One of the challenges that many job seekers face is how to get back into the workplace after taking a break from their career. Maybe they stopped working to raise their children, care for an aging parent, or live outside the country for a while. Whatever the reason, taking that initial step to get back to work can be daunting.
But it doesn’t have to be. Especially in a labor market like the one we’re in today.
The key is in knowing what you want, as I talked about in my last blog, and in doing the discovery work around what you have to offer – your skills, experience, competencies and behaviors.
A good example of this is a coaching client I worked with a couple of years ago. She was an executive who had been out of the workforce for several years. She was ready to search for a new opportunity to restart her career but was struggling to achieve that goal while managing several major changes in her personal life. She contacted me for support in focusing her mindset and creating a structured plan to find the right opportunity.
We started our work together by doing an assessment of her experience and skills to identify her unique qualifications and map those to several possible opportunities. Since she’d been out of the workforce for some time, we then worked on creating new personal marketing tools for her – an updated resume and a more professional LinkedIn Profile. I coached her on trends in the recruitment process and changes in the work environment. I helped her think through how she could best combine and leverage her skills and experience from two prior careers to stand out to a potential employer. By encouraging self-reflection and helping her recognize strengths she may have overlooked, I was able to build her confidence level for the job search journey.
We created a tailored approach for each of several target opportunities and the result was that she found a position that she wanted, and that leveraged her experience and skills. She is still there today.
Don’t let a career gap hold you back. Do the work to gain clarity around your skills, experience, achievements, and unique qualities that you bring to the workplace and then map those to potential opportunities.
If you’d like to learn more about transitioning back to the workplace, I’ll be facilitating a panel discussion during the Phase2Careers Forum on November 3, 2021. You can register here.
Want to chat about your career and explore new options? Let’s do this! Contact me today and schedule a meeting https://calendly.com/michellemendoza-connecttohr/45min. You can also reach me directly at michelle@connecttohr.com.