This is the kind of mindset that discourages people from taking healthy risks. There are any number of legitimate ways to explain a gap, such as, "No, I was not actually playing video games and surfing reddit the entire time! I actually wanted to invest more time in ____. Can I share with you what I learned?"
Disclaimer: my CV has often been a horrendous mess of 3-6 month "gaps" (during which time I learned many of my most valuable life lessons) and it never cost me more than a month of training myself up, networking, and interviewing.
Another disclaimer: I've always been of the habit of saving my money so that long gaps feel stress-free and I don't have to take the first job I'm offered.
You can easily eliminate every gap up to 12 months and some gaps up to 23 months simply by omitting months on your resume. Quit job A in January and joined job B in December of the next year? 2011-2013 at Job A, 2014-Present at Job B! Solved!
Exactly. If pressured on interview to detail months then have a good fractal story. People love stories. First mention is one sentence; if listener is interested then you go into more detail.
If they ask for details, then list all the places you went, and then if they're curious about any individual one give them more details about what you did there. If they don't ask for any details about travel, then they don't care, and you're not wasting time with irrelevant information by going into detail on travel from the beginning.
It's a risk. If a hiring company searches in your butthole for gaps in employment you're likely better off not working there anyway. There are plenty of other companies who won't do that...
Alternatively, just write that you were a consultant / freelancer, and actually work as one for like a month of a year (even for free for a non-profit if necessary).
>"No, I was not actually playing video games and surfing reddit the entire time! I actually wanted to invest more time in ____. Can I share with you what I learned?"
I consider this a self-reflective question on the interviewer's part. If your interview can't sniff out the gap in their experience, then there are two possibilities.
A) The most likely one: your interview sucks and you're not as good as you think you are
Disclaimer: my CV has often been a horrendous mess of 3-6 month "gaps" (during which time I learned many of my most valuable life lessons) and it never cost me more than a month of training myself up, networking, and interviewing.
Another disclaimer: I've always been of the habit of saving my money so that long gaps feel stress-free and I don't have to take the first job I'm offered.