Job interview tip I got from a tiktok but it’s genius:
If you were unemployed for a while, they’re going to ask if you can explain the gap in your resume. Unless you were actually doing something cool & relevant, this is hard to answer in a way that makes you sound like a good corporate cog. So here’s the best and infallible answer -
No you cannot, because you signed an NDA.
You now sound mysterious, desirable, worldly, experienced. They can’t even really ask you more about it! Perfect.
This tip isn’t genius.
You can give general details even after signing an NDA, and the interviewer can absolutely ask about them. What type of work were you doing? What references can you provide for that time period? What sector was the job in? What skills did you learn from it?
If you’re going for a non-office job, claiming to have an NDA will sound weird at best and might make the interviewer decide you’re not worth the drama. If you’re going for a professional job, the interviewer will be familiar enough with NDAs to be suspicious.
There are plenty of reasonable excuses for a resume gap that won’t raise any red flags. You had a family situation which has now been resolved; you took time off to explore starting your own business but found you preferred working in a more traditional employment structure; you had a baby; you took classes; there was a fucking pandemic on. Your interviewer doesn’t care too much, they just want to know it’s something that won’t be a problem during employment (so no “I sent bomb threats to my workplace and that was when the case was ongoing”).
Please don’t learn professional skills from TikTok. Most of them are coming from teenagers who have no idea how interviews actually work.