By Joanne Meehl, owner of Joanne Meehl Career Services
It’s no shock that this year, many who’d rather be working have a gap in their work history. But employers know that it’s the desired employee who does something useful despite pandemics and other unexpected career interrupters. They respect the “where there’s a will, there’s a way” attitude.
Now that you’ve experienced a gap and have recognized it as such, start filling it so that it’s not getting any longer. What courses can you take on LinkedIn, Coursera, your local community/state/private college’s online course offerings? And how might you volunteer remotely for a favorite cause? What kind of paid work can you do remotely?
A question you will probably get is, So what have you been doing with your time? When I asked a new grad, someone in exactly this situation, “What have you been doing since losing your job?”, at first he said “Nothing”.
But then told me of the books of this one author that he’d been reading, well on his way to reading them all. And how he gave some ideas to his former employer on setting up a curbside delivery service for meals, then helped him with marketing and also updated the restaurant website to show this new service and did some other updating of the site. And how he’d established an Instagram page for his college’s photography club, which meant he was dealing with lots of people every day.
So we honestly wrote these up, for 2020, from the present back to the spring, as:
While not a “real job”, this kind of activity is much better than “nothing” since March 2020, when it seemed everything changed.
So don’t underestimate activities like this, that have led somewhere positive. Talk with a career coach about how to substantiate various activities, without them looking fake or exaggerated. Better to be honest about the work, paid or not, so a potential employer sees how you made the best of a bad situation. They will respect that attitude!
— Joanne Meehl is the owner of Joanne Meehl Career Services and also known as The Job Search Queen. For more information or to book a time, go to http://www.joannemeehlcareerservices.com/store.
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