Earlier in my career, I remember reporting to a new office after a promotion. One of the first things I noticed was that everyone had a manila folder with a smile drawn on it on their desk. Curious, I asked a friendly face what the folders were for, and her matter of fact response of “they’re our smile files” let me know I was missing something. Seeing my confusion, she…
As a return to work and leadership coach, I have coached hundreds of individuals returning to paid work after a career pause. In my experience, one of the most common hurdles to overcome is a lack of self-confidence. A lack of confidence often arises in situations where the outcome is uncertain, you are trying something new (or that you haven’t done in a long time), or you are taking on…
If you’ve set a goal of restarting your career this year, you’ve come to the right place. Of course writing “Get a job” at the top of a blank piece of paper may feel a bit daunting. Where do you start? Like most big goals, it helps to break it down into smaller, actionable steps you can take. One important step is to find your cheerleaders. Yes, this is just…
Job searching is no fun. It’s a lot of work and for all that effort, you may get ghosted or rejected outright. Noone wants that. “The job search can feel very lonely, very difficult, and very discouraging,” says Emily Askri, program manager at Path Forward. “It’s especially hard when you’re on that journey alone.” But here’s some great, research-backed news: there’s something super simple you can do to make your…
I’m a big fan of Patty Azzarello, a writer and executive coach. I find her advice really helpful. Much of it comes out of her experience in large organizations, but it’s often applicable to people working in companies of all sizes. One memorable blog post was about how to win a big promotion and, as usual, it has a lot of good advice. But that’s not why I’m sharing it…
Self-care requires the discipline to do the hard and boring things that are good for us. But the way self-care is portrayed today is completely and utterly backward. First, self-care as a concept is almost exclusively aimed at women (generally wealthy white women who can afford the goods and services that get marketed to them as self-care). The not-so-subtle suggestion is that women need to be reminded to care for…
Over the years I’ve met a lot of people looking to return to work. And a question that often comes up is how to engage spouses or partners to be supportive during the career restart journey. Some partners are naturally good and supportive and intuit what their partner needs from them. But most of us live in the real world where even the best and most loving partner may need…
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,…
It can be hard to stay upbeat when you don’t get a job after many attempts and applications submitted. One problem people run into is hoping it will be easy to return to work, which actually creates a bit of an expectation that it will be easy. When it isn’t, the disappointment you feel at not meeting that expectation — no matter how unrealistic it was — can be really…
Fall is typically a time of back-to-school and new beginnings, but as with every facet of daily life, the pandemic has turned that upside down. While this has been a challenging year for everyone, we know that it has been especially difficult for working moms trying to maintain their careers while caring for their children, and for caregivers looking to return to work in an unstable economy. While there is…
