The gap is a fact. The explanation is yours to write.
Add each period you were not employed, say what you did with it, and get three honest ways to put it — a resume line, a cover-letter paragraph and an interview answer. It invents nothing you did not type.
Add your gaps.
One period at a time. Say what you did with it in your own words — that is the only material the explanations are made from, so a line you would not say out loud should not go in.
One or two sentences, in the first person. A course, a project, a responsibility, a recovery — whatever is true.
Your gaps
0 added
Nothing added yet. Add a period above, or load the example.
Nothing to write yet
Add at least one period, then press Write the explanations. Each gap gets its own three, and a set of them gets a summary line.
Why one sentence, said first.
A gap that is not explained gets explained for you, and the explanation a stranger reaches for is never the kind one. One sentence, in the same words everywhere, takes that away from them.
The reader wants the shape
How long, roughly why, and what you were doing. Not the story. A reader who gets the shape in one line moves on; one who does not will keep wondering through the rest of the page.
Say it before they ask
On the resume, in the letter, and in the first minute of an interview if the gap is recent. An explanation that arrives only when asked sounds like something you hoped to avoid.
Same words, every time
Three surfaces, one account of what happened. Three slightly different versions is the thing an interviewer notices, and it is the only version of a gap that reads badly.
Six reasons, all fine to say.
Every one of these is ordinary. The line to use gives the shape; the line to avoid gives too much, too little, or an apology nobody asked for.
Caring for someone
Use: I took time out to care for a family member.
Avoid: A paragraph about the illness. The reader needs the shape, not the medical history.
Health
Use: I took time out for a health matter, which is resolved.
Avoid: Diagnoses, treatments, or any sentence that sounds like a warning about the future.
Study or retraining
Use: I spent the period retraining, and finished with [what you finished with].
Avoid: "I was studying" with no object. Name the course, the certificate, or the thing you built.
Redundancy, or the company closed
Use: My role was made redundant when [the company] closed the team; I used the time to [what you did].
Avoid: Blaming the company at length. One clause is enough, and it is not really about you.
Travel, or a move
Use: I relocated to [place] and took [months] to settle before looking for the right role.
Avoid: "I travelled". Say where, and say what you did with the time, or it reads as a holiday.
A break I chose
Use: I took a planned break after [years] years in [field], and came back to it deliberately.
Avoid: Apologising for it. A chosen break, said plainly, is the least remarkable sentence on the page.
What it will not do.
Hide the gap
A countersigned record carries the company's dates, not yours, and the space between two of them is visible to anyone reading it. That is exactly why the sentence beside it matters.
Invent a reason
The six reasons set a sentence shape. Everything inside the shape is what you typed, and a blank field stays blank rather than being filled with something plausible.
Stretch the dates
Months are rounded to months, never nudged. A gap of fourteen months is described as over a year, because that is what it was.
Questions.
How long does a gap have to be before it needs explaining?
About three months. Shorter than that reads as the ordinary time between two jobs and a sentence would draw attention to nothing. Longer, and the reader has already noticed.
Does the reason belong on the resume itself?
A single line in the place the job would have been — the dates, the shape, what you did. The detail belongs in the letter and the interview, where there is room for it and somebody to hear it.
What if the reason is private?
Then say that it was, and that it is resolved. "Personal reasons, now resolved" is a complete and honest sentence, and a reader who pushes past it has told you something about the company.
Does ClearHire show my gaps to anyone?
It shows the roles a company countersigned, with the company's dates. It draws no line between them, adds no label, and never calls anything a gap. What you write here is yours to put on a resume or not; nothing from this page is on your profile.
Keep going.
The STAR method
When the gap question comes up, this is the shape of the answer that follows it.
Your employment record
The dates either side of a gap, confirmed by the companies that set them.