Hi All,

I thought I'd chime in here as I've seen many of these type of questions in my tenure in corporate IT. All that the hiring personell are looking for is someone who is creative, resourceful and doesn't give up. So, if you say you were unemployed from date X to date Y due to a lay off couldn't get hired due the a bad economy, believe me your application will be in the trash before you know it. Also, requesting information for the past seven years is completely unrealistic (and the hiring managers know this). They will only be interested in job history for up through the past year or two.

A few other points to keep in mind:
- The application's sole purpose is to weed people out.
- Never, ever, ever, ever say you were fired. Even if you were fired, say you were laid off.
- What you say on an application should always flatter you and tell them why they would benefit by hiring you.

I was on a phone interview yesterday and this exact question arose. My last "job" ended over a year ago (lay off), but I've been doing contract work for the past year. When asked what I've been doing for the past year, I simply say that I've been doing IT contract work and I'm currently between contracts looking for interesting and challenging projects to pursue. She seemed very happy with my answer.

There are a number of reasons you can put on an application to explain gaps in employment:
- "I chose to take a several months off to spend the summer with my family"
- "I took several short term IT projects which I exposed me to new ideas and methods"
- "I wanted to take a few months off to spend time training and updating my skill set"

One could argue that you are never really unemployed, just pursuing different avenues of learning and growing as a person. All of which makes you a much better employee for them to hire.

Hope this helps.
Peter

Tim Bogart wrote:

All,

Please forgive me for my stupidity, but I've never been able to wrap my brain around this one.

I am filling out an application for a major corporation and on it they wish me to provide dates of unemployment for the last seven years. That I get. The part I don't get is that they wish me to provide an explanation for those periods. Explain what? Why I was unemployed? I got laid off, or the contract expired or I got fired from the previous position. Or, why I was unemployed or why I couldn't find work? I dunno. Am I to explain why a company didn't want to interview me, or hire me, or didn't get presented with my resume? This one just dumbfounds me. To me, this is just a stupid way to word something. Oh, and by the way... nobody answers the help line. Nice...

Any thoughts?

Tim B.
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