Being out of work for an extended period can get you down. Even worse, whenever you apply for a vacancy, you know there will be many others applying for the same post, and – what the heck – many of these people are still employed!

You feel you can’t compete with them because prospective employers are more likely to favour such people when looking at applicants. (Employers don’t like idle people, you suspect.)

Thankfully, this is not true.

Saying nothing
A resume-writing adviser from ExpertResumes.com says if you are unemployed for less than a year, your best strategy may be to say nothing about it in your resume.

“Shorter time frames of up to a year or so aren’t absolute necessities to explain on a resume,” says Teena Rose. If you are still jobless after more than a year, a possible strategy is to fill the time with useful but unpaid activities such as community work, special projects or a study programme.

If you've been out of work because you are looking after a baby (raising a family is also an important kind of National Service in Singapore), caring for a sick family member or recovering from an injury, state it clearly in your resume and do not be apologetic about it.

There's nothing wrong with being out of work for whatever reason, so don’t apologise.

Prospective employers want to know how you used your time away from the workforce as opposed to why you were unemployed, says career planner Anne-Marie Ditta, president of First Impression Career Services of New York.

So, in your resume, don’t talk so much about the reasons for losing your previous job – layoff, company closure, job termination, etc. Instead highlight the fact that you are using this time period productively to acquire new skills, expand your industry knowledge or cultivate your contacts.

Get busy when out of work
So, get busy. Out-of-work is NOT vacation time. Search for activities or programmes that will gain you further experience, expertise and knowledge in the industry and profession that you are in (for instance, attending workshops, seminars, trade fairs and networking events).

Also, involved yourself in some structured activity that can brighten up your resume. These include:

- giving tuition in community centres,
- mentoring students in your old university,
- learning a new computer application,
- studying a foreign language (e.g. Business Mandarin or Bahasa),
- helping in fund-raising for a community hospital such as Ren Ci,
- reading up on management practices and innovations,
- pursuing freelance work, and
- pursuing a graduate diploma or a master

Note that signing up for an MBA programme is extremely expensive, and since the financial crisis was triggered by irresponsible bankers who are mostly MBA-holders, the perception is that an MBA could be seen as a liability when you compete tooth-and-nail for a job.

Write an industry Blog
To show that you are productively engaged even when you’re not employed, write a Blog on what you’re doing. And include your Blog address in your resume.

Add value to your Blog by including news information and insight on the industry that you are engaged in.

Preparing a forward-looking resume
Prospective employers still value the chronology-based resume where you list all the jobs you have held, in chronological order. But you can add punch to this kind of resume by first stating what and how you can contribute to your prospective employer.

The difficulty is that most of what you know of the job vacancy are the requirements and qualifications of the candidate, with only minimal information on the role, responsibilities and scope of work. So you need to do some research on the organisation, its products and services and then make an educated guess on what the new job entails.

Even if you do not get most of the details right, employers will still be impressed when reading about your attempt to put forth what you can do for them, rather than what they can do for you.

The fact that most applicants don’t write this kind of forward-looking resume should encourage you to give it a try. But if you over-promise, readers will know immediately that you are not sincere.

The above article has been reproduced with permission from MyeCitizen (http://www.myecitizen.sg), a one-stop lifestyle portal featuring personalised eService offerings from the government and the private sector.