Difficult question - how to answer?

Kimia

What do you say when an interviewer asks you why you have been unemployed for so long? Say 6 months or so, how do you possibly answer this?

sunflower27

Hi Kimia,

I'd say 'have you been living on Mars the last two years?'

Seriously, I can't imagine anyone asking that in the current climate, but if it were me (which it probably will be in 3 months), I'd just be honest.

gandalf

Be honest with them but make sure you show them you have been doing something during that time. You should have a pitch practised in case it is asked.

bbam

To be honest it's probably a bigger deal to you that you were off for 6 months or even a year, tell the truth if you've been looking for jobs then that's it.... If you've been taking it easy at home with the kids that's acceptable too... Just don't be negative and say you were doing nothing...
Half a million people are out of work, employers will understand.

Mr. Loverman

Tell them you just got out of prison.

...

The best answer is travelling. You do not want the employer to think other employers do not want to hire you. You need to appear like a good catch.

tenchi-fan

Kimia wrote: »

What do you say when an interviewer asks you why you have been unemployed for so long? Say 6 months or so, how do you possibly answer this?

Look at it this way, you did over 850 hours of jobhunting over a 6 month period. Assuming you were fairly flexible with regards to the location, type of work, pay required and hours available, you should have a job by now. If you were looking for a specific type of job you might be forgiven to some extent.

You'd want to demonstrate that something else occupied your time if it wasn't work: Volunteer work, an evening course, training, travelling or otherwise personal development .

x in the city

yes, but its more difficult to get a job now even if you spent 1,000,000,000 hours looking for one and did 200 interviews. Many employers can pick whoeverthey wish now as they have such a large candidate pool to chose from.

also 60% of advertised jobs are bs or dont exist in the first place.

MASTER...of the bra

Career break for personal reasons?

francie81

Kimia wrote: »

What do you say when an interviewer asks you why you have been unemployed for so long? Say 6 months or so, how do you possibly answer this?

I think this goes with the whole routine of any interview and in the current climate it will hardly go against ya by answering it negatively.

gandalf

Mr. Loverman wrote: »

The best answer is travelling. You do not want the employer to think other employers do not want to hire you. You need to appear like a good catch.

And if they question you on where you travelled? If you say somewhere the interviewers knows the country place and they catch out your deception because they query you. Then you can definitely kiss any chance of being considered goodbye.

MASTER...of the bra wrote: »

Career break for personal reasons?

If I was interviewing that would suggest to me that the person was not able to operate in a working environment, maybe they couldn't handle the stress. It certainly would get me thinking negatively about them.

francie81 wrote: »

I think this goes with the whole routine of any interview and in the current climate it will hardly go against ya by answering it negatively.

This is the key, there are 450,000+ people looking for jobs and employers are acutely aware of how tough it is at the moment and if they hold something like that against you then tbh they are not worth working for anyway. I have been out for six months myself. In that time I have completed a FAS course and I have full details of all the interviews I have done and why I didn't get the positions practised so I can go through them to show I haven't just been sitting on my ass watching day time TV.

Again I would not recommend the OP that you do not lie about what you have done as you will be automatically discounted from any position if they suspect you are spoofing them.