Writing up your resume is a daunting and frustrating task at times, but it can become a real panic situation if you have gaps in your work experience or lack qualifications. You may even have left a previous employment on bad terms. Having a blemish on your resume isn’t any reason to feel you can’t aim for another good job, and there are ways to spin your resume to make it (and you) look attractive to a potential employer.

Large, hard-to-explain gaps in your work history from periods in your life where you were unemployed can be corrected in a manner of ways. You certainly can minimize the damage gaps do to your chances of getting a job. The first thing to do with your resume is to measure time spent on a job in years, rather than months. When noting the length of time you spent at a company, show the year you began the job and the year you left, rather than showing the year and the month.

If the gap in your work history lasts for a number of years, then you’ll need to explain the reasons. Honesty is the best plan if you did something constructive, such as working as a freelancer, raising children, going to school, or even traveling. Even if you didn’t do something even remotely constructive, then you shouldn’t lie about why you weren’t working, but you should at least claim you were trying to find yourself or attempting to get back on your feet.

The opposite situation that causes employers reading your resume to raise an eyebrow is having too many jobs, reflecting that you’ve been moving from one company to another at an accelerated pace. Going from company to company or touching on many types of jobs is known as job hopping, and potential employers get the impression you may not be around at their company for long. As with gaps in your work history, note the time spent on the job in years rather than months, to try and fool the eye into thinking you stayed at jobs longer than you really did. Noting things in years will also help to try and focus your resume on your skills rather than your experience and erase any jobs that were too short term to make any real impact on your work history.

Limited qualifications, be they in training, education, or experience can also present a problem for your resume. In this situation, you’ll want to emphasize your experiences other than conventional qualifications, along with whatever qualifications you do meet, while writing your resume and attending a job interview. Additionally, emphasizing skills over experience will also help your resume.

Finally, if you left a job on bad terms, remember that you do not need to indicate on your resume why you left your last employer’s company, nor do you need to allow your potential employer to contact your previous employers. Should the question about your reasons for leaving come up in an interview, definitely downplay bad relations and do highlight what you learned and gained from that particular employment. Any spins on your resume, whether the ones listed above or ones that you have created on the fly, should above all else be subtle. Blatant lies and completely glossing over issues will cause more problems than solve them. The words you use and the way you’ll write information can work wonders for your resume.

Image taken on 2009-09-28 15:27:36. Image Source. (Used with permission)