Rule number one is if you’re applying online, just tailor the resume to the job offer. Use all the keywords and buzzwords they use to describe the position in your previous experiences, that way they’ll think you’re perfect for the job. Tailoring the resume to the job also means that you have to think what to keep and what to leave, that way all your experience will seem relevant.

As someone else already said, make up jobs or even say you worked as a freelancer, and have someone who’s willing to pose as your previous boss/client.

What have you been doing during the two years you were unemployed, if you don’t mind saying? You’ll have to come up with a way to justify it, so maybe education or self employment could be an easy excuse.

i’m having a lot of trouble with doing so because i have a very rough history with jobs ( quitting without notice many times when i was much younger )

The neat part about writing your resume is that you can leave out parts of your employment history that make you look “bad” (kinda like japan does with WWII). So let’s say you had 4 jobs over the course of a year, skip the two jobs that you had for the shortest amount of time. After that do some stretching, ex say you started a job a month earlier than you did and tack on a ~month - month and half to the end of it. Now never say you were fired or quit for no reason, you could say that it was a temp position from the start cause your employer had more business that time of the year and that there was no prospect of staying longer from the very start. Try to keep the gaps between jobs small (I’d say two - three months at most). Now if you have a lot of jobs where you quit early on you could just skip that entire part of your employment history and say you starter working later in life. Employers generally don’t care about how old you were when you got your first job, and they have no way to get your employment history (some government jobs can and will check tho I think) so don’t mention stuff that makes you look bad. And yes this will shorten your work experience but being inexperienced is more desirable than frequent job changes on a resume (dumb af, ik, but it is what it is).

Now regarding embellishing how long you worked at a certain place, the further back the job was the better. Employers will typically only check with your last one or two employers if they check at all ( again some gov jobs might be an exception). One more tip, most place won’t keep a digitalized employee database where they could easily search up your contract, so when embellishing try to avoid jobs that you believe might have kept digital records ( like chains etc). A lot of customer facing jobs have a huge turnover anyways so there’s a good chance that there’s noone you worked with that stil works there, let alone rembers you by name to be able to dispute what you said on your resume. Lastly if you get confronted about embellishing the time you worked a specific job, there’s two things you could do: I didn’t have my old resume on hand since I haven’t worked in 2yrs so I wrote it from memeory or (better imo if you can project confidence during the interview and if you claimed you started earlier than you did) you can claim that you were on a trial position before signing the full contract so the one they looked up probably doesn’t reflect your actual time there. If you can sell this with enought confidence they won’t bother calling again to check, as it’s a perfectly reasonable explanation and they already confirmed you worked there. If you aren’t feeling confident about lying about any of these things, first lies by omission are much easier to sell and second just practice with your friends/parents.

Now depending on how confident you are there is another approach (which is more effective imo and it’s what I did). You could only list a year on your resume and then just positions and places where you worked during that year (again feel free to omitt some jobs here) without specifying the duration. This lets you wing it during your actual interview where you can meet, judge and lie just enough based on the person interviewing you. It also lets you avoid some lies that would be easily exposed by not telling them in the first place (ex. If your interviewer worked at the place you were gonna lie about there’s a good chance they’ll mention it when the topic of that job comes up, so you just don’t lie about that one). Note that some jobs might not even invite you to an interview without specifying the length of employment at each position, but in such cases, of you notice you aren’t hearing back from them at all, you could just reapply with version according to the first approach I gave. Fixing a resume and reapplying is super common and you aren’t really losing anything (except some time ofc).

As for the two year gap as some have suggested saying that you worked freelance is an option. If you aren’t feeling confident with that approach you could say that you had to take care of a sick/injured parent/relative, they can never get their hands on their medical records and asking about details would feel kinda rude for most people (but not all, so be prepared for questions just in case, but also know that if the question seems to detailed refusing to answer would be pretty normal) so that might be an easier sell.

Anyways hope you find some of this usefull, feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Try to keep your resume to 1 page. Write a cover letter if you have experiences that didn’t have a place on your resume but are relevant to the job you’re applying for. There are templates online for cover letters and resumes that you can borrow from. Don’t go too fancy with the resume styling. Just a clean, readable layout.

A psychology thing I use to put the reader in my shoes and make me seem capable (because I am them as they read) is that I describe in detail my responsibilities with action words ending in “ing”. Example, if I was a waiter in the past and applying for another customer facing role, I could write “- served food and drinks. Stocked consumables.”, or I could highlight my empathy and social awareness and time management:

• promptly greeting customers as soon as they walk in
• creating an environment where they can enjoy their meal and company
• adjusting my service based on their individual needs
• timing tasks to keep on top of restocking and cleaning while prioritizing customers

It feels weird to write “ing” verbs at first but it makes a difference. Good luck, keep practicing, it takes ages but try to tweak your resume for each individual job you apply for. Dont be afraid to follow up with the ones you really want - calling is unheard of these days but if you phone and sound friendly, ask to speak to the hiring manager, mention you’re keen on this position and would love the chance to interview for it, that will probably put you at the top of the pile. They don’t want to waste their own time interviewing people that are only half interested in the job.

If you get an interview, obv being confident is great but if that’s not you, it’s ok to be nervous. They know you will be. Just focus on giving coherent answers. Practice the STAR method to answer their questions. Explain the Situation, Task, Action, Result. Keep it relatively short and to the point. Example: tell us about a time where you handled friction at work.

Situation - I was working on a project that required external collaboration. Task - I needed a colleague to give a timeline on a task of theirs but they were hesitant to commit to a date since this was not a typical priority for them. Action - I empathized that this was an extra workload to them and asked questions to understand what their biggest roadblock was. I then offered a few options that had different approaches but still achieved both our goals. Result - We came to an agreement on priorities, clarified requirements, and both delivered our projects on time. This person also ended up being a valuable contact and we often consulted each other in future tasks.

Try to think of at least one question to ask them at the end, such as “what do new employees typically find surprising after they start?”. Do a bit of research on the company, even if just for small talk as you’re walking to the meeting room. It’s not a good look if you have no idea what the company does.

I had a shitty period of work and I glossed over it by grouping all that time under an agency I worked for. Any time I talk about work experience from that era it was for a ‘client’ of the agency.

I also worked some interesting jobs through a recruitment company but they were all short term contracts. When the question of ‘why did you leave?’ Comes up I can say it was the end of the contract.

You might need to find people willing to lie to cover up the last two years though, or stretch out your last role on your resume to look like you finished last week.

Do you have friends that would be willing to take calls from potential employers and lie about being your manager?