/sabbatical: Personal growth, exploration, learning new cultures.
- Caring responsibilities: Supporting ill or elderly relatives, or providing care for other family members.
- Studying: Returning to education, retraining or adding relevant skills to make you more employable.
- Freelance work or other employment: Short projects that you might not list on a CV, either because they lack impact or relevance.
- Relocation: A gap between leaving a previous home and settling into a new location, requiring you to search for a new job.
Tips for explaining gaps on your CV
While you might worry that explaining gaps on your CV could draw attention to them, there are ways to explain them that will avoid damaging your reputation, and could even enhance your chances of success. Give yourself the best chance of success by following these tips for explaining gaps on your CV:
1. Be honest but strategic
When it comes to explaining career gaps on your CV, honesty is generally the best policy. However, there is a big difference between being honest and being over-detailed, which can leave you looking like you lack tact or self-awareness. As such, a strategic approach is required. You'll want to provide a valid reason for your CV gap, without creating a feeling that you're overly defensive, or adding detail that could work against you.
Take a look at these examples for how to be both honest and strategic in explaining your CV gaps:
Honest and strategic
- The role came to an end after it became clear the environment wasn't the right fit for my working style.
- I took a period of time out to address a health matter, which has since been fully resolved.
- My previous employer went through a significant restructure which resulted in my role being made redundant.
- I took a planned career break to provide full-time care for a family member during a period of serious illness.
- Following several years of intensive work, I took a deliberate career break to travel and broaden my perspective.
Honest, but lacking tact
- I was let go from my last job because my manager didn't like me from day one and created a toxic work environment.
- I had a breakdown after my divorce and my doctor signed me off work for six months.
- The company went under because of terrible management decisions and I was made redundant.
- My mum got sick and there was nobody else to look after her, so I had to quit my job.
- I was burnt out and needed to get away from everything, so I went travelling for a year.
2. Keep explanations short
Adding a brief explanation will help you to explain gaps on your CV without drawing undue attention to it. Your explanation could be as little as a few words, or if you feel you need to justify your break further, a single sentence. You certainly don't need to add bullet points or the level of detail you would add to describe a job or another significant career milestone.
Here's an example of a brief career gap explanation that provide perfectly adequate levels of detail:
Career break for family caregiving
2021
-2023
Career break to provide caregiving duties to an older relative, including transportation, meal provision, and administrative tasks.
3. Focus on what you gained
A career break needn't be framed as dead time, waiting for the next employment or training opportunity. You can use a career break to show skills and experience you gained, that you can put to use in the workplace. This could either be soft and transferable skills, or hard skills that you can directly apply to a new job.
For example:
- Travelled internationally, developing adaptability, cultural awareness and cross-cultural communication skills.
- Recovered from major surgery, taking time to develop skills via online courses in project management and data analytics.
- Provided care for two young children, managing household logistics, budgeting and early-years education.
4. Use positive wording
Avoid putting a negative spin or a defensive tone on your explanations for career gaps. Aim for a neutral or positive tone to justify the gap and, where possible, showcase benefits you gained from taking the time away from work.
Here's an example of a negative and a neutral career gap explanation, and one with a more positive spin:
Positive:
Company restructure resulted in redundancy, providing the opportunity to retrain and refocus my career objectives.
Negative:
Lost my job and spent six months out of work.
If you're struggling to put a positive spin on your career gaps, Jobseeker's CV builder provides AI suggestions to help tailor and improve your CV's written content. You can also choose from pre-written cover letter text that you can adapt to match your career journey.
Examples of how to write CV gaps
If you're seeking ideas for how to frame your career gaps in your CV, take a look at the CV examples below for inspiration:
Reason for CV gap | Bad example | Good example |
Unemployment | I couldn't find a job for 6 months | Job Search & Upskilling (2024) – Applied for roles, completed digital marketing course |
Health reasons | Was unwell and unfit to work | Medical Leave (2025) – Underwent surgery, recovered fully and ready to return to work |
Career break/sabbatical | Took a career break | Career Break (2022–2023) – Focused on family and upskilled in project management |
Studying/retraining | Went back to college | Education Break (2021–2022) – Completed diploma in UX design |
Freelance/side projects | Completed small side projects in own time | Freelance Designer (2022–2023) – Completed branding projects for 3 clients |
Where to put career gap explanations on your CV
The placement of your career gap explanations on your CV or cover letter will depend on when they've occurred, how significant they were and how much you want to highlight them. The following sections of your CV are all viable and justifiable places to mention career gaps:
1. In your work experience section
Your CV work experience section gives you an opportunity to mention employment gaps in your CV that fell between jobs. This helps the reader by presenting the gaps as part of your career chronology, giving them a complete timeline of your employment history, along with any gaps and the reasons for them. You could highlight the gaps in one of two ways:
- If the career gap was particularly prominent, or if you used it to do something which has significance and relevance to your future employment, you could list it between work experience entries. Add it between the two roles where the gap occurred, and use formatting that mirrors your main work experience entries.
- If you took a brief career break after finishing one job, and before starting another, you could simply mention this in a brief bullet point within the former work experience entry. This will help to justify a gap in the dates between your employments. For example, 'Followed this employment with a three-month career break for retraining'.
2. In your personal profile/summary
If you took a short career break or have experienced a break while seeking to change careers, you could mention this in your personal profile or CV summary. This CV section is particularly relevant if you're currently on a career break and you're seeking a return to work, as it will help explain your motivation and ambition for the future. Here's an example:
Motivated marketing professional returning to work after a planned career break taken to care for family responsibilities. During this time, I maintained my industry knowledge through online courses and professional networking. I am now eager to apply my communication and project coordination skills in a dynamic marketing role and continue developing my career.
3. In your education/training section
If your career break involved a return to formal education or training, you can mention the break by listing your qualifications in your CV's education section. This will help the reader to build a complete picture of your employment and educational activities. If you wish to make the timeline more obvious to the reader, you could also briefly reference the break in your work experience section, directing the reader to your education section for further details.
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How to prevent gaps from hurting your CV
There are various things you can do to reduce or eliminate the harm that CV gaps can potentially cause to your CV. Take a look at a few of the most effective strategies below:
Using a functional CV
If you're worried about CV gaps distracting from valid and relevant skills that should put you in the frame for the job, you could use a functional CV layout. A traditional, reverse-chronological CV layout can accentuate CV gaps by focusing on the timeline of your career and education. However, a functional CV structure places your skills front and centre, grouping key skills into categories and giving you the chance to show how you've applied those skills in your career, in a non-linear format.
When listing your skills, be sure to only include those that match the job requirements. This helps to smooth over career gaps, focusing instead on whether you have the necessary skills for the job. Jobseeker's CV templates can help you select the right CV format for your next application, whether you're using a traditional layout or a functional structure.
Showing freelance work
If you carried out any freelance work or small projects while between jobs, these are worth mentioning to fill gaps in your CV. Even if you did these projects without receiving payment, or undertook a project for your own personal development (such as practicing coding by building your own app), these are still legitimate activities to mention in a CV and show the reader you used your time productively.
Showing volunteer work
Volunteering demonstrates care for the community, proactivity and a dedication to causes beyond your immediate interests. From communication skills to the ability to work with people of all ages, volunteering equips you with skills that are transferable to any position or industry, making it a useful way to spend your time during a career break.
Data Insight
Research from Jobseeker found that 57.5% of HR professionals said they view volunteer work on a CV as relevant professional experience.
Adding hobbies/extracurriculars
Including hobbies, interests and extra-curricular activities in your CV can give recruiters and employers an insight into relevant hard and transferable skills, and how you've worked on these during a career break. For example, model-making can showcase attention to detail, problem-solving and ability to focus. Sporting activities, on the other hand, tend to demonstrate leadership, teamwork and communication skills. Listing these kinds of activities can build a stronger picture of your skill set that could otherwise be damaged by CV gaps.
Adding internships or short-term projects
Internships can provide you valuable, practical experience. Even if most tend to be unpaid, you should consider listing them in your work experience section, or in a dedicated internships section. Emphasise tasks where you brought value to the company, such as managing social media accounts, event support or conducting research. By using internships in this way, they can more than adequately fill a gap in your timeline of paid employment and training.
Adding courses
Pursuing a professional qualification, adding a valuable certification or licence, learning a new language or even taking part in an online workshop can demonstrate a dedication to learning and an interest in professional development. Using your time away from work in this way shows proactivity, as well as adding new skills that you can put to use in your return to work.
Expert Tip:
When stating the dates of your employment on your CV, it’s perfectly fine to include the month and year. This minimises gaps while still giving an accurate representation of the duration of employment. However, never extend dates of employment to cover gaps as the truth will out when a prospective employer checks your references.
Next steps: building a strong CV despite gaps
You can turn your career gaps from a negative into a positive in your CV being honest and strategic about your career gaps and explaining what they were and why they occurred. Keep career gap explanations short and concise, to not detract from the main content of your CV. Make sure to put a positive spin on your career gaps, showing skills you learned and other experiences that you could use to positive effect in a future role.
Remember, you can list career breaks in your CV profile, work experience section or education section, or add further context in your cover letter. Using Jobseeker's CV builder and check our resources which can help you create a CV that highlights your strengths - even with career gaps. You can choose from a variety of pre-designed CV and cover letter templates to match your style, and the role you're applying for, making your CV stand out from the crowd and giving you the best chance of progressing. Sign up today and create your next winning application in minutes.
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