How to update your CV after redundancy

The question people arrive with is how to explain redundancy on a CV. The more useful question is whether it needs explaining there at all, and most of the time the answer is no. A CV is a record of what you did, not a record of why each job stopped. Nobody expects a reason beside the end date of a role from 2014, and the same logic holds for the one that ended in March.

Where redundancy does create work is elsewhere. It is in the end date itself, in the months that follow it, and in the defensive sentence people write while trying to get ahead of a question that was never going to be asked. Those three things are what this guide deals with. The rest of your CV changes less than you think.

On a CV with dates in months and years, a role that ended is unremarkable. Every role on the page ended except one. What a reader's eye stops on is the space afterwards, and what the writer did about it.

Under about three months, that space registers as nothing at all, because notice, consultation, garden leave and an ordinary application cycle fill it without comment. Past six months a reader starts to wonder, and a reader left wondering supplies their own answer. That is the real argument for a short factual line. Not honesty, which the dates already deliver, but taking the pen back.

The second thing worth understanding is what redundancy is a fact about. In a restructure the post is cut, not the person sitting in it. Written plainly, that lands as an ordinary business event. Written defensively, it invites exactly the suspicion the plain version never raises. "Through no fault of my own" is the clearest case: nobody had suggested fault until that sentence arrived on the page.

There is a real difference between a whole site closing and being selected from a pool of five, and it may matter to you a great deal. It is not a difference a CV can carry. Trying to make it carry that is what produces the paragraph everybody later regrets.

"My department was closed in March and I have not worked since." "The whole site goes in November and I am still on notice." "I took voluntary redundancy and now I have to explain why I left a job I liked."

If you are still in post, you are in the best position to do this well, because you still have access to your own records, and that access ends on your last day.

If you are applying back into the same sector, the closure is probably already known to the people reading. Writing around a fact that is common knowledge in your industry reads worse than stating it in a clause.

This guide covers the document only. For your rights, notice pay and the consultation process, Acas and the National Careers Service publish official guidance, and Career Auntie is not a substitute for either.

1. Get your evidence out while you still can. Appraisals, project write-ups, figures from reports you produced, the exact wording of your job description. Personal copies of your own work only, nothing confidential and nothing belonging to a client. Once the laptop goes back you are writing from memory.
2. Put dates in months and years. Rounding to years to soften a gap is the tell, because a reader who spots one imprecise date starts checking the others.
3. Leave the role fully described, in the past tense. It is your most recent and strongest evidence, and it did not become less true when the post was cut. Hunt for "currently" and "present", which survive in a document far longer than anyone expects.
4. Decide whether the CV says anything at all. The default is no. Add a line only when the space after the role is long enough to invite a guess, or when the closure is public in your sector.
5. If you do add it, use one clause and stop. "Role closed in a company-wide restructure." "Post removed when branch support was centralised." No apology, no adverb, no account of the selection criteria.
6. Account for the months since, if there are several. A course, a contract, freelance work, volunteering or caring each take an entry with dates. Time spent searching is not a CV entry and does not need to become one.
7. Put your availability where it will be seen. If you can start immediately, that is genuinely useful to an employer with a vacancy open now, and it belongs in the profile rather than three quarters of the way down.
8. Keep the cover letter to a sentence. One clause on why the role ended, then straight on to the job you are applying for.

"Seeking new opportunities following redundancy." As a profile opener it hands the first line of your CV to the one subject you would rather the reader moved past. Open with what you do.

"Unfortunately", "sadly", "through no fault of my own". All three answer a charge nobody made. Delete them and the sentence gets stronger.

Anything about the selection pool. A reader cannot verify it, and it reads as a grievance carried into an application.

A stretched end date. Payment in lieu of notice and your actual leaving date can differ. Use the date your employment ended, because that is the date a reference will give.

A shortened entry for the role that was cut. People trim it because it is uncomfortable to look at. It is your most recent evidence and it should be the fullest block on the page.

"Present" left on a role that finished in March. The most common error on a redundancy CV, and the one that costs the most credibility for the least reason.

Career Auntie writes documents. It cannot tell you whether your redundancy process was handled properly, what your notice pay should be, or whether to sign a settlement agreement, and it should not be asked to. Acas and the National Careers Service publish official guidance on all three.

What it does do is read your CV against a specific advert and return between five and fifteen findings, each one quoting the line it refers to. After a redundancy the finding worth looking for is a tone one, because defensive phrasing is precisely what gets flagged, and it is the hardest thing to see in your own writing a fortnight after the announcement.