You Have a Gap on Your Resume.
Here’s How to Think About It.

A career gap at the executive level is not the liability most people fear it is. I’ve been writing C-suite resumes for over 15 years and I can count on one hand the number of clients whose gap actually cost them the role they wanted. What costs executives the role is almost never the gap — it’s how they handle it.

There are two mistakes. The first is trying to hide it. The second is over-explaining it. Both signal the same thing to an experienced reader: this person is uncomfortable with this period of their career, which means I should be too.

What Kind of Gap Is It?

Not all gaps are the same and they don’t all need the same approach. The broad categories:

How to Handle It on the Resume

Be honest and be brief. A gap doesn’t require a paragraph of explanation — it requires an honest label if it’s going to come up in conversation, and a confident framing when it does.

For a voluntary departure: “Sabbatical — personal development and board advisory work” is cleaner than a blank space and more honest than stretching dates. For a transition period: just let the dates speak. Recruiters see thousands of resumes — they notice disguised gaps. For restructuring: “Position eliminated following acquisition” is factual, specific, and removes all ambiguity.

How to Handle It in Conversation

State it directly. Don’t build up to it. Don’t apologise for it. Say what happened in one or two sentences, then immediately pivot to what you did with the time and where you are now.

The ones who handle it poorly are the ones who rehearse the explanation so many times it starts to sound like a script, which makes a skilled interviewer more curious, not less. Forty words said plainly is almost always more persuasive than four hundred words said carefully.