How can women successfully return to work after a career break

“I don’t know where to start” - how women can successfully return to work after a career break bringing up children
 
It was May 2006, more than 15 years ago, but I can still see myself in the office, with my manager and work colleagues, and she was updating everyone that I would be back from maternity leave the following week, and leading a certain team and project.  I can hear her words, and still remember the nervous feeling, wondering how on earth I would cope.  My life for the previous few months had been baby routines, breast feeding and taking care of my two young boys.  As I sat there, I hoped that people couldn’t see on my face the panic I was feeling inside, questioning how I would transition back to work.  And if that can happen to someone who was a confident and competent worker after a six month maternity leave, I realise how much harder it is for women who leave the workplace for longer.  And that’s why I am passionate about, and specialise in, helping women back to work after a career break bringing up children, both in private 121 sessions, and also on my course Fresh Horizons – helping women get back to work. 

My own experience echoes that of many mums whose careers pause or go off track.  My confidence dropped during my second maternity leave, but fear can build over a number of years where people take a longer career break.  Women say things like:  “I used to have real work focus, but my confidence has dropped” “I had big career dreams but now I fear failing”  “Somehow my work got lost along the way of my husband’s work and the family” “My CV is disjointed” “As my kids grow, I feel underemployed at home, I waft around and jump from one thing to another”  “I sign up for courses but find it hard to find a path and stick to it”  “I find it so hard to think about what I want” and “I don’t know where to start” which gave this article its title. 

You may identify with one or more of these statements, all of which are drawn from real women I work with.  They are not direct quotes to protect the confidentiality of our discussions, but all reflect real sentiments of women feeling different versions of what I felt - fear and panic, lack of direction or practical worries on transition. 

But there comes a time when a woman is ready to get back to work and this can happen for different reasons.  I find there are three main motivators for women to get back to work, and they often overlap.  The first is life cycle.  As kids grow up, women choose to get back to work at a time that works for them and their families.  This can be when children are in nursery, primary, secondary school or even when kids go to university / leave home and a woman may get the ‘empty nest’ feeling.   Second, life happens and not always in ways that we planned and major unplanned life changes – divorce, separation, death or retrenchment, can all provide shocks to the family, affect financial security and mean a woman needs to get back to work, sometimes urgently.  Third, personal motivation can be a key driver, for a woman wanting to find or refresh her purpose in life, to grow in self esteem and self worth.  

But even when women are ready to get back to work, there can be a number of ‘blockers’.  Above all else, confidence is often the biggest blocker. Even if women can overcome the confidence issue, a key question is often ‘what can or should I do? Do I go back to what I did before, try something new or start up a business?’.  The practical issues of investing in the career search can seem overwhelming – everything from the CV, the fear of the interview process, the huge amount of time that it takes.  Finally, keeping going and having the grit to pick yourself up after what seems like the 100th rejection.  It is really hard to sustain the effort to get back to work which is why a career coach, a good friend or the Fresh Horizons programme can be important motivators. 

Women often ask what is the easiest way back to work.  I find the answer to that depends very much on the timeframe, the financial pressures, and someone’s confidence levels.  Where time is short, financial pressure is high and/or confidence is low – using your existing skills and experience is a quicker road back.  If you have luxury of time and/or some financial resources, then you can pause to figure out what you really want to do, whether to use your existing skills, think about pivoting to a different career, or starting up a business.  Sometimes it’s about sequence, doing what you did previously to get you back to the work environment and routines, rebalance work/family life, and use that as a stepping stone to what you really want to do next.

So what’s my best advice for women getting back to work?  It’s helpful to complete my Worksheet on Readiness for Getting back to Work (email [email protected] to request a copy or if you are in South Africa, follow this link: https://www.recruitmymom.co.za/additional-services/back-work-course).  At the heart of this, are my three Top Tips:

• Tip 1: Get clear on the WHY you want to work.  When people are clear on the ‘why’, their motivation levels rise and this is important for sustaining your career search.  There are always multiple answers to this question, and taking time to answer these is a really good investment. 
• Tip 2: Figure out the WHAT you want to do.  Without doubt, this is the hardest step.  It’s tough figuring out what is your life purpose, career ambition and what success means for you in your working life, and what type of work balances your personal, professional and family priorities.  But without a clear ambition, it’s hard to focus a job search and develop an action plan, and you may find you drift or jump into different courses or applications but they don’t add up to a coherent career plan.
• Tip 3: Reframing.  Helping women to value themselves and their skills – focusing on what they have, not what they don’t have.  I spend a lot of time talking to women, building their confidence, looking at transferable skills.  Often women have done amazing things whether paid, unpaid eg supporting a family business or voluntary eg at school or for a club, but very little of this experience is reflected on the CV as women often don’t see that it adds any value.  Reframing is also a strong mental exercise too, for women first to recognise these negative thoughts (eg I have a disjointed CV), and then act on them, changing what they don’t have into an upside or something they do have (eg rewriting the CV to present voluntary work and results achieved while on the career break). 

 
Women can help themselves by investing in the job search in the following ways:
Action 1: Treating the job search like a job, taking it seriously, allocating ‘back to work’ time in your diary.  Build small regular work habits.  I much prefer it when women say they can focus on the job search 1 hour per day and stick to it, then people who have a ‘back to work frenzy’ and do a couple of days of research or CV work, but then don’t work at it again for several weeks.  Getting back to work is not easy, and without a serious and regular time investment, it’s hard to make the transition.
Action 2: Figuring out what you want – the hardest part of a career search is working out what you want to do, what motivates you, and what a work purpose / ambition / success looks like for you alongside being a mum.  Don’t try and shortcut this, pause the job search, and invest time to figure this out.  Once women have deeply thought about what they want, discussed and agreed with their loved ones, then the action planning is much more straight forward.
Action 3: Building a very good dossier and getting lots of recruitment practice. Clean up your social media (eg LinkedIn, Instagram), work on a modern CV and tweak it for each role to reflect the job description ‘asks’.  Don’t hide work gaps, but using Tip 3 above, positively re-frame.  Use this period to get comfortable with the discomfort of talking about yourself, any work gaps so you can be confident when the real interview comes around. 

If you are planning to get back to work, I hope reading this will motivate you to know where and how to start. And if you want to take the next step, you could also watch my YouTube video on how to successfully get back to work after a career break.  I hope this will inspire you on your back to work journey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asaLKbl10S8&t=1s