The In-Between Job: Putting Garden Leave on Your CV Without Inventing a Gap

Garden leave sounds like a lovely problem. You have handed over the laptop, said goodbye to the team, and you are still being paid. But when you open your CV, the dates start to look odd. There is a month or two floating between your old job and whatever comes next, and suddenly you are preparing to explain a gap that is not really a gap at all.

That is the strange in-between period. You have left one role, but your employment has not quite ended. In the UK, garden leave is usually paid notice where your employer asks you to stay away from work, clients or confidential information. It is common in financial services, consultancy, civil service roles and any job with a long notice period or a non-compete clause. It is also deeply confusing to put on paper.

At WorkGaps, we talk a lot about CV gaps and career breaks. Garden leave is neither. It is paid contractual time at the end of a job. The trick is making your CV say that clearly, without turning your employment history into a riddle.

First, call it what it is

Garden leave is not time off in the career-break sense. You are still employed. You are usually still bound by confidentiality, exclusivity and sometimes a non-compete. You may have been told not to contact clients or colleagues. You may have handed back your phone and your security pass. But your contract is still running, and so is your pay.

This matters because CV dates should follow employment, not your last day at the desk. If your contract ends on 31 January but you stopped working on 4 December, your CV should show the role ending in January. That is not dishonest. It is accurate. The last day you logged on is not the same as the last day you were employed.

Date the job, not the diary

The simplest rule is this: use the start and end dates of your employment contract, not the dates you were physically in the office. If you are still on garden leave, you can write the role as ongoing, for example, March 2023 to present. Then use your cover letter or interview to explain when you are available.

If your end date is already fixed, use that month and year as the end date. You can add a short parenthetical note if it helps, such as March 2023 to April 2026, garden leave until 30 April. Keep it factual. Do not create a separate entry called Garden Leave. Do not list it as a job, a project or a career break. Recruitment software and tired recruiters will read that as filler.

If you were paid in lieu of notice, the same logic applies, but check your termination date. Payment in lieu usually ends the employment relationship earlier than the notice period would have done. Your CV should reflect the actual end of employment, not the date the money landed.

Keep LinkedIn boring

LinkedIn is where garden leave gets messy. People either leave the old role showing for months after they have gone, or they add a strange new position called Between Roles. Both create questions.

If you are still employed and on garden leave, keep the role as current until your end date. You do not need to announce it. If you want to signal availability, use your headline carefully, for example, Operations lead, available from May 2026. That is clear without oversharing. Do not add garden leave as a separate experience entry. It is a status, not a job title.

Once your employment ends, update the end date to match your CV. Keep the two documents consistent. Recruiters notice mismatches, and a mismatch looks like an unexplained gap even when there is a perfectly ordinary reason for it.

What to say in an interview

When the question comes, keep it short. You are not confessing to anything. You are explaining a contractual timeline.

A useful line is: I was on garden leave until the end of April, so my employment ran to then, but I was available from May. Or: My notice period included a period of garden leave, so I have been free to start since the beginning of March.

Then stop. Do not over-explain the politics of why you were put on garden leave. Do not criticise your old employer. Do not call it time off if you were paid and employed. If you did something useful during the period, such as a short course, volunteering or caring responsibilities, you can mention it briefly. But you do not have to justify every week.

If an interviewer asks what you have been doing, answer honestly but lightly. I used the time to finish a course and sort out childcare, and I have been ready to start since April. That is enough. Most interviewers are checking that your dates make sense and that you can start when they need you.

Sort the reference before the access goes

One practical point: while you are on garden leave, you are still an employee. That is the moment to ask HR for a reference contact and confirm how they will describe your dates and job title. Many UK employers now give a standard reference confirming employment dates and role only. Ask anyway. Keep your final payslip, P45 when it arrives, and any written confirmation of your end date.

If a new employer asks for a reference while you are still on garden leave, give them the HR contact rather than a manager who may have already moved on. If you have signed a settlement agreement, check the agreed reference wording before you pass it on.

When it is not garden leave

Words matter. If you resigned with no notice and no pay, that is a gap. If you took unpaid leave, that is a career break. If you were ill, caring for someone or travelling, call it what it was. Garden leave has a specific meaning: paid, employed, usually on notice. Do not stretch the term to cover a period when you were not employed, because a reference check will expose the mismatch.

The two-line check

Before you send your CV, do a small audit. Do your CV and LinkedIn show the same end dates? Is your interview line ready? Have you confirmed who will provide your reference? If the answer is yes, you are done. Garden leave is not a gap. It is the tail end of a job. Put the dates right, keep the explanation short, and let the chronology do the talking.