-
People returning to work
after a career break:
-
I call them relaunchers.
-
These are people who have taken
career breaks for elder care,
-
for childcare reasons,
-
pursuing a personal interest,
-
or a personal health issue.
-
Closely related are career
transitioners of all kinds:
-
veterans, military spouses,
-
retirees coming out of retirement,
-
or repatriating expats.
-
Returning to work
after a career break is hard
-
because of a disconnect
between the employers
-
and the relaunchers.
-
Employers can view hiring people
with a gap on their resume
-
as a high-risk proposition,
-
and individuals on career break
can have doubts about their abilities
-
to relaunch their careers,
-
especially if they've been out
for a long time.
-
This disconnect is a problem
that I'm trying to help solve.
-
Now, successful relaunchers
are everywhere and in every field.
-
This is Sami Kafala.
-
He's a nuclear physicist in the UK
-
who took a five-year career break
to be home with his five children.
-
The Singapore press recently wrote
about nurses returning to work
-
after long career breaks,
-
and speaking of long career breaks,
-
this is Mimi Kahn.
-
She's a social worker
in Orange County, California,
-
who returned to work
in a social services organization
-
after a 25-year career break.
-
That's the longest career break
that I'm aware of.
-
Supreme Court Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor
-
took a five-year career break
early in her career.
-
And this is Tracy Shapiro,
who took a 13-year career break.
-
Tracy answered a call for essays
by the Today Show
-
from people who were trying
to return to work
-
but having a difficult time of it.
-
Tracy wrote in that she was a mom of five
who loved her time at home,
-
but she had gone through a divorce
and needed to return to work,
-
plus she really wanted
to bring work back into her life
-
because she loved working.
-
Tracy was doing
what so many of us do
-
when we feel like we've put in
a good day in the job search.
-
She was looking for a finance
or accounting role,
-
and she had just spent
the last nine months
-
very diligently researching
companies online
-
and applying for jobs with no results.
-
I met Tracy in June of 2011,
-
when the Today Show asked me
if I could work with her
-
to see if I could help her
turn things around.
-
The first thing I told Tracy
was she had to get out of the house.
-
I told her she had to go public
with her job search
-
and tell everyone she knew
about her interest in returning to work.
-
I also told her, "You are going
to have a lot of conversations
-
that don't go anywhere.
-
Expect that, and don't
be discouraged by it.
-
There will be a handful
that ultimately lead
-
to a job opportunity."
-
I'll tell you what happened
with Tracy in a little bit,
-
but I want to share with you
a discovery that I made
-
when I was returning to work
-
after my own career break of 11 years
out of the full time workforce,
-
and that is, that people's view of you
is frozen in time.
-
What I mean by this is,
when you start to get in touch with people
-
and you get back in touch
with those people from the past,
-
the people with whom you worked
or went to school,
-
they are going to remember you as you were
-
before your career break,
-
and that's even if your sense of self
has diminished over time,
-
as happens with so many of us
-
the farther removed we are
from our professional identities.
-
So for example, you might
think of yourself as someone
-
who looks like this.
-
This is me, crazy after a day
of driving around in my minivan.
-
Or here I am in the kitchen.
-
But those people from the past,
-
they don't know about any of this.
-
They only remember you as you were,
-
and it's a great confidence boost
to be back in touch with these people
-
and hear their enthusiasm
about your interest in returning to work.
-
There's one more thing I remember vividly
-
from my own career break,
-
and that was that I hardly kept up
with the business news.
-
My background is in finance,
-
and I hardly kept up with any news
when I was home caring
-
for my four young children,
-
so I was afraid I'd go into an interview
-
and start talking about a company
that didn't exist anymore.
-
So I had to resubscribe
to the Wall Street Journal
-
and read it for a good six months
cover to cover before I felt
-
like I had a handle on what was going on
in the business world again.
-
I believe relaunchers
are a gem of the work force,
-
and here's why.
-
Think about our life stage:
-
for those of us who took career breaks
for childcare reasons,
-
we have fewer or no maternity leaves.
-
We did that already.
-
We have fewer spousal
or partner job relocations.
-
We're in a more settled time of life.
-
We have great work experience.
-
We have a more mature perspective.
-
We're not trying to find ourselves
at an employer's expense.
-
Plus we have an energy,
an enthusiasm about returning to work
-
precisely because we've been
away from it for a while.
-
On the flip side, I speak with employers,
-
and here are two concerns
that employers have
-
about hiring relaunchers.
-
The first one is, employers
are worried that relaunchers
-
are technologically obsolete.
-
Now I can tell you,
-
having been technology
obsolete myself at one point,
-
that it's a temporary condition.
-
I had done my financial analysis
-
so long ago that I used Lotus 1-2-3.
-
I don't know if anyone
can even remember back that far,
-
but I had to relearn it on Excel.
-
It actually wasn't that hard.
A lot of the commands are the same.
-
I found PowerPoint much more challenging,
-
but now I used PowerPoint all the time.
-
I tell relaunchers that employers
expect them to come to the table
-
with a working knowledge
of basic office management software,
-
and if they're not up to speed,
-
then it's their
responsibility to get there.
-
And they do.
-
The second area of concern
that employers have about relaunchers
-
is they're worried that relaunchers
don't know what they want to do.
-
I tell relaunchers that they need
to do the hard work
-
to figure out whether their interests
and skills have changed
-
or have not changed
-
while they have been on career break.
-
That's not the employer's job.
-
It's the relauncher's responsibility
to demonstrate to the employer
-
where they can add the most value.
-
Back in 2010 I started noticing something.
-
I had been tracking
return to work programs since 2008,
-
and in 2010, I started noticing
-
the use of a short term
paid work opportunity,
-
whether it was called
an internship or not,
-
but an internship-like experience,
-
as a way for professionals
to return to work.
-
I saw Goldman Sachs and Sara Lee
-
start corporate reentry
internship programs.
-
I saw a returning engineer,
a non-traditional reentry candidate,
-
apply for an entry-level
internship program in the military,
-
and then get a permanent job afterward.
-
I saw two universities
integrate internships
-
into mid-career executive
education programs.
-
So I wrote a report
about what I was seeing,
-
and it became this article
for Harvard Business Review
-
called "The 40-Year-Old Intern."
-
I have to thank the editors
there for that title,
-
and also for this artwork
where you can see the 40-year old intern
-
in the midst of all the college interns.
-
And then, courtesy
of Fox Business News,
-
they called the concept
"The 50-Year-Old Intern."
-
(Laughter)
-
So five of the biggest
financial services companies
-
have reentry internship programs
for returning finance professionals,
-
and at this point, hundreds of people
have participated.
-
These internships are paid,
-
and the people who move on
to permanent roles
-
are commanding competitive salaries.
-
And now, seven of the biggest
engineering companies
-
are piloting reentry internship programs
for returning engineers
-
as part of an initiative
with the Society of Women Engineers.
-
Now, why are companies embracing
the reentry internship?
-
Because the internship allows the employer
-
to base their hiring decision
-
on an actual work sample
-
instead of a series of interviews,
-
and the employer does not have to make
that permanent hiring decision
-
until the internship period is over.
-
This testing our period
removes the perceived risk
-
that some managers attach
to hiring relaunchers,
-
and they are attracting
excellent candidates
-
who are turning into great hires.
-
Think about how far we have come.
-
Before this, most employers
were not interested
-
in engaging with relaunchers at all,
-
but now, not only are programs
being developed
-
specifically with relaunchers in mind,
-
but you can't even apply
for these programs
-
unless you have a gap on your resume.
-
This is the mark of real change,
-
of true institutional shift,
-
because if we can solve
this problem for relaunchers,
-
we can solve it for other
career transitioners too.
-
In fact, an employer just told me
that their veterans
-
return to work program
-
is based on their reentry
internship program.
-
And there's no reason why there can't be
a retiree internship program.
-
Different pool, same concept.
-
So let me tell you what happened
with Tracy Shapiro.
-
Remember that she had to tell
everyone she knew
-
about her interest in returning to work.
-
Well, one critical conversation
with another parent in her community
-
led to a job offer for Tracy,
-
and it was an accounting job
in a finance department.
-
But it was a temp job.
-
The company told her
there was a possibility
-
it could turn into something more,
but no guarantees.
-
This was in the fall of 2011.
-
Tracy loved this company,
and she loved the people
-
and the office was less than
10 minutes from her house.
-
So even though she had
a second job offer
-
at another company
for a permanent full-time role,
-
she decided to take her chances
with this internship
-
and hope for the best.
-
Well, she ended up blowing away
all of their expectations,
-
and the company not only
made her a permanent offer
-
at the beginning of 2012,
-
but they made it even more interesting
and challenging,
-
because they knew what Tracy could handle.
-
Fast forward to 2015,
-
Tracy's been promoted.
-
They've paid for her
to get her MBA at night.
-
She's even hired another relauncher
for work for her.
-
Tracy's temp job was a tryout,
-
just like an internship,
-
and it ended up being a win
for both Tracy and her employer.
-
Now, my goal is to bring
the reentry internship concept
-
to more and more employers,
-
but in the meantime,
-
if you are returning to work
after a career break,
-
don't hesitate to suggest
an internship
-
or an internship-like arrangement
-
to an employer that does not have
a formal reentry internship program.
-
Be their first success story,
-
and you can be the example
for more relaunchers to come.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)