Advice on Emplyment Gap on Resume

[salsill]

Here is the story:

Last year 6/26/2015 I moved from Texas to PA.  I did not look for work as I was dealing with buying a house and the good stuff that comes with moving to another state.  After several months dealing with the move, I started the process to become a US Citizen and enrolled to take the PE Exam in April 2016.  After Christmas and New years festivities, all I did was study for the PE exam and attend the immigration appointments.  Moving forward to May, I Passed the PE exam and received the results 5/19/2016 and officially became a US Citizen 5/20/2016.

Now I am getting ready to apply for jobs and my question is:

How can I explain this gap ( ` 11 months) on my resume? Do I write move to new state, became a US citizen, and Passed the PE.  Or just focus the gap on passing the PE exam?

Thanks,

Luis

 

[jijir83]

I've been there. I had 8 months gap before I started applying. I did volunteer work though as a tutor at a local school and ran a non-profit i started. The career coach I had told me to have those summarized in an addendum rather than an employment line. It filled and explained the gap. If you had any volunteer experience that still plays on your engineering strengths then don't neglect those. It could be that you helped people with designs or tutoring etc... My resume and linkedin had those. In addition she had me list year ranges of my experience rather than month and year. I suppose you could list 2012-2015 with your last job and 2015-2016 with PE achievement. It will look pretty bare though. I would personally have that and citizenship in the intro/profile along with opportunity you're looking for. I've been getting an annoying amount of calls from employers and recruiters. My guess is the market has picked up and a less than a year gap will hardly be questioned.

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