Massive gap in employment - how to work around this?

[Toastandmarmite999]

Hi,

this is following on from a post I wrote previously about finding it hard to get an interview at 53 (thanks for all your support and suggestions!)

My question is this - how on earth do I get back on track?
Let me elaborate:

I became a lone parent when my DD was 13 months old.
Once she started primary, I set myself up as a freelance PA but found it difficult to get clients, so when we moved to a new town (she was now 5) I decided to look for work in admin (before she was born I'd been an Office Manager in London).
However, I found it impossible to find anything (maybe because of a lack of recent experience in an office?) so with the Job Centre breathing very heavily down my neck, I was offered a job in garden maintenance and grabbed it - It paid well and I could fit it perfectly around school hours - I actually really enjoyed this.

But 3 years later, I began to suffer with backpain (gardening's quite physical) and decided to retrain in an industry which I was told was undersubscribed.
It is, and I found a job straight away, but it soon became clear that it wasn't the right choice for me, and having just been made 'redundant' before Christmas I'm now looking at 4 wasted years pursuing a wrong path with a now even wider gulf in my relevant employment history with regards to admin/secretarial work - Stay at home mum(3 years); Freelance PA (2 years); Gardener Maintenance (3 years); The other job that simply wasn't suitable (4 years).

I'm aware that it's not advisable to include Employment History that goes back years, so in my case what do I do? 2010 was the last time I was in an office.

I'm also aware that now having a Masters, I'm overqualified for most of the jobs I'm applying for - do I not mention this? I've deleted my Linkedin account which mentions this, but it's still online.

It's all such a mess.

I could lie, but I'm an honest person and this really doesn't sit well with me.

I could temp, but I've been told that there's no guarantee of regular work and as a lone parent with a mortgage - this is a worry.

There are so many jobs I see advertised that I could do standing on my head, but I can see why my CV doesn't portray me as someone who's followed a steady career and as well as my age, isn't getting that foot in the door.

I'd be really interested in hearing your thoughts.

Thanks.

unless they these are jobs requiring a degree, unlikely over qualified.

how long ago did you do your masters?

what was the 4 year unsuitable job in?

I completed my Masters 3 years ago - I'd rather not say what it was in.
Sorry - I didn't understand - do you think I should remove it?

no.

because unless directly relevant to your job you’re applying for… it will be ignored largely if not totally anyway

so don’t bother removing it

will you get any references from PA role?

Lurking as I too have an inconvenient gap (was an unpaid carer alongside a very PT admin job) so no good recent evidence of my admin/IT competencies.

I can't really follow any of this.

Was the only job you did before you had your DD an office manager? How long did you do that for? Was that the job that finished in 2010?

So... 20XX to 2010 - Office manager
2010 to 2013 - Career break
2013 to 2015 - Freelance PA
2015 to 2018 - Random gardening job
2018 to 2021 - Secret unsuitable job
2021 - Masters in... mysterious subject?

If the above is vaguely accurate, I'd rewrite as:

Employment history

20XX to 2010 - Office manager
2010 to 2013 - Career break
2013 to 2015 - Freelance PA
2015 to present - Career break

Education

2021 - Masters

If I look at the second version, I see someone who obviously took time out for kids, gave PA work a go and decided it was too much whilst raising kids, but then did some further study to keep her mind active and is now ready to reenter the workplace.

If I look at the first version, I'm confused. TBH, I think I'd rather see a career break to raise a child who isn't small anymore than unrelated jobs in quick succession.

PS If it helps, I've had my own PA/secretary/admin team before, so I'm the sort of person who would be looking at your CV trying to figure out if you were worth calling in for an interview. I just want the CV to make it easy for me to follow, and for the gaps to have valid reasons. Taking time out to raise a child or care for a relative is fine.

If the secret masters is related to the the gardening job and/or the secret job, all the more reason to leave those two jobs off as they'll indicate some desire to change career.

Don't go looking for a PA type job in FS though, as they'll expect you to give them your full employment history including the random jobs, and they will check. Pick any other industry. And go back on LinkedIn, and get some of your old PA clients to give you recommendations and endorsements as a favour. People will if you build up the courage to ask.

Your whole post comes across as disappointed and depressed. You need to re-write work history and experience as a series of interesting jobs that you took to work within your family responsibilities, which are now much less.

Thanks for your reply.
Before I was an Office Manager, I'd spent my 20s and 30s in various admin roles in London, then I had a child.

I appreciate that having a career gap to raise a child is fine, but don't you think 8 years is a long time to be spent on further study and keeping my mind busy?!

I can only get two references from my time as a freelance PA from 8 years ago.

Btw way - what is FS?
Thanks

FS is financial services. I was just about to say DO apply for FS but go for a mutual. They are far more accommodating to people who've been out of the workplace, particularly women. Many have signed up to the women in finance initiative (you don't need to have a 'finance' job, you'd just be working within the FS, e.g as a PA!)

Put everything on your CV but concentrate on transferable skills. You said you enjoyed the gardening role; what was it you liked? The organisation you needed to implement? The budget you had control of? Think about what you actually did in all the roles you've done and how the skills you've learned along the way can be used positively in a new role.

You're overthinking it... many workplaces don't care about gaps in your CV as long as you're honest about how/why you took the oath you did.

Good luck OP. Have a look at restless.co.uk which is a job board specifically for people returning to work.

What jobs are you applying for? Admin?

It's really difficult for people to advise you on how to weave your employment history into a coherent story on your CV / sales pitch to employers when you won't even say what the most recent four years were spent doing.

You said you struggled to find admin work a decade ago, so it seems less about age and more about your search strategy and the way you present yourself.

@JustGotToKeepOnKeepingOn A lot of FS employers will spring a background check on just about anyone, where you'll have to explain any gaps in your employment by proving what you were doing (which is a nightmare if you were ever unemployed and didn't claim benefits). I'd only avoid FS if leaving jobs off her CV.

Or... maybe just do a functional CV rather than a traditional one? Where the OP groups skills and experiences rather than a chronological CV?

@Toastandmarmite999 I wouldn't be bothered at that length of time out. As long as you can use a computer in your day to day life, a lot of admin things are easier now (thanks to improvements in tech) so I wouldn't be worried about a returner picking things up again. Now, if you were looking for a professional technical role, that would be different. You're not.

Really, the biggest issue is that you're being so cagey about what you've been doing that the best advice is to just leave it off and go with the big break.

Did you get fired from the very unsuitable job, bullied out and/or was it in another seemingly random choice (like gardening)? If so, yeah, leave it out, say you've been raising your child or caring for a relative, and take a job where the employer isn't going to vet every gap (raise a flag on undeclared jobs) in your CV (so just not financial services or banking).

There are plenty of admin/PA type jobs you could do if you presented your CV better and styled out your work experience in an interview. If you come across as very people-y and helpful, you'd be surprised at how much you could get away with for the sort of work you are now after. When it comes to admin/PA work, those of us who are client facing really just want someone who seems vaguely competent, we think can put up with us and who seems like they can gatekeep people for us and ensure we can maximise our billing hours. Someone with better experience on paper who we don't gel with in the interview is not getting the job.

I really think it's just technique and confidence. You're much more employable than you think.

I really think it's just technique and confidence. You're much more employable than you think.

I agree with this. It seems like whatever happened in your last job is casting a shadow over your thinking at the moment.

I'm going to be a bit ruthless. Sorry.

I take part in recruiting public sector admin a lot. We have a huge number of applicants for every role, and I can guarantee that 80% of them will be recent graduates with full work histories and no "career breaks" (which could mean a lot of things). Even applicants with Masters are not uncommon.

Why? Because it's the foot in the door. Admin roles these days are far less "admin-y" than they used to be - many people, including senior managers, are much more self-servicing in a lot of admin tasks, so office admin often tend to be much less answering phones, setting up meetings or typing up stuff, and much more the "project support" type thing.

I think that without knowing what you have to offer (mysterious degrees?) and what you are applying for / expecting from a role, there's bound to be a huge spectrum of advice that may or may not be of any help.

OP o think you have to accept that given your career history you have very little pulling power from an employers perspective. You are looking at a very basic admin role.

and even then you you be up against competition from people who’ve had more relevance experience than gardening. Aside from the admin role a decade or so ago

for the past four years you have done an unsuitable job.

so unsuitable that you don’t think there’ll provide a reference (or at least a positive reference) to a prospective employer??

I find this quite disheartening to read: I'm looking for a public sector admin job and had hoped that recruiters in the PS with its professed commitment to diversity would at least consider someone older with diverse life and work experiences to offer, and all the transferable skills that may involve. Do all the jobs go to the recent graduates with unblemished work histories?

...my thoughts exactly.

@Toastandmarmite999 check out
this thread

I could temp, but I've been told that there's no guarantee of regular work and as a lone parent with a mortgage - this is a worry.

getting recent experience is easiest done with temp/fixed term contract work. I would register with several agencies and spread the risk. Keep in touch with them regularly, build up a relationship so you aren't out of sight out of mind, and you'll find that they'll think of you for new work that comes on their books.

No they don't - but most of our applicants are in their early 20's and fit this profile.

In common with many employers "diverse life and work experience" is not relevant. We set down a series of skills / experience in the person specification that are required for the role, and all applicants, regardless of any other factor, are shortlisted based on those requirements and those alone. Interviews are based on testing what the person specification requires. It is up to every applicant to operate on this basis, so if they have "diverse life and work experiences to offer" it is up to them to demonstrate why things that have no direct relevance to the role should be considered relevant. With respect, if your prior recent experience is all weeding and turning over flower beds, then it is up to you to show what relevance those "diverse life and work experiences" have to my need for someone who can manage spreadsheets.

We would not, and cannot, employ older people whose applications do not meet our specifications over younger people whose applications do, in order to "diversify" the workforce. That is direct discrimination, and the reason that we apply these techniques.

Besides which, if we were to deliberately look to diversify our workforce by selecting groups of people who are under-represented, we would be going out of our way to recruit 20-somethings - in common with much of the public sector, thanks to over a decade of limited recruitment our workforce is largely older.

Your understanding of what diversity means is flawed, and if you are depending on public sector recruiters to make allowances for the fact that you aren't meeting our requirements (and are therefore the best candidate for the job) simply because you have lived longer than others, you will struggle. But actually about half of our apprentice intake is older workers retraining because the apprentice route is now open to everyone and is specifically designed to be able to support people without the right skills and experiences to gain them, whatever their age.

@Turkeyhen

but just looking at the Op’s CV

So... 20XX to 2010 - Office manager
2010 to 2013 - Career break
2013 to 2015 - Freelance PA
2015 to 2018 - Random gardening job
2018 to 2021 - Secret unsuitable job
2021 - Masters in... mysterious subject

plus only two references, both of which from 10 years ago.

I really don’t think that an employer choosing not to select the Op would have anything to do with her age and everything to do with a very very little to go on

it would be fact that most recent was 2018 to 2021 - Secret unsuitable job
and no reference - that would be the most concerning to me as an employer.

it certainly discounts the public sector immediately as they will ask for that reference and without contact details for the last employer - they won’t progress with the op.