(Make an inverstment in the future. While you're busy looking for regular work you can always use your spare time writing articles for Steemit!)

Out of Work?

At some time or another we've all been out of work and are actively on the job market. During this lull we all feel the yearning to be in touch, to have that secure sense of being needed, and to be a happily employed worker bee. However as the fates have it, one can be out of work for literally a few minutes (happened to me once), or for much longer than we care to think!

While there's plenty of advice out there on how to keep busy finding a job, one thing I hear many friends and colleagues telling me is about their concern about the dreaded "resume gap" – that lull of weeks or months when you've been busy looking for work with no luck.

The Dreaded "Resume Gap"

When you finally do find a chance at new work, for some reason an extended lull of unemployment looks bad on a resume. And sometimes it also becomes a deal-breaker at actually getting new work.

(Recruiters seem maddeningly disinterested in able-bodied folks who are unemployed yet very qualified and ready for work. Does anyone know why they shun really well-qualified unemployed workers? Leave a comment below...)

Self-Employed = "Employed" on Paper

To get rid of this much-dreaded "resume gap" syndrome, here's some simple advice: Open your own company and count it as "work" on your resume.

Whether you actually have customers or run a fully blown business is another matter.

In many cases, opening your own company on paper is easy. If you have extremely limited funds, you could easily keep costs down by paying a small fee for a local business license and tacking it to the wall next to your desk at home and calling yourself a company. There you are: You're self-employed in the simplest sense.

Maybe you haven't earned a single cent, but at least you're official.

What you do during this time is up to you. Some folks have enough reserves to fudge along until they interview for and get their next job. Others may cringe at the thought of not keeping extremely busy, and in turn they seek any opportunity to get busy as an independent consultant.

If you do this...

You might actually find it worthwhile to continue looking for work while wearing the self-employed hat. Even if you didn't find much work while self-employed, you probably kept yourself very busy. And in some capacity you did operate as a business - albeit a business that perhaps didn't make any money. If you're lucky and you did make some money, then all the more praise to you!

You're Covered!

The whole point is: Your "resume gap" is covered.

Legitimately, for that amount of time between regular stints at work, you can fill in your resume and say you were busy at work. During your next "real job" interview, you can confidently say, "No, I wasn't unemployed. I was actually busy working."

Bogus!

Unethical, you say? Consider this...

It's a well-documented fact that self-employed entrepreneurs all have have had their fair share of lulls between work gigs. This said, the ranks of self-employed also consider time spent searching for their next contract or gig a fact of life, a real part of their business activities that come as a part of the self-work experience. Time spent technically unemployed looking for work is legitimate work time.

Beyond Covering the Gap

OK, this discussion has offered you a way to cover what's considered a critical "weakness" (if you want to call it that) on your resume. But... Consider self-employment for what it is: an opportunity.

If you change the perception of being "self-employed" in the limited sense that this discussion presents, you can go a step further and actually go for it. If you're ready, you can make the jump! Go ahead, print those business cards, publish a company website, get out there and sell yourself, and actually become legitimately self-employed.

It's what you make of it.

And what you make of it is a story that's entirely up to you, and goes well beyond the very limited "resume gap" coverage topic this discussion began with. There's opportunity everywhere. Find it and go beyond all you wish.

Good luck to you!

Get Rid of the Dreaded "Resume Gap"