How to Explain Redundancy in Your Resume

The story behind this post is pretty straightforward - while twittering, I came across the following tweet (the username of the poster has been withheld to protect their privacy):

“I was told not to put “Made redundant” on my CV. Recent interview said I was a job hopper (7 jobs, 5 redundancies). What should I do?”

Great question - so why don’t we explore that, considering that, if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you were let go by your employer when the recession started.

First of all, it’s important to differentiate between being made redundant and getting fired. While a lot of people use these terms interchangeably, getting fired means losing your job for whatever reason, including poor company performance, bad relationship with your boss or spending too much time surfing the Internet instead of getting work done. In short, you can get fired for a whole bunch of reasons - and, very often, this terms carries fairly negative connotations.

Now, let’s contrast that with redundancy. A person is said to be made redundant when the company decides that the job this person is currently doing is no longer necessary. For example, if a business has a cell phone division which they decide to shut down, employees in this division could be made redundant.

The difference between the two terms is that redundancy occurs due to factors outside your control. If you were made redundant, then, by definition, you’re not responsible - with the economy in recession, companies are looking to concentrate on their core businesses and sell off or shut down the rest. In contrast, getting fired could happen due to many reasons - including poor work performance.

This means that you should neverbe embarrassed to mention redundancy on your CV! It’s a fact of life and it has happened to everyone - including the recruiter (in fact, I once read that the average employee has been made redundant 2.7 times during their professional career).

However, when you do mention redundancy on your CV, it is very important that you also specify the context in which it has occurred, and be prepared to talk about it during the interview. Were you part of an under-performing business unit that the company decided to pull the plug on, despite your best efforts? Or were you hired purely on a temporary basis to participate in the implementation of a project? To be sure, you may have some explaining to do - but it’s certainly nothing as major as you might expect.

In the end, keep in mind that being made redundant is not your fault - and that, in today’s economy, recruiters are used to dealing with candidates just like you. This doesn’t reflect badly on your resume - so long as you were actually made redundant, and not fired.