Her Next Chapters

69. Returning to Work? These Women Did It - And So Can You!

• Christina Kohl

Share episode

Self-belief is essential for successfully re-entering the workforce after a career break. Christina shares inspiring stories of women who overcame self-doubt and found fulfillment, emphasizing that with small steps and the right support, anyone can achieve their professional goals.  

• Sharing Ann's journey back to work  

• Highlighting Fay’s proactive career change

• Exploring Debbie's experience with volunteering

• Patty's successful return to tech after 20 years  

• Bonnie enrolled in a 12-week community college program to get up to speed in her industry and will likely be hired by an employer sponsoring the program.

•The importance of taking small steps towards goals  
• Encouragement to believe in oneself  
• Offering support and actionable resources

Grab the Free Strengths-First Resume Template - it's perfect for anyone in career transitions, whether with a long career gap, a career pivot, or just ready for a change.
Want to chat about your career goals? Schedule a free call HERE.
Send me an email ---> christina@hernextchapters.com
Connect with me on LinkedIn ---> www.linkedin.com/in/kohlchristina





Christina :

Hi and welcome to Her Next Chapter's podcast. I'm your host, Christina Kohl. I'm a mom of three and soon to be an empty nester. I'm also a certified HR pro who restarted my career after being a stay-at-home mom for over a decade. I created this podcast to connect with moms who have an empty nest on the horizon and are wanting to redefine their identity outside of motherhood, which might include a job search. On this show, we'll have raw conversations about our ever-changing roles as moms. We'll hear from women who restarted their careers and share tips for a job search after a career break. So if that's you, you're in the right place. Friend, let's get started. Hi, friends, and welcome to this week's episode of Her Next Chapters.

Christina :

I want to talk to you today about self-belief, self-doubt. So what's prompting this topic is I had one of my clients reach out and she was just feeling kind of down. She's been a stay-at-home mom for over 10 years and she's wanting to come back to the workforce, but she's just feeling really discouraged, like who is going to hire me? I haven't worked for over a decade. Who is even going to give me a chance? I've been out of the game too long and you guys, I get it. I've been out of the game too long and you guys, I get it, I've been there. For me, it was 13 years that I didn't have a paid job. I say paid job because I had a job. I worked, I did a lot.

Christina :

Those of you who are parents, you know the workload, the mental workload, just the physical all the things that we do as moms in particular. We are working. We are working 24-7, but it may not feel like it internally because even though we're working and we're busy and we're contributing, not earning a paycheck there's some weight that comes with that and it can get really discouraging. You know, wondering like how am I ever going to reclaim my career? How am I going to get back in? Who is going to give me a chance? And it's a tough mental space to be in and when you're job searching it's so important to have that resilient mindset. And so I want to take a few minutes here today just to let you know and this is what I shared with my client it's totally normal to feel this way, to feel discouraged, and even if you haven't taken a career break, job searching is hard. It takes so much inner strength and self-care and, I guess, stick-to-itiveness I don't know if that's the right phrase, but resilience, to just keep going and have that belief in yourself. To just keep going and have that belief in yourself.

Christina :

So I want to take a few minutes to review some of the success stories, to show that it is possible to return to meaningful work. Not just getting a job at the mall, but really getting back to meaningful work in the paid workforce is possible, and I know for myself. When I was returning to work, I didn't know anyone in my social circle who had done it. I had become friends with all the other moms at school and nobody was talking about going back to work. I was the only one, and so it was hard to believe it was possible when I wasn't seeing other people do it. So that's part of why I do. What I do is I want you to know what is possible, because other people have done it and if they can do it. So that's part of why I do. What I do is I want you to know what is possible, because other people have done it, and if they can do it, so can you. So I'm going to start with my client, ann, and I've probably talked about her in the podcast before.

Christina :

But Ann was a stay-at-home mom for about let me look at my notes she was a stay-at-home mom for 15 years even longer than I was and she had had a 13-year career prior to that. And Anne's story was that her and her husband they had their kids and they decided that it made the most sense for her to be the at-home parent to take care of everything on the home front, and that was great until life happened and a divorce happened. And then here's Anne been out of the workforce for over a decade and needed to find a career for herself to support herself and her kids, and that just wasn't part of the game plan, right? So Anne had a few part-time jobs, did a few different things, but really wanted to be back fully in her career. So Anne came to me last year and after she had been looking for a year and hadn't made any progress on her own, and so she realized she needed help, and so when her and I started working together, things actually happened pretty quickly. She got, she landed interviews. I coached her through those interviews, getting in touch with her experience from several years prior we were talking 15 years since she had done this type of work and so getting in touch with that, those experiences, being able to talk about them as if they were yesterday, not 15 years ago, and really got her prepared well for those interviews. And she did great. And they, of course, loved her and made her an offer. And even then her and I hopped on a call and talked about what she could expect salary-wise before they actually her an offer. And even then her and I hopped on a call and we talked about what she could expect salary-wise before they actually made the offer. We knew it was coming, we did the research together, had her prepared and then she knew what the offer was. We had her aim for $5,000 more and, you guys, she got it. I'm so, so excited for her. And Anne is easily I don't ask my clients their ages, but based on her work experience, so 13 years in the workforce, 15 years out, so that would put her somewhere in her mid-40s and she's successfully returned to a job that she loves and, bonus, it's remote, so she works 100% from home.

Christina :

And then let me tell you about Fay. Fay was not a stay-at-home mom, she was working this whole time, but she knew that things were shifting at her work and she was ready for a change and there's a possibility that the funding for her role might go away. So she was being proactive when she reached out to me and she had about a five-year horizon left on her career and she was able to make a significant change and landed a great job Again. Hybrid, same thing, same story as Anne, in that we were able to negotiate the tools that she had from working with me and gave her the ability to negotiate, and she got $5,000 more above the offer. So it's not too late is my point to pivot and make a change, which is exactly what Fay did. And let's see I've got.

Christina :

Debbie is someone that I worked with and did resume insights and review for her. So Debbie had a corporate career that was about 10 years long. She left in 2002. And then she did some part-time jobs. She volunteered a lot. Debbie was volunteering at schools, she was volunteering with youth sports organizations, she was an educational consultant, so self-employed, helping students figure out what they want to do for college and all of that, and those were just kind of side hustle type things that she was doing, but she had been out of the traditional workforce since 2002. And, debbie, I'm really, really excited to share that she is now a workforce development manager. She's working full-time, loves her new job and it's in line with what she wants in her career. So that's really exciting too, and that you know it's like.

Christina :

Again, I'm not telling you these stories to brag, because that's not the point at all. The point is to share. It is possible and when you see this someone else doing the thing that you want to do it just gives you that realm of possibility. And if it's something that Debbie could do, it is something that you can do as well as well. And then Patty. Patty is someone she came to my resume masterclass back in November and she was the winner of the resume review, which is a one-on-one. We did 30 minutes and it was all recorded, so she got to have the transcript of the video of all of my input and suggestions for her resume, specifically how to address and talk about her career break in a positive way and talk about it as an asset.

Christina :

And her background is in technology. She was an engineer for good almost 12 years before she took a career break back in 2005. And since then she's done things like a lot of she's done homeschooling, she's volunteered in the schools. She's written a children's book and she has done presentations to school children to get people to get them excited about careers in stem. And more recently she was a robotics team mentor, so helping kids learn about robotics, and she did that for several years. And then she, when she got really focused and ready to come back to her career after almost a 20-year break, she started volunteering last year, in 2024, as a community lead in this AI program for women, defining AI. And then she became an AI let's see I'm reading it from her profile an AI digital future forward accelerator. That's a mouthful. And then she helped create and deliver an AI course for women. And so these are things that she was doing to reconnect to her interests and her passions and to be the stepping stones in her career. And I'm so excited that in January. So her and I met in December and she's starting to do this volunteer work already. We revamped her resume and in January just last month she got hired. She's working remote and she is working on AI powered solutions for clients using an AI platform, and so I'm so excited for Patty to see that success after a 20 year break from her career in engineering.

Christina :

So now I want to tell you about Bonnie. Bonnie was also an engineer, but her engineer focus was in food technology. She had over seven years of experience before she became a trailing spouse. So by trailing spouse, if you're listening, that are in that situation. You know what I mean. Whether your husband or your spouse is in the military or maybe just an expat, they were working and living in a different country. And, of course, you're trailing because you're married and you want to stay with the person you love. But you can't always work when you are visiting another country and not visiting, but living in another country visiting another country and not visiting, but living in another country. So Bonnie was a trailing spouse and stepped away from her career and is ready to come back to her career.

Christina :

And when her and I talked about you know volunteering and things like well, how can I volunteer in the farm and food industry? Like you can't just show up and volunteer for something like that. So what I recommended was well, maybe go to the local high schools and see if you can do a presentation or teach. Maybe go to your local community college and see if there's, you know, somewhere that you can help there with teaching a course, whether it's an entire course or just as a guest speaker, just to be tapping in, expanding your network, getting current experience. You know talking about, you know her profession and I'm so excited to share that. Bonnie did look at her local college and she's not teaching there, but she found a program. It's a 12-week program that offers training and the most current regulations and procedures relevant to safe and efficient manufacturing of pharmaceutical products, right up her alley. So, even though she is experienced, she's gotten her degree already, she's got all of her training. She's got years and years of experience. She is in this cohort, which is like in this bootcamp, basically to get her up to speed at a community college and there are local companies who are looking to hire participants at the end of the program. So she just started the program just recently and so I'm so excited for Bonnie, for this great step for her. And again, these are not to say like, oh, look what they did and celebrate, yes, it's for that, but it's really to show you that it is possible.

Christina :

The key similarity that all of these women have is taking small steps, taking those little tiny steps of action that are moving them closer to their goal. And I get it, you guys. I was there. It took me two years of stopping and starting and stopping and starting and feeling so frustrated and feeling that rejection. And just I mean, I was told directly by a recruiter that she would never hire me over someone who was currently working. And as an HR professional, I get it. I want someone who's who I don't have to on-ramp and you know, train and like I want someone who can just step in and do the job.

Christina :

So I understand why she said that, but it also kind of I was down about it for a little bit, but then it also lit a fire. It's like you know what? I'm going to prove you wrong. And it takes that resilience and that self-belief. Because here's the thing If you don't believe you can do it, you're right. It's going to be really hard to do it unless you have that internal belief. And I had a mentor that I was talking to and she had told me you know what? You just need one person to believe in you. And I was like, yeah, I just need one hiring manager to give me a chance. And she's like, no, the one person that needs to believe in you is you and you guys. It is so true.

Christina :

Once that shift happens and you start believing in yourself and taking the small, little, tiny action steps towards that goal, that's when things start to happen. But if you don't have confidence in yourself, that is going to show up in how you talk to people. It's going to show up in your resume. It's going to show up in your cover letters. It's going to show up in how you apply and if you do happen to get an interview, that lack of confidence is going to show up there too.

Christina :

And if you don't have confidence in yourself, how am I supposed to have confidence in possible? Is it easy? No, not necessarily. I can't promise you easy. I can promise you possible if you believe in yourself, if you do the work and doing the work. There's a whole way to different ways of doing that, but just those little, tiny action steps. So what can you do today? One thing is it reaching out to an old boss and saying, hi, how have you been? Or maybe reaching out to an old colleague. Or maybe reaching out to your local community college and seeing if there's a program there. Whether you're volunteering to teach or you find a stumble onto a program, that's exactly what you need to be a springboard into your next career. So, whatever it is, just even one step a day.

Christina :

And if that's too much, one step a week, volunteering, reaching out to your network, meeting up with someone in person, thinking of your elevator pitch, how you want to talk about your return to work, figuring out your goals, because obviously that comes first. It's like what do you even want to do? Just take baby steps, and all of those steps are going to build on top of themselves. So, those little steps you don't know which one is going to open the door. But until you are taking those action steps and until you have that internal belief and for now I believe in you I will hold that belief in you for now. So trust me and let me be your belief until you have it for yourself. Okay, because I know it is possible. I am proof because I know it is possible. I am proof. Debbie, Fay, Ann, Bonnie, Patty, they are all proof of what is possible. All right, so it is possible for you, my friend.

Christina :

And if you want help, if you are ready and you want some help and guidance, I am happy to jump on a call. I've always got it in the show notes. Just reach out, my calendar is there. It is public reach out. We can just hop on a call and just let me cheer you on and, like I said, let me hold that belief for you until you can hold it for yourself. Okay, all right. Well, I'm so excited to hear what happens next for you because, you know, if sometimes I talk to someone, once we just have a one-time call and they put into practice the things that we've talked about and then things start happening and it fills my cup to hear those stories. So, if you have been listening to this podcast and it's making an impact for you and you were taking steps and you're noticing and things are happening, oh my gosh, please make my day and let me know. You can rate and review the podcast and send a note. That would just make my day and I would so appreciate that. So, yes, if you want to hop on a call, I'm here for you cheering you on and would love to talk to you and figure out what's possible for you.

Christina :

All right, my friends, that is it for this week. Thank you so much as always for listening in and if there's someone that you know who could benefit from this message, if there's someone you know who is feeling discouraged about their job search and wants to get some belief for themselves hearing these stories of others who have done it. Please share this episode with them, all right? Well, with that, that is everything that I have for you today. Have a wonderful week and I'll talk to you next time. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope this episode hit home for you and, if you haven't already, be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn and say hello so I can personally thank you for listening. Until next time, remember, your story is uniquely your own, and your next chapters are ready to begin.