Many people find it hard to get back on the career path after a break for personal reasons. Leah Lambart* has some advice for those facing this problem.
It’s not unusual to lose confidence after taking a career break to raise a family, care for a relative or for other personal reasons.
From my own experience, in addition to working with many re-launchers, the longer people have been out of the workforce often the greater the hit to their confidence.
There are many reasons that contribute to this lack of confidence after a career break.
They include fear of having skills that are out of date, or being out of touch with networking and talking about themselves in a business sense.
They might feel they are out of practice with actually going to work in their new situation and therefore unsure about how it will all work now that they have a child/ children/sick relative to care for.
They may be in doubt about what they actually want to do, particularly if their values have changed since before they went on a career break.
Finally, they may be uncertain about what strengths and transferable skills they can offer.
The biggest issue with a loss of confidence is that it leads to inaction.
Then people feel stuck and don’t actually do anything to help their situation.
To deal with this I recommend the following key steps.
Manage the inner critic: Returning to work is a major change in your life and unfortunately your inner critic tends to appear when a major change is required.
The first thing you can do is to actually expect your inner critic to surface during your re-launch.
It may be saying that no-one will want you after being out of work so long, or you’re too old for a career change.
It may suggest that returning to work will be too difficult with a family to manage.
If you’re aware of these negative messages, you can start to manage them straight away.
Listen out for them, acknowledge them, and write them down.
Then for each message, write down arguments to the contrary.
If the inner voice is telling you that ‘you have no skills to offer’, meet a friend or a previous colleague and ask them to help you write down all the skills and attributes you can offer a future employer.
Take action: A vast majority of jobs are filled via networking and direct applications and this figure is even greater for re-launchers.
In most cases, your relaunch is not going to happen through researching online or via conventional job search methods, especially if your preference is part-time work.
Submitting your resume via SEEK is only going to highlight the gap in your career.
What you need to do is to get out of the house and get in front of people face-to-face to tell your story so that they can see for themselves what you have to offer.
Set yourself a goal each day to take a risk and do one thing to push you outside your comfort zone.
Take small action steps at first as you build your confidence.
Tell your family that you are returning to work next year (notice that I didn’t say thinking about returning to work next year).
Meet a friend to brainstorm career ideas, or organise a coffee with an ex-colleague to talk about industry changes.
Sign up for a one-day PowerPoint course to refresh your skills.
Send a LinkedIn connection to a stranger working in an area of interest.
Prepare an ‘elevator pitch’ — who you are, what you can offer and what you are interested in doing.
All these small steps will add up and your confidence will grow.
Practice talking about yourself: One of the hardest things to do after being out of the workforce is to talk about yourself and what you can offer.
Before you organise coffee meetings with potential employers or advocates, practice telling your story (to friends, to the mirror).
Think about what you’ll say if someone asks what you want to do with your career.
Update your personal style: Invest in a haircut and one new outfit that makes you feel fantastic.
When you have coffee meetings and start networking you need to feel confident with your look and presentation.
Relaunching your career can be a frustrating and overwhelming experience.
Give yourself mental and physical headspace to prepare for your return to work, setting aside time every day to take action steps to get you one step closer to your end goal.
*Leah Lambart is a career coach at Relaunch Me, based in Victoria. She can be contacted on [email protected].
This article first appeared on Leah’s blogsite.
