Informational interviews are casual meetings where you scope out potential jobs and learn activities in your industry. Depending on the connection, you may be able to get advice on your career path. The important thing about informational interviews is that you’re letting people know you’re on the job market and are looking for details to help you in your search. So you’ve scored an informational interview with an amazing person…
You may recall reading the statistic that men, on average, apply for jobs when they meet 60 percent of the qualifications, whereas women tend to only apply if they meet 100 percent. While this stat is often attributed to a lack of confidence, a follow-on study found that many women perceive the rules of job searching differently than men do. The women in that study assumed the list of qualifications…
I would venture to guess that most people, when they leave the workforce to focus on caring for their family, plan to re-enter at some point. That plan may be specific or hazy, but almost everyone I’ve ever spoken to about their restart journey says something like, “I always planned to go back to work.” And while I don’t think anyone expects that the search for employment will be easy,…
Short answer: Maybe. In April I wrote about LinkedIn’s new feature allowing people to include career breaks, for caregiving and other reasons, to their profiles. I applauded the move — LinkedIn’s profile had been overly rigid and made accounting for time out of the paid workforce very difficult. Making our profiles more customizable to fit our actual lives is an important step in recognizing that not every career follows a…
“Right now I’m relearning how to be in the workforce again. This returnship is opening the door for me, it’s helping me to be more confident and comfortable in my job. And the thing is, I’m learning every day.” Collective Health interviewed Fatima for a blog article titled, “Meet the Collective: Hi Fatima!“. Read about her successful return-to-work journey and her thoughts on how employers can support women returning to…
After a 15-year career break, Wanda Chiu returned to her engineering career with a returnship at Cloudflare in 2016. Several years later, she started a new role at Mux. In this video, Tami Forman, Executive Director of Path Forward, asked Wanda why she encouraged Mux to start a returnship program. In short, Wanda has so enjoyed the supportive culture at Mux that she knows it will make the perfect landing…
Our mission at Path Forward is to empower caregivers to restart their careers after a break focused on caregiving. Our work centers on shifting bias and stigma while uplifting and celebrating these women and men throughout their return-to-work journeys. The idea started because many of us had the personal experience of either being or knowing a mother who’d left the workforce to care for her young children and was struggling…
Path Forward supports caregivers of all genders in returning to the workforce. But we recognize that women often carry an extra burden. That’s why for International Women’s Day on March 8, we’re calling out that many obstacles women face are due to gendered stereotypes about careers and caregiving. In the home, these may include ingrained ideas about who is most responsible for providing childcare or whose career is most important.…
The Ongoing Caregiving Crisis in the US Fuels the Nonprofit’s Actions to Expand Reach (New York City: Nov. 29, 2021) — The national nonprofit Path Forward, which helps moms and other caregivers return to the paid workforce, today announced the appointment of three new board members — Jayne Jamison, Neema Bollampally, and Sheena White. The appointments are a first step toward increasing the organization’s reach and impact in response to…
Kathryn Zaharek returned to work after a 3 year break by completing a returnship at Audible, where she now works full-time as a Senior Product Manager. She tells us about how she prepared for her return, how Audible supported her during her remote returnship experience, and explains why returners should always have an elevator pitch ready. Tell me a bit about your career break. What type of work did you…
