As long as you can back up your lie with a grotesque amount of overconfidence, most hiring managers are not going to dig much deeper than surface level. Like you already said, they are probably overworked and just going through motions. Hiring you has the potential to ease their workload, not hiring you means wasting another afternoon conduction more interviews the next day.
Me: Can you explain why this is the 4th time you've posted this exact job in a year?
I've actually applied to 2 different places 4 times a piece over the last year. I had initial interviews with them each the first time and both said "lol no we found someone better qualified". But alas, they keep reopening those positions. I think at this point I'm blacklisted from both and it's an insta-deny on Indeed from them.
I don't mean this in a mean way, but to me if you have a gap (and I mean like you create one on the paper) it's sort of an old school "shouldn't exist anymore but boomers gonna boom" "intelligence" test. Their attitude is basically "no one I hire will have an employment gap." So, you just simply do not have a gap. Whether it's true or not is irrelevant because let's be honest ain't no one capable of nor willing to prove or disprove your employment status from Jan-June 2022 (random example). Maybe the IRS or whatever relevant tax agency, maybe law enforcement, sure, but if you're applying for a job as the sales manager or whatever the fuck at Don's Dogshit Diaper Emporium... just go ahead and stretch the dates together to fit. You could probably put other shit in there if you did it like completing on-going education credits in your relevant field, but, keeping it simple is best. Even a fucking financial institution, a bank or whatever, won't bother to figure that gap out when they literally pull on the nitrile gloves and shove their entire fist up to the elbow into your financial asshole looking for any reasons to downgrade your eligibility for a mortgage or give you a shit rate- ask me how I know. So, just lie. If they care enough to find that shit that place absolutely sucks anyway. Or it's a federal law enforcement agency and you should feel bad and stop doing that anyway.
Yup always stretch dates to fill in gaps, much easier than making things up, not to mention plausible deniability.
I've yet to have an employer bring it up. Although admittedly my approach is to apply to 500 places then go to 20 interviews, so I suppose some of the many rejections/ghosts could have been from investigating the gap. But I wouldn't have been hired at those places anyway so nothing is lost.
if my resume was even remotely accurate it would be like swiss cheese with all the gaps.. and each one of those gaps, be it 1 month or 6, was like heaven while it lasted