Career News/Trends: How to overcome red flags on your resume

Edition: April 30th, 2021
Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS

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Excerpts from article by Patricia Carl, published in Harvard Business Review

Landing a job is never easy — but a resume full of red flags makes it even harder. Overcoming these red flags comes down to developing and controlling your own narrative.

Red flags can call into question a candidate’s commitment, performance, and reliability.

By unapologetically owning your decisions and planning out concise, forthright talking points, you can proactively address these concerns and make the best possible impression on your interviewer.

Here are 3 of the most common red flags and some strategies that can be effective in addressing them:

1. Employment Gaps

One of the most common resume red flags is an unexplained lengthy employment gap between previous roles. While an interviewer may assume the worst, there are in fact a number of perfectly valid reasons for a gap in employment.

You can approach these gaps in the following ways:

• FILL YOUR TIME PRODUCTIVELY: If you’re not yet back on the job market, think about ways to fill your time with some sort of professionally relevant activity that you can later fit into a consistent narrative. Find ways to demonstrate how whatever you spent your time doing does in fact reflect your strong candidacy.
• CONVEY THAT IT WAS YOUR CHOICE: If part of the reason you were unemployed for a while is that you choose your roles carefully, emphasise that. The more you convey that an employment gap was your choice, the less likely your interviewer is to view you as desperate and unemployable.

2. Job Hopping

The next red flag is candidates who’ve had multiple jobs over a short period of time. This can raise a couple of concerns with interviewers which can make an employer wary about taking a chance on you, regardless of your qualifications.

Here are a few key strategies you can use to preempt your interviewer’s concerns if you’ve hopped between multiple positions:

• TALK ABOUT ACCELERATED LEARNING UNDER DIFFERENT LEADERS: Emphasise how the experience of working alongside different leadership styles has accelerated your learning and professional growth.
• HIGHLIGHT ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Focus on your accomplishments in each role rather than your time in it.
• MENTION HOW THIS INCREASED YOUR KNOWLEDGE: Highlight how the experience you gained by working across industries and the exposure you acquired to best practices in different types of organisations increased your breadth of knowledge and competence.

3. Unplanned Departures

Most hiring teams generally prefer candidates who are currently employed, and will likely assume that a strong candidate wouldn’t leave their previous role without a new position lined up. Given this, if a prospective employer sees from your resume that you’ve recently left a role, they will likely ask you about the circumstances surrounding your departure.

Whether you resigned, were laid off, or fired, there are a few key considerations to keep in mind when thinking about how you’ll explain the situation:

• FOCUS ON POSITIVES: While you may still harbor bitter feelings, leave blame at the door when you step into an interview with a new organisation. Instead of focusing on the problems with your last position, do the difficult work of finding the positive aspects of your experience with your former employer.
• TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU NEED TO PROSPER: Reflect on the environments in which you thrive — i.e., a high-growth company, a focus on innovation, etc. Articulate these needs to your prospective employer, and they will read between the lines that the prior organisation did not support you in these ways.
• BE STRAIGHTFORWARD: If you were fired, address it head on. Prepare a concise response to explain why you left.

After more than a year of uncertainty and widespread job loss, it’s more important than ever for candidates to position themselves in the best possible light. With the strategies outlined above candidates can set themselves up for success.

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(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)

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