I used to answer this question talking about myself but then someone advised me to actually talk about my work history. I've talked about my work history since and my interviews have gone a lot smoother.
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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Potentially you could say that you were investigating re-training and doing Udemy courses if you wanted to make it sound like you were not just sitting on your hands in the employment gap.
To be honest, as someone who has been sitting on the other side of the desk doing a lot of interviews on behalf of my company recently, I don't really pry into the employment gaps. A lot of people put on their CV that they were focusing on their family commitments during the gap and there's no real reason to question it. Employers are interested on the relevant experience that the candidate has over their entire career as opposed to just the last position they held.
I'd recommend looking on YouTube, "Life After Layoff" has some good interview advice. There's many more, but that's the one I remember right now.
Generally, the response should be related to you're "professional life", not your private one. They don't care that you have 6 brothers and sisters and like to hike - your looking for a job, not a date. If your job happened to be for a national park baby sitting children, then your personal life just became much more relevant.
This question can be used to naturally lead into the "where do you see your self in 5 years" question, by talking about some of your career goals (if relevenat). Let's say your goal is to be a park ranger, and the job your appling is to go around the park cleaning up - that's a reasonable jump. If your planning to leave the job after a bit, don't tell them anything to make it obvious.
If you can bring relevant past expirances of things you did (not just job title) into the conversation that's good. Maybe you used to work at the local park keeping it clean from the local teens, advocated for trashbins to be installed and you want to continue taking care of nature on a larger scale.
Obviously those examples are completely made up, but including expirances to your responces can make a huge difference.
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