Just lie. There is absolutely nothing unethical about lying about timeframes on your resume.

Looking for a job after being made redundant, but still in good standing with your former coworker or manager? Just say you still work there.

Otherwise they'll have way more leverage when it comes to salary negotiation.

My friend did this when he got made redundant, landed a well paying job, after months of being unemployed.

You have no reason to have a gap on your resume because you'll be unfairly punished for it.

Just lie. It's 100% ethical.

No I can't. I signed an NDA.

This question should be illegal to ask.

"I was unemployed"

• Why?
• Can they not even keep a job?

"I took a sabbatical"

• Mysterious
• Arousing
• Shows off the size of your enormous sack

EDIT : When I took my sabbatical and I was dating at the same time, instead of being seen as a scruffy bum it actually did give an air of mystique, since most people at that age were not doing things like that.

"I was consulting."

It's true, I was giving out advice left and right.

Yes. I created the document in Google docs, and you opened it in Word.

In Germany, just ask them what the gap between 1933 and 1945 in their company's history is as a direct response.

If i have to explain the gap (which clearly means I was not employed), it means you are incompetent, you fail my interview, I don't work with incompetent bosses.

I was told one way is: I singed a nda and I’m not allowed to answer that

"I had to provide end of life care to a close relative."

I have a big gap from a few years of depression and that's my go to line. I have never ever heard a follow up question.

Haha, as if anyone actually asks that. A gap gets you automatically rejected by the employment AI, long before humans see it.

FMLA is always a safe bet. Only one available to care for a dying family member buys sympathy and is an area they can’t legally ask any follow-up questions.

Source: former corporate shill and interviewer

That's too much info. A simple "I can" answers their question.

“Sorrry, I have an NDA”

I spent some time in a mountain cave replica in a Nepalese themed restaurant, diligently honing my programming skills without the noise of the outside world. No internet, no mains, no toilet. Just me, my laptop, an angry manager who called the police and 60 charged replacement batteries that fell off a truck.

There I created the art of meditative programming where I learned to program not just my machine, but myself. As a result of this resume gap I am now able to function as a 13.6% more productive employee and have finally met the benchmark of 1.0x engineer. At my former employer I delivered a project which brought them in revenue totaling at least $12, giving me priceless experience because of this training.

I got really into table tennis and lost track of time.

"That is the year when I was happy."

Those were the times I was taking time off to argue with the voices in my head that were telling me to kill again.

An idiot asked me that once when I had just finished my masters. Like did you read my resume?

In principle they shouldn't be allowed to ask that. if they seem to be giving too much weight to that they are just being lazy on trying to evaluate you and they will likely be bad employers who believe that taking time off for yourself is a red flag

"I took four months off to recover from burnout"

Me: "I was moving in silence or under a NDA."

I was working on my mental health

Took a year off to let everyone else catch up 💅

"Those are line breaks. You see it's easier to read if you break up blocks of text into paragraphs separated by a whole empty line."

I always put in "traveling overseas"

In my case this is actually true, but I've never had anyone question me taking 12 months off every few years