Many of you have left the workforce to either stay at raising your children, pursue business ventures, care for a sick relative and many other valid reasons. Some of you take two years off whereas some of you spend 15 years pursuing other endeavors. It is also common to see people who have owned a successful business decide to reduce their work stress by transitioning to a regular full time employment for the remaining 10-15 years prior to retiring.
As you approach the transition from the former to the latter, you might find yourselves wondering how to market and present yourself to employers. Some of you might want to secure a similar position to the one you had prior to venturing away or you might want the opposite, a lower position than the one you had when you initiated your corporate departure. This might be due to wanting a less stressful job to spend more time with your family. After all, we all have important things to dedicate time outside of work.
This type of transition tends to be a difficult one for many of you. There are many negative stigmas that have developed against people who have spent some time away from corporate America. Combating these negative stigmas is a major challenge that needs to be overcome, first by your mind and then your resume.
Here are the top three challenges you must overcome when deciding to transition back into the workforce:
Believe in Yourself
The first challenge lies in believing in your professional capacities, abilities, and skills. While some of you might be ready to tackle this transition head on, many of you begin to doubt and wonder whether you still have what it takes to be an asset to employers. You begin to question your skills and qualifications compared to your competition, who are up to par and updated with current job demands and requirements.
You must believe you are good enough to make a difference in an organization. You must believe you have an edge that is very unique and difficult to find in the hundreds of other candidates who are applying for the same vacancy. Your own self-perception will transfer onto your resume and other career marketing documents, such as your value proposition letter or professional biography.
Research, research, research. Be prepared.
The second challenge lies in researching current positions and the skills required to fulfill those responsibilities. You must conduct a thorough research of the jobs for which you are at least 70% qualified and even the companies you would make a good match. If you have no idea of what position to pursue, brainstorm on your background and think of the jobs you had when you were in the workforce, as well as the education you received. Think about what others say you are good at or have a special talent for. Was is sales? Was it communications? Was it motivating people? Good organizational skills? Management? Developing new ideas? Think. Think of all the areas you were and are good at and write them on paper.
After taking notes on this brainstorming session, go online and research the top 10 jobs in high demand. Use a site like Indeed.com. Leave the search field empty and enter the country in the where field. After entering this search, sort the results by state. You will also have the option of selecting the results based on salary. Study these results and see which positions match your brainstorming notes.
Ask yourself, “Do I meet at least 70% of the requirements for each of these positions?”
After narrowing your results, select the top three preferred positions. Once you have done this, you are now ready to focus on your resume.
A Resume that Markets Your Best Achievements & Problem Solving Capabilities
The third challenge you must overcome is developing a resume that markets your qualifications while overcoming the idea that people who have been out of the workforce for more than 6 months are:
- considered unhirable or unemployable.
- believed to be incompetent, as they apparently have not developed new skills.
- believed to have outdated skills and follow old processes that are no longer efficient.
- lacking technical skills, because technology is advancing so rapidly.
- believed to have poor verbal and written business communication skills, since they have not been in a business environment for a while.
- believed to lack the ability to work with teams, since they have become more and more independent.
These are only several negative stigmas employers have against those who have been out of the workforce for some time. These believes are quite valid and reasonable, but not necessarily true.
So, how do you tackle these negative stigmas on your resume so employers actually call you for an interview?
First, draw attention away from the time gap.
Here are some strategies that can be applied in certain scenarios:
- Develop a 3-5 line story expressing your personal achievements during your time away from the workforce. Your personal stories can be presented in a positive light with a few achievements. This helps keep the flow of time and dates on your resume.
- Present your most notable achievements on the forefront of your resume even if they occurred during your earlier work history.
- Design and format your most impressive problem solving achievements in such a way that the reader is so impressed and captivated by such that they do not notice the dates until the second or third review of your resume. At which point, they have already been wowed and wanting to meet you.
You must arm yourself with a powerful resume to re-establish yourself among your professional network. If you want to be the person employers call out of the hundreds of other applicants, you need to invest in a resume that will give you a good return on your investment. If you are using your old resume to send it to employers via online aggregator websites just like thousands of other people, then you are truly wasting valuable time.
Take control of the venture to your new job by overcoming the three challenges in this article; believing in yourself, researching, and arming yourself with a powerful resume. If you want to be the person whose resume employers actually compliment, then you should to have a well crafted professional marketing resume.
My personal experience
I remember when I used to search for jobs and send my resume to employers, I used to get called for several of the vacancies for which I submitted my resume. Once at the interview meeting, I would get complimented on my resume. Employers would say, “Do you know how many people applied for this position? 120 or 150 (+/-) and you were called out of a handful of them. You have a good resume.” I remember another employer say, “Nice resume. Did you create your own resume?” Of course, I answered that I did. If asked, you can say, “I worked with someone to create it.”
I guide my clients towards overcoming these top three challenges. As we begin collaborating, I lead them into imperative research and independent brainstorming sessions. All of this is exemplified with a professionally crafted marketing resume they use to send off to their target employers and professional network.
Would you like to partner with me to create your new resume?
Click here to select your new career portfolio.
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Yuleni Pulido: Professional Resume Writer
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