Why YSK: Interviewers like to weed out people who have gaps in their employment history for myriad nonsensical reasons. If you remember that this is all just a game to the employer, you can play to win.
Fill the gaps with a story about a failed foray into entrepreneurship in a related field.
I had a massive gap and this worked gangbusters after six months of constant rejection. The gap was caused by my mother's health rapidly deteriorating, and my sense of responsibility to care for her - which became a full time job until she passed.
After that, I went through the dehumanizing experience of dozens of interviews where I was asked about the gap. Describing why I took the time out of the workforce was hard enough - adding insult to injury was the homogenous reactions among all interviewers. You could watch them mentally write me off in real time, and then go through the motions before sending me off to wait for a "the organization has interviewed several great candidates" email.
It occurred to me that instead of baring my pain for callous interviewers, what they'd rather hear about was a "go-getter" whose spirit has been broken enough to come crawling back to the rat race. So I concocted a story about a failed attempt at being an entrepreneur in their industry.
Lo, and behold - After I stopped telling the truth and started telling people about Vandelay Industries` mighty struggle to remain solvent due to market forces, I found myself with three offers in the same number of weeks.
The difference in interviewers` whole demeanor between "took care of dying mother," and "had to see if I could get Vandelay Industries off the ground while I was young enough to be able to recover from a failure" was night and day.
Read about failed startups. Rehearse.
Everybody lies in the corpo-world. Lie better.
Wow, that's fucked. Not that you're recommending this, but that it's necessary at all.
Generally speaking, HR/talent acquisition teams have very little accountability with regards to their processes and treatment of candidates. Usually most candidates have very little recourse to provide feedback on the process, and HR/talent acquisition have very little interest in speaking with candidates about the process for improvement.
What ultimately happens therefore is candidates tell HR/talent acquisition what the latter wants to hear, and the latter group of people don't usually have the cognizance to realize that their own biases and perceptions cloud their process.
It's "necessary" in so far as the entire system is corrupted to the core. That's why knowing someone is so much more powerful -- knowing someone skips a lot of this process.