Jump Starting Your Way Back into the Career World After Having a Family
This guest post was shared by Lisa, a mom of twins who recently re-entered the workforce after a career hiatus.
If you’re a very busy working mom, who’s taken the time out of your career to have a family, there’s a chance you feel like you’ve missed the mark on getting back into the working world. You love your children, you love your partner, and you absolutely adore the home you’ve created together, but now you want to go out there and show the world just how much of a force you are to be reckoned with!
But don’t worry – you haven’t missed the mark on anything, and you’ve still got plenty of time to establish yourself back into the working world. But if you do feel a bit pushed for time, and you’re not quite able to make up your mind on the moves you should make next, we’ve got a few shortcuts for you. After all, it’s a modern world we’re living in, and the digital age has made crafting a career for yourself a lot easier than it’s ever been before.
Here are some of those shortcutting tips you need!
Assess Your Skills
The first thing to do, before you make any moves back into the career field, is to know yourself inside and out. You need to have belief in what you can do, and you need to be confident over whether or not you’re capable. But to do that, you’ll need to so some self-assessment! Don’t worry, it’s not as hard as it sounds.
You might want to head back to your CV during a time like this; if it’s old and outdated, you’ve got the perfect starting point for knowing what you used to get up to, and assessing if you’ve still got the skills that were involved. You’ve got a whole list of your career history right in front of you; go through it bit by bit, updating as you go, and working out the pros and cons of each and every bit of experience you have.
To make this process easier, ask yourself some questions: What skill helped you achieve the most? Which one had the highest paying salary attached to it? What kind of tasks did you used to get up to with it, and how do they compare to what’s on the market now?
Train Online
Once you have worked out what you’re still good at (and feel confident with!), and what would be the highest paying or rewarding job to do with that skill, you can turn to the internet for help. You know you’ve got some experience, and you can be sure that the skill written down in front of you is valuable to a lot of employers out there, but are you yourself up to date on how to use it? This isn’t on you: times change, and so do the way we do things!
But thanks to the internet, you can take a crash course in your skills, to make sure you’re still working with them to the best of your ability. For example, if you used to run a business, or held a high ranking management position, a cert 3 qualification will only serve to back you up on your job hunt. Think of it as a way of retraining yourself, to go on to do bigger and better things.
Re-establish Your Network
Finally, make sure you’re putting yourself out there during this whole process, and make it known that you’re in search of a new job. If you had quite a strong network in the past, get back in touch with the people in the web; they know you, they’ll want to keep up with you and everything you’ve been doing, and you have the advantage of an already established (and hopefully quite long…) working history – you’re in a great position to score the career of your dreams here!
And if you can get back in touch with any old employers, while you’re at it, it might be worth asking for a few references here and there. You did your best work for them whilst at their company, and now they can return the favor in the form of a glowing review.
You can very well shortcut your way back into your career, with various things you can do to make sure you’re well on your way to building a better portfolio for yourself. You’ve got a lot of talent and skill on your side, and now’s the time to polish it!
