Re-starting Your Career After a Break

Dear 25-year old Self:

 

You’re just a few years into what will hopefully be a long and fulfilling career.  I know you’re not thinking about how you’ll juggle career and family when the time comes, and that’s exactly why I’d like to share with you what I’ve learned over the past 20 years.  You may want to take a break from your career to raise a family.  Here are some strategies for success you can employ now that will make it easier to re-start your career when the time is right:

 

• Keep one foot in the working world: If you can find an opportunity to continue to work on a limited or part-time basis, take it!  This allows you to have an employment history without a gap and to stay in touch with the professional world.  Besides, it’s refreshing to have adult conversations.   This is the #1 thing that women returning to work tell me they wish they’d known when they left their jobs to stay home.
• Make family your priority: You’ve heard it before – you’ll never get back those years when your children are young. If you have the luxury to be around for those early milestones and you want to be home, then seize the opportunity and savor it.
• Consider your options, choose confidently and enjoy life.  Forget “working mommy guilt”, whatever that is. Whether you choose to continue working or to stay home with your children, do the best job you can and don’t second-guess yourself.  You can always reconsider your decision as your circumstances change, but move forward with confidence in whatever direction you’ve chosen.
• Raise independent children: Having your own career, interests and hobbies is so much easier when you’ve raised independent children.  I recently dropped my rising 9th grader off for student-only freshman orientation and was bewildered by all the moms going in with their kids.  When I asked my daughter if she’d like me to come in she said “Mom, I’ve got this.”  Wow – did that make my day! I drove to work feeling a bit sad that she was growing up so fast, but absolutely thrilled that she was so confident and independent.
• Attend a conference once a year: This is a great way to meet people and stay current on new developments in your field.  Choose a conference nearby to keep the cost low or pick a conference in a city where you have friends or family and turn this into a business vacation.  May we suggest the Back to Business Women’s Conference?  It is held in October in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.  Tons of professional job search advice, support from an amazing community of women, a resume workshop, a networking workshop, and so much more – just what you need if you’re returning to work!
• Keep the network up: Make a conscious effort to keep in touch with your professional contacts.  This can be as easy as emailing a few people each week to say hello and let them know what you’re up to.
• Continue to meet as many people as you can during your work hiatus.  I know you’ll be busy (I get it, we have four children!), but some of the people I built relationships with during the time that I wasn’t working full-time were instrumental in helping me return to work when the time came.
• Have lunch with former co-workers: I left IBM in 2003, but meet my former office-mate for lunch every fall.  We have entirely different networks since our careers have gone in different directions, but over the years we’ve each asked the other to make introductions for us.  And since fall is fast approaching, I’d better go check the calendar and invite Jeff to lunch!
• Have coffee with someone new and interesting every month to talk shop: I  know this sounds weird if you’re not in the habit of doing this,  but a few times this summer I’ve reached out to people that I didn’t know personally to invite them to have coffee and talk about something specific.  I was rewarded with fascinating conversations and great new ideas!  You’ll get more comfortable with this the more you do it.  I promise.  I used LinkedIn inmail which was great for this.
• Be a continuous learner: Subscribe to whatever magazine people in your profession read to stay current with developments in your field.  I’ve subscribed to Fortune Magazine since I was in graduate school and since they just kept extending my student rate, I kept ordering it. Sure, some months they piled up on my coffee table, but I eventually read most of them and over the course of the 12 years that I considered myself primarily a stay-at-home parent, I digested a lot of business news.
• Get a good web crawler to send you articles on your field every day: The key here is to send them directly to an email folder so that when you have the time you can read to your hearts content (or until the baby cries).  If they aren’t piling up in your inbox, you won’t feel guilty that you don’t get to them all.  Directing them to an email folder ensures that when you’re ready to read, you’ve got a well-stocked shelf of relevant articles.
• Develop a new skill:  Taking a break from your career or downshifting for a time can provide a great opportunity to make a directional change.  With so many great courses online, you can develop new skills without even leaving your house that will keep you sharp when you’re ready to return to work.
• Update your resume every year on the same day: Call it your “resume-aversary” (OK,don’t call it that), but understand that designating the same day to do this each year increases the likelihood that it will happen. If you’ve taken a significant career break and haven’t even looked at your resume in 10 years, this can be a real roadblock to getting back in the job market.
• Set aside money for professional development while you have an income.  This way you won’t hesitate to invest in yourself when you’re not working.  While there are lots of free courses and advice out there, you’ll find that occasionally spending money to keep your skills fine-tuned will really pay off in the long run.

 

I hope that by the time you’re ready to restart your career, the working world has evolved to seeing a career break as an opportunity for growth and personal development.  I can say with confidence that the 12 years I spent out of the full-time workforce were years of incredible growth for me.  I returned to work with a renewed sense of purpose, the ability to keep things in perspective and time management skills that I could only have dreamed of earlier in my career.  In fact, I owe my current success to my career break.