How to return to work after a gap
Updated 2024-06-27. Originally published 2011-01-01 on VocationVillage.com
Dear Dr. Civitelli,
I am a 37-year-old stay-at-home parent with a BSBA in Management. I haven’t worked in the past 10 years, and my work experience before that was in a different country, as a cashier. Even though I completed a degree, my lack of experience, and having no references, keeps me unemployed. I am competing with the unemployed, the underemployed, other stay-at-home parents coming back to the workforce, kids out of college, kids in college, kids in high school, etc.
I apply for entry-level jobs, but nobody calls me back. What should I do? What are my chances of getting a job with any possibility of advancement?
Signed,
Frustrated
Dear Frustrated,
First, I recommend you stop thinking about the competition because doing so is making you anxious! If you have been sending a resume to employers who don’t know you, I can see why it feels like all those other people are seeking the same thing as you. It can feel tough to differentiate yourself, so here is what I would do to stand out from the crowd:
1. First, choose a clear focus for your job search. Job hunting without a focus is ten times more difficult and 1/10 as effective. Think about your natural strengths, interests, values, and personality. In your life, for what skills do you receive compliments? What types of activities feel effortless to you and more difficult for others?
Try to translate those skills into work-related activities. It might be project management, customer service, communications, sales, data analysis, accounting, or something else.
2. Second, get involved with professionally oriented activities that allow you to become acquainted with people who can serve as references for you and who will say that you are brilliant at whatever focus you identified above. This can be volunteer work with nonprofits or temporary jobs, both of which are easier to land than full-time jobs with advancement potential. Think of starting here as an investment in your future. In addition to building your network, these are also resume-building activities that can dramatically change how your resume looks in just a few months. To find volunteer positions, you can use:
3. While you are involved in resume-building activities, you may need a lifeboat job to pay the bills. This can be anything and doesn’t even have to go on your resume. One strategy is to find something that involves a lot of interaction with the public. The reason this can be good is that you never know which random conversation can lead to a job offer, in which case you can stop all the other resume-building activities so that you are free to take the new job.
4. In my experience, fun social activities work just as well to make connections as professional activities do. This means if you’d rather spend a lot of time learning a new sport or hobby or going to book clubs or anything else that appeals to you, you wouldn’t be wasting your time. Just be your most pleasant self and keep the emphasis on developing relationships naturally. After you have made some friends, you can tell them you are job hunting, and ask them to please keep you in mind for job openings that fit with the focus you identified as your career target.
5. Try to find a professional association that represents the people in your chosen career field. It is much easier for job hunters to network their way into a new job when they concentrate their efforts within a specific profession. If networking and small talk are not your strong suit, don’t stress too much about how to do this. Just be an observer and learn about the field. If you regularly go to the same group’s activities, you will eventually be an insider, especially if you offer to help with something by volunteering for a leadership position.
6. If the career focus you choose is something that lends itself more easily to finding customers/clients than an employer, consider launching a service-oriented business. The advantages of doing this are that you can bring in revenue fairly quickly and many service-businesses have very low startup costs. Customers/clients don’t care about your resume or job history. They are only concerned with whether you can help them with specific problems or concerns. If you start a service-oriented business, you can offer your services at a deeply discounted or pro bono fee for the first three clients, in exchange for positive reviews if you do a good job. Here are 115 ideas for a service-oriented business. https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/starting-new-job/service-business-ideas
7. Read success stories of people who returned to the workplace after an absence. Try to find examples of people in your career field so you can copy the strategies that worked well for others who were in similar situations as you.
8. Remote-first jobs attract more candidates per opening than hybrid or in-office jobs, so consider whether you prefer to hold out for a remote-first job if that is what you really want, or first get some recent professional experience in a hybrid or in-office job and move toward a remote-first job as soon as you can.
9. Consider applying to entry-level jobs through temp agencies. For some organizations, temp-to-permanent is the standard way new employees break in.
10. If nothing seems to work, get professional assistance through a private career coach, college-based community career counselor, nonprofit or government-sponsored career counseling agency, library job search classes, or church-based career counseling.
A career counselor can help you choose your career focus, plan your job search strategy, and learn how to network. Career counselors can also provide emotional support when you feel stressed or discouraged.
Hope that helps!
If you returned to the workplace after a long absence, please contact me if you would share your success story with my readers.
