Published May 4, 2016 | By John Little
Working at home as a stay at home parent can be tricky to explain on your resume. The biggest challenge you’ll face with returning to the workforce is how to sell yourself to prospective employers. Should you mention your ‘Stay At Home Parent’ status or should you leave a gap in your resume?
Skills, skills and more skills!
Believe it or not, you’ve probably got even more to offer than a childless employee. You’ve now gained a multitude of life experience under your belt and have spent the past year or possibly longer fine-tuning your ability to multi-task, prioritise, communicate and no doubt you’ve also developed an incredible ability to stay organised. Why? Because you had to! You’ve likely also honed your exposure to logistical arrangements, your ability to run on time to a clockwork routine and your ability to work within a specific budget.
No gaps
A good resume should always be gap-less regardless of the scenario and it’s good practice to label your time raising your children as ‘parental leave’ regardless of whether you were paid or not. It’s also wise to label your time off as parental leave no matter if you were employed during that time or not. Rather than listing all the tasks of a stay at home parent on your resume, simply list ‘Parental Leave’, include the dates, and leave it at that.
Demonstrate currency
Pair your period of parental leave with relevant study in your field. Clearly highlight on your resume how you’ve kept your skills up to date and the ways in which you’ve remained abreast of changes in technology or legislation that are likely to affect your work. Study can include a lengthy qualification but also any variety of short course so long as it was run by an accredited training provider. Also include any voluntary or part-time work you completed during your time off. Don’t disregard this experience simply because you weren’t paid or weren’t working in an office for example.
Use your squad!
Another trick is to network, network, network! Leverage people in your network to source leads on positions. Some positions are never formally advertised. Others may be advertised but you may not get a look-in unless someone is able to put in a good word. Competition is high but employers may be keen to meet you if they hear about your brilliant work experience from a colleague or another person within your network.
Last but not least, celebrate! Landing the perfect position when making your return isn’t easy and it can take time. But just like for every other parent who’s been there before you, it will happen. So give your resume and job search the time and energy it deserves, and enjoy your success when the time comes.
CONTACT US. If you need assistance on how to craft and design your resume, cover letter, Linkedin profile or branding profile, please log onto www.successfulresumessingapore.com or email infor@successfulresumessingapore.com
Phone: +65 6469 7100
