Career Break on Your CV: A Complete Guide
Taking a career break is nothing new or unusual. Whether voluntary or enforced, many people will experience a break from full-time work at some point in their career. It’s important to know how to handle a career break on your CV, so you don’t harm your chances of job application success. In this article, we’ll discuss how to approach career breaks in your CV for the best possible outcomes in your job search.
Do You Have to Include a Career Break in Your CV?
The simple answer to whether you need to include career breaks in your CV, is no. It’s not essential to declare any and every break you take from full-time employment.
However, don’t leave your career breaks off your CV for fear that they might negatively affect your chances. Hiding your career breaks from employers is probably more likely to do more damage than being up front and honest about your time off. Employers tend to scrutinise gaps in CVs, and if there’s an unexplained gap in your career timeline, this could raise more questions than answers. As a general rule, being clear and honest about your career journey is more productive than lying, obscuring the truth or exaggerating the facts.
Explaining your career gaps on your CV, or in your cover letter, will give you an opportunity to control the narrative. You can explain why you took time away from work, and how you used that time to be productive and gain skills that can actually make you more employable. This reduces the chances of employers making their own assumptions about any gaps in your CV.
Significant gaps in your employment history might have more impact on your CV if you’re at an earlier stage in your career. As your working life progresses, it becomes more normal to take breaks from work, either for parental leave, to act as a caregiver or simply to take a sabbatical to recharge and pursue other passions, such as travelling.
How to Mention a Career Break in Your CV
When mentioning career breaks in your CV, it’s important to highlight them clearly, but without drawing too much attention away from your main career achievements. You’ll want to be honest about the break and your reasons for taking it. But you may also like to explain how you used your time off productively, to gain greater life experience and learn new transferable skills.
Where to mention your career break
The most natural place to mention your career break is in your work experience section. When you’ve taken a break between jobs, this can have its own brief entry in your work experience section.
If you’re on a career break now and looking to return to work, you might wish to briefly reference your
career break in your CV summary. If your career break was a planned experience, such as to travel or re-train, you could even mention your career break in your additional information or in the personal information on your CV. Finally, if you feel the need to add greater detail around your career break, you could also address it in your cover letter.
What to mention about your career break
When mentioning any significant career breaks between jobs, there are a few details to include. Add your reasons for taking the break, the dates you were away from work and any useful skills or experience gained during the break.
The amount of detail you include will depend on how much you want to draw attention to the break and any benefits you took from it. If, for example, you were made redundant from a previous job and spent a period of time searching for your next role, you might prefer to mention this briefly. If, however, you took a planned career break to re-train, travel or dedicate some time to another activity that’s important to you, you might want to add a little more detail.
When not to mention your career break
There may be some times when it’s not important to mention your career break on your CV. If you took a brief break before returning to the same job, you may not even need to mention it, or you could just briefly mention it in the entry for that job in your work experience section. If you’re wondering how far back should a CV go when mentioning career breaks, any break in your career more than a decade ago is probably not worth mentioning. The potential negative effects of missing time away from the workforce will be negated by the length of time that’s passed.
Examples of How to Mention Career Break in Your CV
Take a look at these examples of how to mention a career break in your CV. Each of these examples would sit in the work experience section of your CV, except for the final example, which is for a CV summary:
Career break to re-train in a new discipline or profession:
Career break to re-train, February 2024 - present
- Enrolled in a 12-month City & Guilds Painting and Decorating qualification.
- Volunteered as a facilities assistant at a local community centre, completing handyman jobs, basic repairs and decorating.
Parental career break:
Parental leave, October 2018 - April 2019
- Assumed primary care responsibility for my six-month-old child, enabling my spouse to return to work.
- Organised a weekly parenting group for stay-at-home fathers.
Career break to care for a family member:
Family leave, March 2022 - January 2023
- Provided daily care support to my mother while she recovered from major surgery, carrying out everyday tasks such as shopping, cleaning and home admin.
Career break for travelling:
Sabbatical, June 2018 - February 2019
- Fulfilled a long-standing ambition to travel the length of South America, immersing myself in local culture and becoming proficient in Spanish.
- Attended galleries, exhibitions and cultural and culinary festivals to broaden my understanding of Latin American culture.
Mentioning a career break in your CV summary:
An experienced, knowledgeable sales manager with a track record of increasing sales and motivating teams to improve productivity levels. Looking to re-join the workforce after a year out to care for elderly parents. Seeking a new challenge that will offer the opportunity to build a healthy, thriving, competitive sales team.
Expert tip:
Career breaks may appear more significant on a CV for junior or mid-level candidates than they do for senior, experienced candidates. As such, if you’re applying for junior or mid-level roles, you might wish to add greater detail about how you stayed productive, relevant and connected to the world of work during your time away from the workforce.
Valuable Experiences and Skills During A Career Break
Taking a break from your career isn’t necessarily a negative step on your journey. It’s possible to develop skills that can actually make you more employable. In fact, you might even have planned to take a break so you can pursue some other interests or learn a new skill. Here are some valuable experiences and skills you could gain from a career break and reference on your CV:
Professional development
If you took any training courses or certifications during your time away from work, be sure to mention these on your CV. These could either represent a permanent change in your career direction, or simply an attempt to proactively add skills that might be useful for your job prospects.
Volunteer opportunities
If you filled your time away from work with volunteering roles, these can be really beneficial to your CV. Think about how volunteering helped you to develop and use valuable skills that you could apply to your next role.
Transferable skills
Certain life experiences that you might encounter on a career break, such as raising children or caring for older family members, can help to build transferable skills that you can put to use in your career. Skills you might develop through a caring or parental role include flexibility, adaptability, multitasking, organisation and problem-solving.
Languages
Learning new languages is one of the potential advantages of travelling during a gap year or career sabbatical. Foreign languages can be valuable in various roles and industries.
“When mentioning career breaks in your CV, it’s important to highlight them clearly, but without drawing too much attention away from your main career achievements.”
Tips for Including a Career Break on Your CV
Follow these quick tips for listing a career break on your CV:
- Be honest about your career break, the dates you’ve been away from work and your reasons for taking a break.
- Include your career break in your work experience section, in chronological order with your employment history.
- Add brief details that explain your activities while you were taking a break.
- Review the job description for any skills and experience you can link to your career break.
- If necessary, use your cover letter to offer further explanation of your career break.
- Be prepared to discuss your career break at a job interview, and add a positive spin that encourages the employer about your credentials and suitability.
Key Takeaways for Mentioning a Career Break on Your CV
Mentioning a career break on your CV isn’t necessarily a negative move. Career breaks are common, and they can even help you to develop valuable new skills and experience. Be honest about your career break and add details to show the employer the positive side of your time away from work. Be sure to present your career break concisely, within a professionally formatted CV. CVwizard has a wealth of stylish CV templates to help you organise your CV in a clear, professional format. Sign up today and find CV examples, tools, articles and plenty of other useful resources for your job search.
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