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Antiwork

Any time I was asked about an employment gap I never got hired.

First and foremost I want to say that I understand why employers ask about gaps. They want to know if you're a 'reliable' employee. However I just want to say that anytime an employer asked about a gap it never struck me as a good thing. Some asked out of curiosity and others asked the question in a bit of a judgmental, condescending manner. I went through two long stints of unemployment in my career. Any time the employment gap came up it made the interview awkward. A few years ago I had an interviewer where everything seemed well. I answered all the technical questions correctly, discussed my education and experience and everything. In fact he seemed to like me UNTIL he saw the gap. At that point he spent the next few minutes fixating and asking me several questions about it. Then the interview got awkward he thanked me…


First and foremost I want to say that I understand why employers ask about gaps. They want to know if you're a 'reliable' employee.

However I just want to say that anytime an employer asked about a gap it never struck me as a good thing. Some asked out of curiosity and others asked the question in a bit of a judgmental, condescending manner.

I went through two long stints of unemployment in my career. Any time the employment gap came up it made the interview awkward. A few years ago I had an interviewer where everything seemed well. I answered all the technical questions correctly, discussed my education and experience and everything. In fact he seemed to like me UNTIL he saw the gap. At that point he spent the next few minutes fixating and asking me several questions about it. Then the interview got awkward he thanked me and ended up walking me out. Never received a call back.

Had another interviewer who was super snarky and condescending whenever I said 'I don't know' to some of the technical questions for a developer role. Then he got to the gap and then asked in an aggressive manner 'Well what were you doing?'. I made up some BS about how I had to care for a sick family member and he was just like 'oh'. Then kept probing further and further about what else I was doing and I made up more BS about how I was traveling, freelancing and whatnot. He asked me more questions about the gap than about my experience and skills.

Another one of my interviews once asked me about a gap FROM FOUR YEARS AGO! It wasn't even from my previous job. It was the one before that. Yet he felt the need to bring it up, why? At that point does it matter? I already found a job to bridge the gap already. It was weird.

I think a lot of interviewers and employers have some type of preemptive judgment about gaps in employment history. I'm sure there are people that still got hired despite being asked about a gap however in my experience its never been a good sign. Everyone that bought it up seem to have some type of weird hangup about it whether they said anything about it or not. Those are just a few examples and I've been asked about it more than these instances.

TL;DR: Everytime I had an interview that bought up the gap I never got the job

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