Hi chapo, How the fuck do you find work when you have major gaps in your resume?
Short story: I went through a long fucked up period dealing with addiction and mental health issues. I'm fairly okay now mentally/psychically. But I'm having a real hard time finding work. Last time I had a "real" job was over five years ago, also around the time I graduated college. But I have nothing to put on my resume since then. I have zero networking connects, no one to put as a reference.
I need a job real bad but I don't know what to do. With no experience and no connects I feel like no one wants to hire me, but I can't fulfill those requirements without finding work that I can't get. I fucking hate it.
I'm also dogshit at doing interviews and I don't know how to explain long work absences without freaking out employers. What can I do?
P.S. I don't wanna say where I live for privacy reasons but I do not live in America.
I was in a similar boat until this year and just want to send some hope your way and encourage you not to fret too much. I thought my employment gaps and lack of long-term job commitment made me unemployable, especially at this point in my life age-wise. I thought I'd be stuck doing gig work until I decided to end it all one day.
Eventually I decided to set my sights on an area that I'm passionate about and hammer away applying for positions where my past experience was relevant, deciding that I'd not fret about gaps and interview questions until when and if they came up. Well, those worries that I was convinced had doomed me never manifested. Nobody gave a shit. It only indirectly came up and I brushed it off with an aborted grad school attempt that also nobody gave a shit about. I think presenting my gig work in a professional-sounding manner (as self-employment) went a long way. They assumed I ran my own business and I was happy to go along with that. Self-employment can be a great cover and it's more common than ever, so don't be afraid to get creative.
To my knowledge, none of my work history was verified. There was only a criminal background check, which I also feared would doom me over something minor. I expected them to scrutinize the hell out of me given the nature of the work, but nobody gave a shit about any of it. I went from a very dark place to an amazing job just by applying for the right job at the right time, and none of the stressors that held me back ever manifested.
That said, I put a lot of effort into polishing my resume and made many revisions over time. I created a brief, two-paragraph cover letter format that I could easily customize for every job I applied for. That made applications a breeze and removed much of the stress. I spent two nights going over the 50 most common interview questions and made sure I had solid answers for all of them, which wasn't always easy. Only a couple came up, but it was worth taking that time to practice and help get into the right mindset. Keep putting in the effort, keep your head up, and you'll get through it. All the best.