6 Ways to Handle Employment Gaps on Your Resume

6 Ways to Handle Employment Gaps on Your Resume Have you had to bounce around a bit? Worried your recent job history will appear a bit erratic to potential employers? Though job hopping is becoming less and less stigmatized, and more and more employers and recruiters will be sensitive to the particular challenges of the marketplace and the current economy, there are still some situations wherein it’s best to downplay all your job activity. Here are 6  ways to minimize the damage of having employment gaps on your resume1. SummarizeIf you don’t already have a summary paragraph at the top of your resume, now’s the time to add one. Use it to define yourself, and then to guide the recruiter through the bullet points and information she’s about to take in. Use it to show how best to interpret your multiple recent job changes, and what narrative to take away from that. If you give a recruiter a greater narrative, that should stick with them. And, if you’re worried that recruiters might think youâ€⠄¢d be a flight risk? Emphasize in your summary that you are looking for a long-term position, or to be somewhere for the long haul. Get out in front of the story, as they say in the media.2. FocusOn three or four of your recent jobs and flesh them out in more detail than you normally would. Then make a more summarized section on previous employment, including multiple jobs within those dates, to minimize the feeling of having hopped around from job to job during that time.3. Find coherenceIf you can find a through-line to connect all of your hopping, then you’re golden. Perhaps these were all positions within the same field, or in hopes of rocketing up the ladder, or learning new skills. Or if you’ve hopped from industry to industry, emphasize instead the work you do, and how you’ve been trying to hone in on the perfect niche for it. Make your job hopping an asset by making it tell a story.4. Be honestIf you were laid off as the result of a merger or acquisitio n, or you were a contract worker, then some of your hopping was not at all your fault. It is totally okay to explain this on your resume. A quick parenthetical (formerly X Company) next to the company name will be a good start. Your summary paragraph will also help here.5. Fudge the monthsIf you can get away with taking out the months in your dates, and just leaving the years, then you can give the illusion of having worked at a place longer than you did. Using years only helps you to smooth over short-term gigs. You can also put the dates to the right of the job headings, rather than the left, to deemphasize them.6. Try a hybridIf all else fails, the hybrid resume might be for you. This is a new way of thinking about the resume, emphasizing your skills first, and your bulleted, chronological history second. Choose four to five responsibilities or skills or job facets that you’ve excelled in, across all of your jobs, and sell yourself as a primo candidate. By the time the hir ing manager gets to the second page with your list of actual job experience, she’ll already be convinced you can do the job.

Classic education and universities. A road to survival

Classic education and universities. A road to survival Is traditional university losing its grip? The idea of a research university became obvious when Prussian college professor, Wilhelm von Humboldt, proposed a new system, which had to deal with student’s personal experience rather than boring lectures. In the meantime, empirical learning grew to be popular among his younger colleagues, causing Humboldt to expand his strategy and place all his hopes and dreams on the role of research in an institution. Instead of usual academic writing, students were given the task to develop their own approach to educational methods and choose what’s best for them, based on the system of simple observation. Individual projects were presented weekly, and Humboldt could witness an increasing progress in the student’s thinking. Apart from that, he revolutionized the understanding of a university as a public institution. Before that, teachers were mainly focused on the works of ancient authors and considered tradition to be the best learning method and source. Copying the canon was a usual practice, and students summarized what was previously said with the help of their professors. Nothing was left to the learners and their experimental values. Later, in the 1950s, universities in the UK and North America were largely influenced by the teaching models, borrowed from Humboldt. Research centers opened across the country, and students flooded colleges to establish their own projects and become educated academically. With the enhancement of the typical teaching-only model of learning, though, these tendencies vanished into thin air, and lecture theatres became popular once again. There are institutions where face-to-face delivery still remains the norm, while other forms of interaction between a teacher and a student are considered to be ineffective, but generally, online communication wins the hearts of students as the time goes. Campus-less establishments So, what do all these tendencies mean at the end of the day? Will classic universities close and give way to a more modernized system of education, involving online delivery and campus-less teaching? We cannot say for sure, but there have been numerous expressions of gratitude from students, who had an experience in online learning. They were allowed to equal educational facilities and high class diplomas, whereas in other cases the tuition fees would be too unaffordable to handle. Some teachers claim, however, that you should pay your price for using online resources and neglecting the traditional, overcrowded lecture room. With the development of digital learning, we start to forget the empirical experience seminars provides on a daily basis, and regular news updates keep us away from vital information, necessary for successful learning. In the meantime, blog writers and students, who are too focused on using apps for their classes instead of actual listening, are in great danger. They may lose their connection with reality and an ability to evaluate material, based on the source and structure. This is a tendency that is not uncommon among younger learners with their dedication to tweeting and scrolling through the news on Facebook. One may wonder whether the same students will comprehend given information and analyze it according to the teacher’s learning scheme. Unfortunately, most of them have a short attention span, which does not help in case one needs to use a clear and focused approach. Tweeting a sentence differs greatly from making notes on your own, and teacher-student communication cannot be replaced by online resources, no matter how good or mind-blowing the strategy is. The truth about colleges and universities remains the same these days: you have to combine online communication with the real one, and develop a strong sense of academic-led dialogue, where digital sources act as background information. The main values of the traditional institutions have not changed, and we cherish research and analytical thinking as core principles of learning in college.