[TL;DR: What is the best practice of handling employment gap (of 1 year) in the resumé?]
Dear Community,
I am preparing my resumé for MBB applications and I came across a challenge: I have a 1-year gap in my employment from 2 years ago (so in sequence, it is: X years of employment with employer ‘A’ >>> Carrer gap of 1 year >>> 2 years of employment with Employer ‘B’ >>> Today).
Even though the second half of that one year is justified by the resumé with starting my Masters studies (i.e. I wanted to give a headstart of my studies with no work in parallel), one can only notice that upon careful review of my resumé and connecting the dots between my ‘Experience’ and ‘Education’ sections. In addition, the first half of that one year is not justified by my resumé - I was not employed, nor was studying during those ~6 months.
Q1) In your observation, should I proactively include that gap between my two employment periods and mention ‘Career gap’, and only clarify when asked on the interview, or should I just leave it as is, and clarify when asked on the interview?
Q2) Should I volunteer additional information on my resumé? (The reason behind that gap: having resigned at employer ‘A’, I deliberately took some months off to prepare myself to be able to get into management consulting, as I was working in a completely different field before. It actually took me months to get an offer, and even with that offer, I could only start working almost half a year later - so we could see that 1 year as the price I paid for getting into a Tier-2 management consulting firm (from where I now want to step up to MBB).
Q3) Could the gap appearing in my CV reduce my chances of being invited to the first step of the application process?
Many thanks for your input in advance, and sorry for the long post!