Should I share personal circumstances like a family illness or bereavement to explain a long gap?

Personal circumstances can be appropriate — but timing matters. For early-stage recruiters, these details tend to be hard for them to act on and can create unnecessary ambiguity. Recruiters are trying to match candidates to roles, and personal backstory often lands as orthogonal to their checklist. The right venue is later in the process, with a hiring manager who has a vested interest in you as a person and is already invested in your candidacy. Even then, keep it brief and pivot quickly back to your value. The default approach is to backdate your resume to the end of severance and move forward from there.