Resume Example With an Employment Gap
A senior staff accountant in Sacramento returning to work after a two-and-a-half-year break to care for a parent. The gap is on the page as its own labeled entry, in the same date format as every other job, with what was kept current during it.
A fictional resume written by our team. The person, employers and numbers are invented; the tools, certifications and schools are real.
Why it works
- 1
“Accountant with six years of general ledger, month-end close and reconciliation work at two mid-size companies, returning to full-time work after a planned break to care for a parent. Kept the CPA license active through the break and earned the NetSuite Financial User certification in 2026.”
The break is mentioned once, in plain words, and the sentence moves on. Saying it here means a recruiter doesn't find an unexplained gap on their own and start guessing at the reason.
- 2
“Career Break, Family Caregiving, Full-time care for a parent | Feb 2024 - Sep 2026”
The gap gets a plain label and real dates, in the same month-and-year format as the jobs around it. Switching to year-only dates or writing 'personal leave' would hide less than it seems to, and a mixed date format is its own red flag. There is no medical detail, because an employer doesn't need it.
- 3
“Long-term care is now in place; available for full-time work, on-site or hybrid”
The question an employer actually has about a gap is whether it is over. This line answers it directly, so the interview can be about the work.
- 4
“Kept the CPA license active with continuing education, including courses on ASC 842 leases and ASC 606 revenue recognition”
The second question is whether the skills went stale. One line names the specific topics studied, which is more convincing than 'stayed current on industry trends'.
- 5
“Owned month-end close for 3 entities and cut it from 9 business days to 6 by moving recurring entries to templates”
The work before the gap is written at full strength. A break doesn't shrink what came before it, and the page shouldn't either.
How it scored
We ran this example through the same free roast you can use, three times, and kept the middle result. The roast ranks a resume against a typical applicant pile and grades hard, so a resume with little work history can be a good example of its kind and still not score high.
Copy the text
Use it as a skeleton, then replace every line with your own work. A copied bullet with someone else's numbers is the fastest way to fail an interview question.
Marin Holloway Senior Staff Accountant, Month-End Close and Reconciliations Sacramento, CA | marin.holloway@example.com SUMMARY Accountant with six years of general ledger, month-end close and reconciliation work at two mid-size companies, returning to full-time work after a planned break to care for a parent. Kept the CPA license active through the break and earned the NetSuite Financial User certification in 2026. EXPERIENCE Career Break, Family Caregiving, Full-time care for a parent | Feb 2024 - Sep 2026 - Long-term care is now in place; available for full-time work, on-site or hybrid - Kept the CPA license active with continuing education, including courses on ASC 842 leases and ASC 606 revenue recognition - Earned the Oracle NetSuite Financial User certification in 2026 Senior Staff Accountant, Delta Breeze Foods | Jun 2020 - Jan 2024 - Owned month-end close for 3 entities and cut it from 9 business days to 6 by moving recurring entries to templates - Reconciled 14 balance sheet accounts each month, with no audit adjustments in the 2022 or 2023 year-end audits - Led the move to ASC 842 lease accounting for 23 leases, working directly with the outside auditors - Trained 2 new staff accountants on the close checklist and Sage Intacct journal workflows Staff Accountant, Capitol Ridge Property Group | Jul 2017 - May 2020 - Processed about 400 vendor invoices a month for 11 apartment properties and ran the weekly check run - Prepared monthly bank reconciliations for all 11 properties and the audit schedules for year-end EDUCATION AND CREDENTIALS Certified Public Accountant (CPA), California, active Oracle NetSuite Financial User Certification, 2026 B.S. Business Administration, Accountancy, California State University, Sacramento, 2017 SKILLS Month-end close, Account reconciliations, ASC 842 and ASC 606, Sage Intacct, Oracle NetSuite, Excel (pivot tables, XLOOKUP, Power Query), Accounts payable
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