Re-Entering The Workforce As A Stay-At-Home Parent: Tips For Success In Today’s Job Market
If you’ve been a stay-at-home parent to raise your children and are looking to get back into the workforce either by choice or by need, you may feel like you’re entering The Twilight Zone. The economy is more confusing than a child’s questions about nature, (“Where do raccoons sleep and why are they awake at night?” For the record I still don’t know the answer to either of those questions. In a tree and because they blend in at night?), the housing market is more of a nightmare than Freddy Krueger on Elm Street, and the job market is just…puzzling.
Several industries can’t find people to fill roles no matter what they do, and other industries are letting go of employees faster than a toddler’s mood swing (which is extremely fast). Silicon Valley Bank failed which sounds scary (even though it shouldn’t scare you too much because it was an isolated incident) and apparently there may be aliens.
You may be so overwhelmed by the thought of getting back out into the real world that you want to crawl into your child’s Happy Napper and hide until it all goes away.
I’m here to tell you, to peak your head out of that “Happy Napper, get your big boy or girl pants on and get out there, because everything will be okay….well, maybe besides the potential alien thing because if they are really out there and don’t like us, we are in big trouble. Just watch a few Twilight Zone episodes.
But barring an alien invasion, re-entering the workforce after being out for any amount of time isn’t as hard as you may think. With the tips and advice I’ll lay out for you, you should be able to get yourself back into the workforce and in the industry you are hoping for. It’s going to take a little work and planning, but you’ll be able to trade your butler uniform for the career you want. (Unless you want to be a butler to both your kids and professionally, then actually get a butler uniform).
Tip #1: Start Planning Your Re-Entry Into The Workforce Months Before You’re Planning to Go Back
If you are a parent, you should already know all about being prepared. Think about the first time you took your infant to a restaurant or an event, forgot to bring a change of clothes for them, and they…I’ll just say it…pooped through their outfit. If you weren’t a planner prior to that, you learned the hard way and are now a professional planner.
You should have this same mindset for your eventual return to work…minus the pooping through your clothes part. Before you even have a baby you should have some sort of an idea of if you are going to be the one staying home or not, and if yes, if you’re going to be going back to work and in what field.
If you decide you’re going to take 10 years off from working and want to make a career pivot on the other side of those 10 years when your kids are in elementary school, in the years prior to your planned return, you should be looking to figure out where you want to be and how you’re going to get there. In this day and age, nothing happens instantly.
Tip #2: A Stay-At-Home Parent Should Gain the Skills and Experience You’ll Need in the Industry You’re Targeting
This may sound like a lot of work, because, well, frankly it is. You’ve heard the old saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day” right? Well, getting a job after being a stay-at home parent doesn’t usually happen in a day either, unless you are lucky, in which case congratulations go buy some lottery tickets while you’re at it (gamble responsibly of course).
But in all seriousness, if you are a stay-at-home parent for an extended amount of time, you actually have a lot of time that you can carve out to gaining skills and experience. You can gain skills by taking online classes during nap times, school time, early morning, late night or all of the above. I understand you need some “me” time, and you can have that time too (there’s plenty of time to watch Days of Our Lives. I’m assuming that’s still on since it’s been on since the 1800’s and doesn’t ever seem to have an end).
Once you’ve built up your skills, now it’s time to do the same with your experience. Volunteer, volunteer, volunteer. Especially if you don’t need the money (and if you were planning on being a stay-at-home parent, hopefully you planned for the financial aspect. Seems like planning is a theme in this huh?). Volunteering will be the easiest way for you to gain valuable experience without needing a lot of professional experience in the area you’re looking to get into.
So, if you’re keeping track at home, to sum up Tips 1 and 2: Plan, Plan, Plan, Plan and Volunteer, Volunteer, Mousekateer…I mean Volunteer! Okay now for more tips.
Tip #3: If You’re Planning To Re-Enter The Workforce Network as Much as You Possibly Can
Let me tell you about a former client who was a stay-at-home mom for a little over a decade. She was out of the workforce for so long that before she went on maternity leave, there was no such thing as iPhones, and when she got back into the workforce, she was using an iPhone 12 or 13. (I’ll be honest I’ve lost track of the iPhones after 10 which is currently where I’m at).
The point of this is not to be impressed at how many iPhones have come out, but to stress just how long and how much technology passed since she went on maternity leave. Before she went on maternity leave, she was working in the advertising industry…print advertising. Fast forward to a year ago, she accepted a role as a Teacher’s Assistant at a high school and is working her way to becoming a teacher.
You may be asking yourself how someone could go from working in print advertising to on track to becoming a teacher. I’ll give you one guess.
NET – WORK – ING
The only experience she had teaching was helping at her kids’ schools throughout her time away from working. The important thing she did though, was not just sit home every day for 10 years and watch Barney then take her kids to the park every day, rinse and repeat.
It’s extremely important to make connections with other parents, people in your neighborhood, and anyone else who may be able to benefit you down the road. Even though some of you may not like talking to other people at your son or daughter’s 9am soccer game, do it anyway. I found out the mayor’s granddaughter was on my son’s soccer team just by talking to people. Now I have a key to the city. Okay maybe that’s a stretch, but I do get free bagels at the local bagel shop in my town….when it’s close to closing time….and the bagels are about to get thrown in the garbage….but I’ll take it.
Anyway, you should be doing all you can to network and build relationships prior to when you actually need them. I’ll take the person making friends with parents at a Girl Scout meeting over the person sending out 1000 LinkedIn messages to random people if there was a “Who Gets The Job First Competition”.
Tip #4: A Stay-At-Home Parent Should Make Sure Their Resume Is Up to Date
It’s okay that your resume is covered in cobwebs after being a stay-at-home parent for 5 years. Do me a favor though, before you start sending it out again, please make sure you update it.
I know the next question you’re going to ask, and I have your answer. “But Joe, my resume has a gap from 2013 to 2023, what should I do?”
The gap situation may seem tricky, but like any good dentist would say, you need to fill in those gaps. (I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard a dentist say that but it sounds like something a dentist would say about missing teeth). The only reason you should have a gap of 10 years on your resume is if you literally did nothing for 10 years. And, if you’ve actually not done a single thing for 10 years and are expecting to get a big time job right away, you may have a better chance catching a unicorn.
For everyone else who’s even done the bare minimum and just parented during the time you were away, you’ve still done something. Call it being the CEO of “Smith Corporation”. You may be thinking to yourself running a household doesn’t really give me any real world practical experience, you couldn’t be wronger. I know, I know, it’s wrongest. Fine…you couldn’t be more wrong.
If you’ve gotten kids out of the house and to school in the morning, you have almost as much experience as a Hostage Negotiator during the Waco incident in the 90’s. I’m joking, kind of. But seriously, the amount of things you have to manage from feeding kids, to getting them dressed, their school stuff packed and driving them to their destination on time takes a lot of skill. This makes a high-pressure sales meeting or marketing presentation seem like a cake-walk.
So if you haven’t done anything besides parent, you should definitely list out the skills you’ve built by doing that over the years. If you’ve been able to volunteer somewhere or even take classes, put that on the resume. A Parent Teacher Organization Treasurer or President? Well, you know where that goes.
Spend time thinking about what you’ve done during your time off and put it into that polished up resume.
To Summarize (For Parents With A Short Term Memory That Forgot What They Just Read)
If you have to remember just a few things from this chat we had, remember this:
-Plan
-Build Your Skills and Experience
-Network…. Network…NETWORK
-Get that Resume looking like a million dollars.
And if you need help with any of the things I just mentioned, well, a simple click on this link and you can get set up with one of our world class coaches at Your Career Strategy.