Empowering Advice for Women: How to Get a Job After Career Hiatus?

There are many reasons that make people decide to quit their job. Perhaps, they are too tired and stressed, they want to have more time with their family, or they want to continue their education, or even they have to relocate to accompany their partner who has moved elsewhere. Although this can happen to anyone, in the reality this situation is more experienced by women. In Robert Walters’ official report entitled Understanding Employers’ Attitudes Towards Women Returning to Work as many as 66% of female respondents in Indonesia stated that they had stopped working at some time during their lives.

As of my experience, in the midst of a pandemic that never subsides, I had to move abroad to accompany my husband who worked there. The rise of the Working From Anywhere(WFA) sheds some lights that I can still continue my work remotely, even after getting married and relocate abroad.

It was of course hard at the beginning. Not only do you need a work visa, but also getting a job in a new place is always hard. I ended up taking a 7 month hiatus from work.

So, how can you get a job again after a long hiatus career? In theory it seems very easy, you just need to update your CV and then send your job application. Unfortunately, Most of them fail to put this theory into practice. Women feel insecure because there is an empty gap in their CV which is often considered a weakness, especially if they take a break for a long time. In addition, there is a fear from women that the office will perceive the presence of children as a burden that can distract them from focusing on work, thereby reducing their chances of being accepted. Whereas the responsibility as a mother should not make an employee incompetent in their work. Because there are several skills of housewives that can be proud of, such as multitasking which is a typical strength of women in general, customer oriented because they have to prepare some of the needs of their children and husbands, and also leadership because mothers have to lead for their children when their husbands are not at home. For those reasons, women should not feel insecure even though they have been on hiatus career for a long time and want to return to work. Based on my experience, there are several things that must be done by women who want to return to being working moms after a long hiatus from work.

Continue to upgrade skills
As long as you leave your job, it is very likely to experience changes, especially if your job is related to technology because it continues to change from day to day. Therefore, it is very important to equip yourself with the skills and abilities needed to face the new world of work, taking online courses is one alternative that can be done to continue to increase your skills. If what you have mastered is no longer relevant, it will be difficult to compete with other jobseekers.

Build relationships with many people
Networking with many people is also important when you want to return to your career. Because the more you have relationships with people, the greater the opportunity to return to the world of work. Usually when you tell your friends or former colleagues about your plans to return to work, they will introduce us to new people who might have job vacancies that match our qualifications.

Promote yourself effectively
When you are looking for work, you are actually selling services for the abilities you have. Because you have to be smart in marketing your capabilities so that recruiters are interested in us. Nowadays, marketing your abilities is much easier because of there are many professional social media that will bring out your profile to others such as LinkedIn.

Stay confident
As I have said before, actually being a housewife requires you to keep honing some skills. That’s why you must stay confident. Confidence is the key to returning to the workforce successfully. If you want others to believe in your abilities, then you must first believe in yourself and your abilities.

Becoming a working mom is always a dream for me and at SekolahMu I can still make this dream a reality.

That’s it! Thanks for reading.

PS:
Thanks to my supervisors and SekolahMu HR team for providing the opportunity and believing that a woman who has been out of work for so long can still be counted on to work.