[ellen364]

Lots of good advice in this thread. One thing I didn’t see anyone mention is how to explain the gap in your CV. Anecdotally, hiring committees are often sceptical about career gaps. The post says you got out of prison a couple of years ago. That’s recent enough that you probably can’t drop it off the end. (As people tend do for jobs that were decades ago.)

I can think of two broad options.

(1) Leave the gap as a gap. Accept that some companies will filter you out and many will ask about the gap at interview. You could prepare a good way to explain when asked and the story might do you favours. But springing a big surprise in an interview can go poorly.

(2) Include prison as an entry in your CV. Solves the gap problem and the “springing a surprise at interview” problem. Probably increases the “getting filtered out” problem, maybe by a lot. But it might also help you quickly discover which companies are a good fit.

Best of luck.

[dorkwood]

Are gaps really that much of an issue? What about freelancers, for example? Are they filtered out?

[webmaven]

> Are gaps really that much of an issue? What about freelancers, for example? Are they filtered out?

Speaking as someone who alternated between freelancing and full time employment, no.

Simply include the period as another job. You can list the position as 'Freelance Web Developer' or whatever is appropriate, or even 'Sole Proprietor, CompanyName' if you actually used a DBA. Then, as per usual, list notable highlights of problems solved for customers, tech used, responsibilities & regular duties.

It may even be useful to list some accomplishments AS an independent business person (marketing campaigns run to acquire customers, customer growth or churn, NPS, niches identified, MVPs built, subcontractors managed, etc.), for the period, depending on the nature of the position you're applying for.

Lots of companies are pleased to get applicants that have a bigger picture of making a business work, and you might appreciate being able to identify (and eliminate from consideration) the other companies that are just looking for cogs to slot into their machine.

[ellen364]

> What about freelancers, for example?

On the CVs that I’ve seen, freelancers looking for a full-time job tend to put freelancing as a single entry with an overall start and end date.

> Are gaps really that much of an issue?

I don’t remember seeing a CV gap cause big problems for a candidate. But I have seen interview panels ask about the gaps. If a CV is a document designed to show a candidate in a good light, it can be interesting to know what they chose to leave out.

[aix1]

I guess we don't know how long of a gap we're talking about in the OP's case.