Today, we're going to explain that gap in your programming resume. Before we get started, like, subscribe, leave a comment down below and it all helps with the YouTube algorithm. So let's say you have a gap in your resume and it's more than three months long. Now this isn't as big of a deal as people think. A lot of people have a resume break when they decide to have kids. And I'm not going to hold that against you. But the other kind of gap happens when someone loses a job and because they're over specialized or unqualified or just get discouraged, they just can't find a new one. And you see this a lot with new graduates too, where they have a computer science degree, but they didn't really do any projects and didn't have any internships that could help land themselves a job. Most of the time, you should just tell the truth about a gap in your resume, especially if it involves a major change in your life situation. So I've dealt with this personally. I actually have four gaps in my resume and all of them were deployments when I was with the Army National Guard when America was fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So typically when someone asked me, I answered like this. Oh, so Iraq after America's strong and by some injustice! Okay, so maybe I don't answer them exactly like that. But the whole point here is that there are valid reasons why you might have a gap in your resume. Some others might include, well, I ain't taking FMLA for the birth of my first child. And I have enough money saved up that I could basically do a whole year on my savings. And I decided to stay home and be with my child for the first year and it was very rewarding. Or, who my father was at the end of his life and he needed a caregiver. And I spent the last year of his life caring for him and telling him his needs until he passed away. And I thought that was very rewarding for me to be there for him when he's always been there for me. Or, hey, you know, one of my buddies was in Vegas. He was getting married and the forecast they're called for snow, if you know what I mean. So I headed out there for a little ski trip. I was driving a car, got pulled over. There's some drugs in the car. I ended up doing 30 days in jail, $10,000 fine. Loss my job. But I'll tell you one thing. I learned my lesson from that. I don't even use a Ray List anymore. I've gone completely clean. And I consider that a learning experience in my life. Now, when it comes to verifying employment history, most employers will only give out your dates of employment and your title. And that's it. So the only person who can admit that they were fired because they were in jail is you. But any kind of legal conviction is going to show up on a criminal background check. So it's best just to admit that to an employer face to face, show contrition and show that you've learned something. But what if you're one of those guys who lost a job and your gap just kind of grew and maybe you had a string of bad luck interviewing, maybe you got depressed and just stop looking. Well, this answer. Yeah, during that time, I just couldn't find anything. I just live it off on employment. I beat 7.27. No. Yeah. Is not the right answer. Don't say that. And you might be tempted to say, yeah, COVID. Yeah, it just couldn't. Can't buy it. Yeah. Now, I might believe this if you were super specialized like you were a SharePoint developer, a service now developer, a newsroom kind of IBM mainframe language. But if you're a C sharp or Java developer and could you credit operations and SQL, I don't know if I'm going to buy that story. So how should the answer this question about a resume gap? Well, I like to use the acronym, Tpie. This stands for trading, entrepreneurship, passion project, illness and education. Now, the whole point of this is not to lie. The point is to get close enough to the truth of your situation that you can explain a gap in your resume. So T stands for trading as in trading stocks or maybe you were trading collectibles or shoes on eBay. I spent that six month gap day trading. I've been investing ever since I was in college and I decided I was going to try to go into business for myself just strictly day trading. And I did okay. I made enough money to cover rent and food. But every day it was like walking tightrope. So I decided to go back to work. So this is totally reasonable and understandable, especially during the Robin Hood craze and especially if you know a little bit about stocks and can talk about it. East answer entrepreneurship as in you are helping a friend start a business or maybe you started your own business. Well, ever since my brother and I were kids, we had always talked about opening up the skateboard shop and my brother had the money, but he just didn't have anyone to work the store for. So I decided to take off. I took off for six months and I did the whole build out of the store where all the inventory I set up the initial hiring to the point of sale system. And now that you know, once we're at the point where we had business and we we could find someone to manage the store for us. I went back to work and he took over the store. I still work there weekends, but one of the things I discovered is that I like skateboarding, but I love programming. And that's why I went back to writing software. Now this shows that you have skills that may go beyond programming. Now one thing, if you did freelancing, feel free to mention freelancing. But if you didn't do freelancing, don't lie about it because someone's going to ask you for a portfolio of work. Now, peace stands for passion project. This should be one of those projects that you need a time to take off of work in order to complete. Could be building a house or hiking the Appalachian Trail. One morning, if you had a political passion project, like you were trying to help someone get elected, I don't know if I would mention that during an interview. That's one of those things where 50% of the people you talk to might be on the opposite side of the political spectrum. So you might want to leave that out. Instead, say something like this. My dad had a 78 barracuda and he had just retired. And I spent those nine months working with him in the garage fixing up that 78 barracuda. And I have some really great memories of that time with my dad. Or I spent that time training for an Iron Man Triathlon. I got let go and I had a little bit of money saved up and I realized like if there was any time to do a full Iron Man Triathlon, that's 140 miles, that was the time to do it. So I got to work training and I ended up doing Iron Man and Kona. And it was probably the highlight of my life. Or maybe, let's see, I've been laid off in March of that year. I was right before the start of baseball season. I had a little bit of money saved up and I decided that this was a once in a lifetime experience. I was going to try to go to a major league baseball game at every single bar ballpark in the US. So I've been to 17 states that have ballpark. I've been to all 30 ball parks. I've been to multiple games. And I've actually visited every single state except for Alaska and Hawaii. You know, on my road trip to go to all these ball parks. It was a it was a once in a lifetime experience. So this shows you had a passion about something and that you took time off and work to follow it. It might even lead to more interesting stories that you and your recruiter could talk about. Now the eye stands for illness. This is a pretty easy one. I had a family member fall ill and I was a primary caregiver. Eventually, we found a full time caregiver and I was able to go back to work. It's a simple explanation that a lot of people understand because who hasn't had to take care of an injured or ill family member. And most people won't press for specifics on the illness or injury. The last E is for education. Well, my previous company was mostly a VB6 on wind forms. And so when I got like, I had a little bit of a severance and I decided to use that time going to a C sharp. And Azure boot camp so I could get into the Azure and cloud space. Or maybe that break was when I got my master's degree. I just I couldn't go to school and work at the same time. So I just decided to concentrate everything on finishing my master's. Now one more thing. A lot of these reasons come attached with the fact that you had a little bit of money saved up. And you do have some money saved up, right? Right. If you haven't already done so, please take a look at my video on seven financial moves for new developers. It has a lot of information I wish I had when I just started out programming. And it'll be available at the end of this video. So the Tpie method gives you five reasonable and understandable explanations as to why you had a gap in your resume. Find one of those methods that fits similar to your situation. Practice it a couple of times in the mirror on a webcam and good luck on your next interview. So there I was. I was pinned down down to my last round of ammunition up to my knees and hand grenade pins in my bay and it was bent. And I said to myself. Self here in the world I heard. And so I reached into my left. As you were I reached into my right cargo pocket and I pulled out an MRE bomb that I had made with an MRE heater and a Gatorade bottle. The moral of that story is never give up. Never ever give up. Thank you.