8 Tips for Parents Returning to the Workforce

8 Tips for Parents Returning to the Workforce8 Tips for Parents Returning to the WorkforceIf youve been a stay-at-home parent whos now returning to the workforce, you might feel intimidated. After all, youre competing against candidates who didnt step away from a professional track, your skills might feel rusty and it might have been years since you interviewed. But with some effort and the right mindset, you can get yourself back to work. Here are eight key tips to make the transition from stay-at-home mom or dad to working parent. 1. Dont put child-rearing on your resume as a job. Some parents who are returning to work are tempted to list their time at home as its own job, complete with titles, such as domestic engineer, family CEO or household manager, and duties, such as scheduling, budgeting and child care logistics. Dont do this. Your resume is for professional accomplishments and employment where you were accountable to someone outside of your family. And you dont want to co me across as if you dont understand why the difference matters. 2. Explain the gap in employment in your cover letter. Employers will wonder about the gap since you last worked, but you can simply explain in your cover letter that you took a few years (or however long its been) to stay home with your child but are now eager to return to work full time. 3. Dont try to hide your time away from work by using a functional resume format. Stay-at-home parents are often advised to avoid a standard chronological resume format and instead use a functional resume to downplay their work gap. Functional resumes dont show employment dates or a clear career chronology, but instead simply list skills and achievements. The problem is that the format is an immediate red flag to hiring managers that youre trying to hide something. It makes it impossible to understand what you did and when you did it. Functional resumes are often an instant verstndigung im strafverfahren breaker for employers. Theyr e not worth the risk. 4. Lean on your network. Your network will be one of your most important assets when youre ready to look for work again. When youre competing against candidates with more recent work experience, having a connection to the hiring manager or a referral from someone who knows you can be the thing that gets you an interview and serious consideration. Hopefully youve been maintaining your network long before you began thinking about returning to work by staying in touch with past colleagues, occasionally going out to lunch and just generally not letting those connections lapse. But if you havent done that, its not too late. You can still reach out to past colleagues, classmates, neighbors, even parents of your kids friends, and let them know that youre looking for work. 5. If possible, do some contract work while youre out. Completing a few contract projects will give you more recent work to put on your resume, and it will start building a group of new contacts who might eventually hire you for full-time work or refer you to jobs at other companies. 6. Join a professional organization in your field. Professional organizations can be great distribution policys to meet people in your field, get job leads and ort yourself more strongly for your return. You can amplify the benefits of membership even further by volunteering to serve on the organizations board or one of its committees, as well as attending its networking events. 7. Talk with your partner about how youll divide child care duties now that youre returning to work. If your partner has been working while youve been at home, he or she may assume that youll continue to be the primary person responsible for juggling school pick-up and drop-off, homework supervision, packing lunches, field trips and everything else you juggled when you were at home full time. But just because it used to be your job doesnt mean that it should continue to be. Now that youre both working, its time to rev isit that division of labor and come up with a new plan thats fair to you both. You may even need your partner to take on more than half while youre getting settled in your new job. Whatever you decide, dont assume that youre both on the same page. Sit down and talk it through. 8. Make sure you have a solid child care plan with backup options. If your daycare wont take sick kids, do you have a backup sitter, an agreement with your spouse to split the care on those days or some other plan? Sick kids can eat up your annual leave quickly, especially if your company gives fewer days to new employees, so youll want to have plans in place to handle inevitable kid illnesses when they arise.