You’ve been gaining new skills throughout your career break. Many of those skills and experiences are valuable in the workforce. But how do you translate those experiences in a way that recruiters and hiring managers will understand?
The better you are able to articulate how your experiences have helped you develop skills that are valuable to a business, the more likely you are to persuade a potential employer that you will be a valuable asset to their team.
Here are four common experiences that many people who are out of the workforce have, and the business skills that they help to build. Use these ideas to update your resume with the kinds of skills and accomplishments that will get you noticed.
1. Leading a volunteer organization or project
Leadership in a volunteer organization is one of the most common ways that people build skills outside of their paid profession. But while it’s often cited as an obvious plus for people to be leading these groups, many job seekers don’t articulate the benefits well on their resumes. Running a volunteer organization pr project shows that you have the ability to persuade using influence instead of authority. This is a hugely valuable skill in today’s highly matrixed, collaborative environments. Similarly it shows that you can collaborate with different personalities and manage competing agendas. Maybe most important of all, running volunteer projects demonstrates that you can focus and deliver on goals, so be sure your resume lists specific achievements.
One common volunteer accomplishment is fundraising and managing a budget. Regardless of the type of job you’re seeking, your ability to secure and maintain financial viability for your project will be interesting to any business. Plus, leadership in a volunteer organization shows an ability and willingness to lead. These posts are often elected, which means you had to convince a group of people that you could lead. And the fact that you raised your hand demonstrates drive and ambition — traits that all employers admire, especially when deployed in service of a greater goal.
2. Participating in a volunteer project
While many advice columns focus on leadership roles in the volunteer world, you can gain a lot of really important skills and experiences by participating at any level. This is especially true if you volunteer strategically on a project that lets you practice and show off your existing skills.
Volunteering shows your ability to maintain commitment to a cause, despite the ambiguity of roles and responsibilities that’s so common with volunteer organizations. While roles are often better articulated in businesses, you can expect ambiguity at work, especially as traditional hierarchies have given way to flatter organizations that require more cross-departmental coordination. Volunteer work also demonstrates your ability to manage your own performance to accomplish the team’s goals because you rarely have an effective “boss” in volunteer organizations. In today’s leaner business environment, showing that you can get the work done without a lot of management oversight is a big plus. And again, volunteering demonstrates passion and drive — traits that all employers look for.
3. Managing your child’s special needs case
We’ve been surprised how often we meet people who’ve taken a break from their career in order to devote time to managing their child’s special needs. These “breaks” can be difficult and are often taken out of necessity, but they also help you develop specific skills that translate to business. First and foremost, managing a special needs case involves navigating complex bureaucracies and rules while adhering to very strict deadlines and schedules. The number of organizations that are often involved in a child’s case — school districts, health insurers, doctors and hospitals — can be staggering both in breadth and complexity. Working on your child’s case demonstrates an ability to process complex information and make decisions, often with limited information — traits that are highly valued in fast-paced businesses.
4. Coordinating an international move
We also meet many people who’ve taken time off from their career in order to move their families – sometimes multiple times and often around the world – in service of a spouse’s career. (This is especially true for military spouses, but also happens frequently across today’s global workforce.) Coordinating this kind of move demonstrates many skills that businesses need today. Like a special needs case, coordinating a move to another country also requires you to navigate complex bureaucracies and rules while adhering to deadlines and schedules. You’ve also learned to adapt to different cultures and supported your family in their adaptation — something that businesses will recognize as important. Of course for any global business, time abroad gives you a perspective on the world that is very valuable. And you get a net-plus if you also had to learn another language, which both demonstrates your ability to learn new skills and is a skill in itself that many companies value.
So how do you specifically translate these experiences to your resume? Think about our suggestions for the types of skills that your unpaid work can demonstrate. Then add your accomplishments in those roles to your resume with an eye toward those valued skills. By translating your “non-work” experience into business language, you will help them connect the dots to the requirements of the job and are far more likely to catch the eye of a recruiter or hiring manager.