Any advice that you could give to a Mom who is re-entering the workforce (it has been 15 years)

It sounds harsh, and I don’t mean it like that, I’m not sure how to get it across completely kindly.

Don’t tell everyone about how hard it is to be away from house/kids/family unless you’re absolutely sure they can relate.

Depending on what sort of job she has, she may feel lost at first, chances are she’ll do fine and the people around her won’t ever think she’s lost. Unless she tells them how out of place she feels, how much she misses the way things were, and how unsure she is.

In the office: Show everyone what you can do, then get to know them, then tell them about yourself. For better or worse, work is about production.

Outside the office, in our day to day lives: It’s exactly the opposite, you tell people about yourself, get to know them, and then they learn what you can do. It’s about who you are.

And just like anyone else, after you get your feet wet and feel good about it, don’t settle, find something you love and go for it. If it’s not that first job, just get through it for a while until something great comes along.

My best advice is for her to not sell herself short. As a mom and former member of the workforce I know that I am a great candidate to be someone’s employee. I’m loyal, dilligent, dependable, organized, able to multi-task without becoming distracted, able to set and follow a routine, allow ample time to accomplish projects——etc.

If she could run her resume by a couple of her friends first, that’d be a great idea. Also, if her friends or her spouse are able to role play an interview, it’d help her.

She most likely will be delighted to get out of the house everyday, too! She should show that entusiasm when she’s interviewing.

It’s VERY difficult, at least in the fields I’ve been in.

I would say she needs to get really creative (but remain realistic and not laughable) with her resume. And unfortunately, she should aim for entry level.

As an HR person, I find it difficult to find qualities I can use in a person who hasn’t worked in 15 years!

I would interview them, however, for very entry level positions.

But when someone puts “Domestic Engineer” on their resume, I just laugh. So please tell her to avoid that kinda stuff when she gets creative…

What sounds hard at first is not that hard. What I like the most for the US is that everyone is given a chance to prove themselves. She could have been away for 15 years but in those 15 years she learned a lot more than others. Raising a kid is different from any job one can find /have. And it requires top attention and dedication for that mom. Since she was off for 15 years she has at least 4 kids [by my calculations] so she can easily point out she raise a small army ^^

So she should focus her job search to the military and/or Blackwater? LOL

I’d sit her down with someone from the career office at the community college and sort out what her skills from home were that she could reintegrate into the workforce: management, budgeting, that sort of thing, so she can emphasize those skills on her resume.

It’s work, whether she got paid or not.