Have you found yourself as the protagonist in a common story for parents in our generation: you ducked out of the workforce when you had a child and want to sneak back in, but how? You now have a PhD in poop but haven’t used Slack or even heard of it. Your face scrunches at the gap in your resume. And what happens if your son forgets his lunch, and you can’t bring it?
You will face challenges as you prepare to return to the workforce. Fortunately, your STEM training and experience prepared you for this. Treat going back to work as a project. Apply the same rigor you’ve used in past projects to make your workplace re-entry just as successful.
Use this pragmatic methodology for optimizing the change for yourself and your family: Assess, Plan, Prototype, Operationalize, Optimize. Assess: What do you want?
Ahhhhh...money. This - and a conversation about something other than playground drama - drives many parents back into the workforce. You plunged from two salaries to one...with many more expenses. The promise of a revived salary calls your name. Before you plan that expensive trip abroad, carefully consider how your career affects your family. Returning to work from full-time parenting isn’t easy. You owe it to yourself and your family to do work you enjoy and that supports your balance of career and parenthood.
Like with any project, start with the specifications. A complicated project demands thorough requirements, so consider all aspects of your career: industry, hours, boss, peers, commute, and oh yes, the work itself. Treat yourself as you would any client: be honest!
Determine if you should return to your previous role/company/industry. Have you missed your old position? Did the birth of your child align with a job you wanted to abandon anyway? Does this career reboot provide an opportunity to utilize your talents elsewhere? Ensure returning to work will be a positive step for you and your family.
Define expectations of your role. Are you looking to keep your foot in the door or continue your track to the executive level? Salary, bonuses, promotions, working hours, and flexibility tie to the answers of those questions.
How do you want you work? Our economy offers endless configurations for working: full-time, part-time, employee, contractor, work from home, work share. Many companies will offer flexibilities for talented employees.
Plan: Handle the gap in your resume
As a full-time parent, you handle both strategy and tactical operations for your household corporation. You are CEO, CFO, COO, and HR. Everyone depends on your leadership! Maybe sometimes it’s a thankless job, but your family couldn’t imagine anyone better qualified. And your kid’s school probably receives countless consulting hours - something they couldn’t afford at your regular billing rate.
How come this doesn’t count on the resume??
Don’t attempt to artificially fill-in or apologize for the gap. Instead, make it work for you.
Shift your mindset from diapers to data points. Read blogs and trade journals. Go to lunch with friends in the industry and attend a conference. Download trial versions of industry tools to re-familiarize yourself. Sign up for training webinars. Scour YouTube for online lectures.
Impose structure on your day by scheduling these tasks into your future working hours.
Make volunteer hours work for you. Working the carnival cake walk is fun, but if you want to return to work as a chemist, organize the school science fair instead. Find an opportunity to use your specific skills in a volunteer role. If your associated organizations don’t need your skills, join one that does - they will appreciate it.
Go big. Don’t just show up for a time slot. Develop programs to affect change in the organization. Remember to make it sustainable once you transition - this provides the organization and its constituents with lasting benefit.
Equipped with this experience, you will be prepared and proud to discuss that gap - which we all know didn’t involve a lot of relaxation anyway!
Prototype: Test your re-entry
I’ve heard of a reality show where the participants get married without meeting. That reminds me of accepting a job. Both sides require big commitments, but no dating happens to test the relationship in stormy weather. Betas, pilots, and other prototypes are fundamental to STEM. Our personal lives need more prototypes, including our careers. “Prototyping” a job enables us to test it out with minimal commitment, to see if it fits for you, your partner, and your kids. Designing this prototype will require creativity. Hopefully, if your potential employer values you, they will assist in a trial. Try the following strategies for your prototype:
● During your interview process, meet everyone possible on the team. Ask lots of questions. ● Trust your gut and walk away if it feels like the wrong match. It may be all downhill from the interview!● Ask to shadow someone or do an apprenticeship.● Do contracting hours or take on a single project. ● Sign on as a contract-to-hire.● Practice the commute.
Operationalize: Lower your expectations
You didn’t become an engineer or mathematician by having low standards or doing things halfway. As the paycheck-less partner, you probably set a high bar for household management. Perhaps it’s creative lunches or a spotless house or school volunteer of the year (or all of the above!). But you set the stage for disaster trying to maintain those standards and manage your new job.
Time to temper your own high expectations and start delegating to your team at home. Again, treat this like a project and remove emotion. Adopt a combination of the following for success in your work and household:
● Be specific about which chores your partner must take on or share.● Hire a babysitter or other household help. ● Leverage your village. Time for carpools! ● Reduce or increase afterschool activities - whichever involves less work for you.● Have the kids eat the school lunch.● Embrace prepared meals and the occasional take-out.● My favorite: involve the kids. They can make their own lunches, sort laundry, or vacuum the house - all skills that will benefit them as adults!
Your family will forgive a less-than-perfect house - and probably didn’t share your high standards anyway.
A former co-worker runs a Kanban board with his family. All families members have their expectations for the week, and also know which family member may be dealing with an extra stress for the week. Brilliant! We should all do this.
Optimize: Be efficient at work
I haven’t calculated efficiency since my thermodynamics class in college, but if I did one for parenting, it wouldn’t be very big. Shoes always untied, doctor’s visits, and yet another school holiday means you must find optimization somewhere else in your equation.
Assert control over your tasks as soon as you start working. The days of extended lunches and late hours stretching into happy hour have ended. You need to work during your work hours to focus on your family (and you!) the rest of the time.
You’ve heard of a million ways to optimize your workday. Start doing them. Not everything works well for everyone, so apply a structured test: try one per week until you have a measurable difference in your output. For example, try the widely adopted working in 90 minute blocks with a 20 minute break or block off work time on your calendar. Learn more strategies from The Secrets of the Most Productive People, The Energy Project, or the Freakonomics podcast. The Internet is filled with ideas! Don’t make work a task assembly line, either. A little fun will prevent burn out. Build in a small something for you every week during work hours: coffee with a friend, power walk at lunch, or stay for happy hour every once in awhile!
If you have confidence to return to work, then it’s the right decision. Always remember you’ll offer your children an invaluable lesson they receive nowhere else: you are modelling for them. Nothing will maintain girls interest in STEM more than watching their mothers apply those skills in their personal and professional lives.