Originally Posted by Unregistered

Unemployed IT professional here.

Did a career switch and ended up in a disastrous job with bad office environment. Job scope was not what I envisioned, 1 day deadlines for work and was being micro-managed. Left after several months when I knew the situation is stuck with little prospect for work progress due to office politics. Now jobless for 1 year.

But spent the past 12 months on self-study and reading up on recent technologies like cloud computing, Web development etc. Also, casually offered technical advice to other IT professionals online.

How to best address this employment gap in the resume or cover letter? Add an "Hobbies and Interests" section to highlight how I spent my 1 year? Add a paragraph in cover letter explaining why I spent 1 year thinking through my options?