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Job Interviews & Careers vocabulary · Career Development

Career gap

Meaning in job interviews & careers, with examples

nounCommon term

In job interviews & careers, career gap means: A period of time when you were not working, which shows as a gap between jobs on your CV.

In Turkish: kariyer boşluğu, CV'deki boşluk, çalışılmayan dönem

How it is used

Gaps can come from caring for family, illness, study, travel, military service or a long job search. Interviewers may ask 'Can you explain this gap in your CV?', and many people add a short line on the CV saying what they did.

Example sentences

  1. I have a two-year career gap because I was looking after my father.

  2. She explained her career gap as time spent studying for a master's degree.

Common collocations

  • explain a career gap
  • two-year career gap
  • gap in your CV
  • employment gap
  • CVA document that lists your education, work experience and skills, which you send to an employer when you apply for a job. It is short for curriculum vitae.
  • career changeA move from one type of work or profession to a different one, for example from teaching to software development.
  • work experienceThe jobs you have done and what you learned from them; in British English it can also mean a short unpaid placement for school pupils.
  • upskillTo learn new skills or improve the ones you have, often so that you can keep up with changes in your job or industry.

More terms: Career Development

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