Plugging that CV gap - the right words?

bernieuk

Good morning all

It is coming up to my first anniversary of being out of work! My chosen work area is IT/Desktop support. Like most people in my position I have made 100s of applications but not having any luck.

I am sure that the one year gap in my CV could be an issue.

Can anyone offer any advice on what to write? I am trying to state something on the lines of "keeping abreast of current technology/trends" or "taking/studying new.....".

I cannot seem to find the right words to make a creditable or worthy statement.

Any advice would be certainly appreciated.

Mista_C

What have you been doing for the past year? (I don't expect an answer to this). Make a rough list of things you have been doing and what has been involved. See if there's a way of wording it to fit your CV.

Most employers know how the market has been in recent years and I imagine there's going to be a lot of people with a lost year. The trick is to make it look as though you've made better use of that year than the next guy has.

Make a point that while looking for work you've been keeping up-to-date on your skillset and even employing some of the newer technologies to help you in your job search. Just make sure you have been though in case they start asking questions on some of it.

Any employer with a bit of common sense has to expect that, in the current climate, there are more job seekers than jobs. Some of those job seekers are going to have come to them via redundancy, it's a fact of life.

TrickyWicky

I gave up on IT years ago. Unless you're super duperly qualified the IT market is saturated with people and even 1st line jobs are getting degree candidates applying for them. My last IT interview was a for a council (equal opps etc) so I knew I'd stand half a chance if I applied. I had to do a presentation on why they should give me an interview (IT employers = stuck up) and got through that with flying colours they seemed to love it.

Went for the actual interview to find out we'd have 3 written tests, an interview, group activity etc.. then found out that along with our group of 5 there were also another 4 groups of 5 being interviewed - for 4 positions and 2 of the blokes in my group had a degree in IT. I wasted £40 in petrol for that application and got rejected 2 days later. I learned a lot from that - my chances were zero with an equal opportunities employer so they'll be even less in the private sector.

Pupnik

Agreed with Mista_C, in this economy it is not unusual for people to have large gaps.

I would just give a brief idea of what you have been doing, preferably related to your area of interest (eg building PCs, fixing other people's, learning new technology etc) but personally I'd probably put it in the covering letter rather than part of the CV, unless you have a little 'profile' section at the top.

Mista_C

TrickyWicky wrote: »

I gave up on IT years ago. Unless you're super duperly qualified the IT market is saturated with people and even 1st line jobs are getting degree candidates applying for them. My last IT interview was a for a council (equal opps etc) so I knew I'd stand half a chance if I applied. I had to do a presentation on why they should give me an interview (IT employers = stuck up) and got through that with flying colours they seemed to love it.

Went for the actual interview to find out we'd have 3 written tests, an interview, group activity etc.. then found out that along with our group of 5 there were also another 4 groups of 5 being interviewed - for 4 positions and 2 of the blokes in my group had a degree in IT. I wasted £40 in petrol for that application and got rejected 2 days later. I learned a lot from that - my chances were zero with an equal opportunities employer so they'll be even less in the private sector.

The Y2K bug curse? Prior to that IT was a good line of work to get into. Then the government decided they needed to train an army of tech drones to combat the Y2K bug and the market became swamped. I'm a computer engineer, used to build and repair motherboards for IBM. Best I could do after 2000 was card-swapping for public sector. To be fair there's not much use for component level computer engineering in Birmingham.

Roll on the Y2K36 bug

bluesnake

Bernie in that year I would hope you have done some certs including ITIL, windows and SCCM. Many of the newbies that know nothing, have already some of these and they are your compitition.

The problem with IT is finding and exploiting a useful niche market, and always chasing after certs. As one gets older, management is often the easiest way to go as often the new stuff can't be learned or retained as fast as younger people.

London seems to be the best place to find a job, but you must have the right skills. Saying that I hear Australia is very short of IT staff.

Years ago we had an contract IT Architect that did a 6 months world tour, came back to find out the market had bottomed. His answer was to upskill and he got his CISSP, then after 1 job could not find another again, so was doing Prince exams. I have not seen him for over a year.

Unfortunately desktop and helpdesk skills are often seen as quite low down the skill level. Our technical specialist contractors get paid around £400 to £500 a day these include exchange, vmware and CCIP

I personally feel lines using lines like "keeping abreast of current technology/trends" or "taking/studying new....." or "studying towards ..." insults the reader, as the lines have such a bad rep.

Keep resubmitting your cv to Jobserve at regular intervals.

TrickyWicky

Mista_C wrote: »

Roll on the Y2K36 bug

Won't exist once the majority of OS's are 64bit as thats a 32 bit limitation :mad:

bluesnake

TrickyWicky wrote: »

I gave up on IT years ago. Unless you're super duperly qualified the IT market is saturated with people and even 1st line jobs are getting degree candidates applying for them. My last IT interview was a for a council (equal opps etc) so I knew I'd stand half a chance if I applied. I had to do a presentation on why they should give me an interview (IT employers = stuck up) and got through that with flying colours they seemed to love it.

Went for the actual interview to find out we'd have 3 written tests, an interview, group activity etc.. then found out that along with our group of 5 there were also another 4 groups of 5 being interviewed - for 4 positions and 2 of the blokes in my group had a degree in IT. I wasted £40 in petrol for that application and got rejected 2 days later. I learned a lot from that - my chances were zero with an equal opportunities employer so they'll be even less in the private sector.

Quite a few companies are 'going to asia' to recruit temp staff for a year. They can get staff with a degree, with three or four qualifications like windows, vcp, ccnp and netapp, pay the person the same as a single speciality. If the staff do not do as they are told, then they can be put back home, also they can not leave, in effect creating a technical sweat shop.

Mista_C

TrickyWicky wrote: »

Won't exist once the majority of OS's are 64bit as thats a 32 bit limitation :mad:

:shhh: shhh we want people to start panic employing IT professionals ready for the endless worldwide disasters that will occur because of it... like with the Y2K bug.

Mistral001

bernieuk wrote: »

Good morning all

Like most people in my position I have made 100s of applications but not having any luck.

"Most" people do not make 100's of applications. Some people do.

Edit: but it is not the OP's fault for thinking that it is most people. Journalists tend to be a bit lazy and home in on the people who have applied for 100's of jobs afterall nobody wants to hear about the guy who applied for 6 jobs before he was sucessful.

paddyrg

IIRC 2036 is the Unix date horizon, so any patches will be somewhat specialist ;-)

I would look at using service delivery experience in management/business as opposed to trying to learn the current syntax-de-jour on the front line. But if you are front-line then go to temp agencies asking for any odd weeks they have, a few weeks of temping makes a 1 year gap seem less relevant if you are back working already!