Hi Jeff,
As someone who has pivoted between careers, one way to present yourself is to show that your core recruiting skills are still intact and that the last three years strengthened, rather than weakened, the parts of the job that matter most. With your experience, working retail shows resilience, reliability, and adaptability. Why not position it as continued employment and transferable strengths, while keeping the focus on your recruiting background? After all, you’re not “trying to get back”. Staying employed reinforced your strengths in communication, organization, and representing the employer brand so you’re returning with added perspective and candidate engagement. Many hiring managers respect candidates who kept working, adapted, and stayed focused on their long-term path. Fit Technical Recruiter with X years of experience and so forth in your cover letter and at top of resume so that you are immediately framed as a recruiter.
When the layoff and transition come up, keep your explanation calm, factual, and forward-focused. Try some thing like:
“I was impacted by a layoff, and I chose to stay fully employed while being intentional about returning to technical recruiting. During that time, I strengthened my communication skills and stayed current with recruiting practices. Recruiting is where my experience and strengths are best aligned, and I’m excited to bring that back into a technical hiring environment.”
Then be ready to reassure that you can understand technical roles, communicate effectively with candidates and managers and most importantly manage hiring processes with professionalism.
Best wishes moving forward.
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