New Year, new resolution and new job

It’s mid January, festivities are over for another year and it’s back to work and back to school. Perhaps one of your resolutions is to return to work since it might be the end of maternity leave. Whatever the reason for a career break returning to the workplace is often not as easy as it might be. However, you could also find that it is a means of reinvigorating your life, giving it renewed focus and direction.

There’s a lot of thinking and questions to consider about what you want to do, what job would suit you, whether you can pick up where you left of or could you do something completely different? At the same time you also need to think about hours of work, child-care and travel arrangements.

So what do you do first?

Practical arrangements are of prime importance and ensuring that pre and post school child-care is in place will reassure you and make other decisions easier. More info from Finding and choosing childcare. Remember to think about:

Then there will be issues about juggling the re-balancing the roles and responsibilities at home [which might include managing children's drop off and pick up as well as domestic roles such as cooking, cleaning, shopping etc]. Getting strategies to achieve the future work-life-family balance right are almost a job in itself. Check here for some extra help and ideas.

You’ll also need to decide if it’s full-time, part-time or a flexible role you’re going to look for.
Next step: what are you going to do?

What are your options?
1.Go back to your old job
2.Stick with your old profession, but on a freelance basis
3.Go in a completely new direction, retraining and learning new skills.
4.Start up your own business
Whichever decision you take, you will need some confidence to start the process and you may be thinking that since you have been away from the workplace for a while that your skills are not as desirable as they used to be. That’s where transferable skills come into play. What have you been doing while you were away from the workplace?

In addition to identifying your skills and interests, you’ll need to consider whether you need to update any of your knowledge or skills. What’s changed since you left? Have there been updates or new procedures that you need to be aware of? So, take some time to research what’s been happening and if necessary take some training.

Final steps:

You need to ensure that your CV and the information you submit on application forms are as effective as they can be in communicating your skills and experience to potential employers. Think TOPICAL.

Reduce your whole life down to just 2 pages, and make it 100% better!

If you’d like more help in sorting your CV out, please let me know. I’ve had over 18 years experience working with people wanting to change direction, return to work or just changing roles and love helping people present themselves well on paper.

Lynn Tulip

Chartered MCIPD, PgDip Guidance & Assessment
HR Career Management Consultant

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About Lynn Tulip
Lynn Tulip is a career management and HR professional running her own HR consultancy. Her passion is working with individuals, helping them rekindle their work passion. Read the newly published Get That Job, the art of successful job hunting.. Apart from loving food and fitness, she enjoys her ever growing family. Find her online or follow her @LynnTulip and @A4P_HR
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