And in the us, between 2025 and onwards

: Deutsche Bank left the chat:

Yeah, and during my five year "sabbatical" I kept very up to date with developing business practices.

Exactly. Unemployment is just a forced sabbatical

Job interview in 10 minutes, planning to say essentially this if they ask about my 2 month job gap. Will update if it goes poorly.

Especially when in a hiring mindset, employers can see it as you being undesirable or lazy, maybe even covering for quitting before getting fired and being out of work suddenly and without a plan. "If you were such hot shit, why aren't you jumping from job to job, higher and higher up the ladder?" That kind of thing.

What's important to keep in context is that typically one provides relevant job experience on a resume. Not all job experience. So gaps might be actual work, even.

Typically if you can have a good excuse and say you did something productive with the time, it's fine. "I was looking for work for 6 months after we moved and it was a tough market. I spent free time helping with a local community gardening project" would be totally acceptable. "I took a 3 month break to go work on an organic farm" is still work, just not relevant to your job application at Cinnabon or whatever.

There isn't a single question you can possibly ask in an interview that doesn't have a million threads like this complaining about it and assuming the worst about its intentions or what the interviewer will conclude from its answer.

The general rule seems to be that any kind of question that you might do badly on, is a bad question.

Why do you assume it's a bad thing? It's no more a bad thing than asking about your previous job is a bad thing.

You renovated your house? Cool, so you are a resourceful person, maybe you can also be asked what did you learn while doing it. When I ask that question people often speak about their hobbies, or side hustles, or learning, or family obligations, it's almost always something positive about the candidate or their character.

I hope your parents are doing well.

Any follow up questions as to whether your parents are going to pull you away from work?

This.

Are they hiring?

Its a fucking stupid and manipulative question for the employer to ask. No employer should give a fuck if somebody took a couple years to travel, take care of family, or just couldn't find a job.

What they are really asking "Are any of the time gaps in your job history, a job that you got fired from with cause? "

Instead of being little shits about it just ask the actual question straight out. The shock value of asking a real non-bullshit questions in an interview has paid off many times for me when hiring.