28. 5 Common Mistakes Career Returners Make (and how to avoid them)
Apr 24, 2024
Christina Kohl
If you are returning to work after a significant career break of several years, there are some common resume mistakes that you'll want to avoid. As a career returner myself (13-years as a stay-at-home mom), I made these mistakes when I restarted my career a few years ago. Being in the unique position of both a job seeker with a career gap AND an HR/Recruiter, I have insights to share to help you on your return to work journey.
I'm opening up 5 spots for resume reviews in May for $97. Interested?
Email me at christina@hernextchapters or sign up below:
If you are returning to work after a significant career break of several years, there are some common resume mistakes that you'll want to avoid. As a career returner myself (13-years as a stay-at-home mom), I made these mistakes when I restarted my career a few years ago. Being in the unique position of both a job seeker with a career gap AND an HR/Recruiter, I have insights to share to help you on your return to work journey.
I'm opening up 5 spots for resume reviews in May for $97. Interested?
Email me at christina@hernextchapters or sign up below:
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'm excited to share with you my first LinkedIn Live event. So I did this a couple weeks ago and if you're not familiar with LinkedIn Lives, like the word says live, it was a live event. And the you're not familiar with LinkedIn lives like the word says, live, it was a live event and the topic was five common resume mistakes career returners make, and I did this in front of a live audience, which was a little scary. You would think that, after doing 20 something podcast episodes, that I wouldn't be so nervous. But I was pretty nervous because it was live and there's no editing button and my intention was to just take a recording of that and turn it into a podcast. But because I am still very much a perfectionist, I wanted to record it fresh so I'd be able to actually edit any mistakes out, because that's just the way I am.
Christina:
So if you are thinking about going back to work, maybe you've been a long time stay-at-home mom and, as the kids are getting older, maybe heading up to college soon, or maybe they're just getting old enough to go to all-day school for the first time. That's when I started getting ready to go back to work. It was when my youngest was in first second grade. Around that timeframe I started getting serious about it. So maybe that's you and if you're like me, the first thing you're like oh, I'm going back to work. I got to dust off my resume and get it ready to go. Well, I want to help you with that because there are mistakes that I made and common mistakes that I see other returners make. I want to help you avoid those mistakes.
Christina:
So if you have any questions about how to address your career break and maybe your resume. You've been putting it out there and you're just not getting any results. And maybe you've volunteered a lot but you don't know where that fits on your work history because you weren't paid for that time and you're just wondering where that fits in. Well, if you have those questions, then you're in the right place listening to this podcast. This is perfect for you if you've been sending out resumes with little to no response. You're not sure what's working or not working and you want to fix it now. Or you're stuck and you just don't even know where to begin, especially how to talk about your career gap. All right, so let's dig in.
Christina:
The first place on the resume that we're going to talk about is your contact information. Obviously, you're going to have your name there and you're going to also want to put in your LinkedIn profile, and a lot of people do these days think to put in their LinkedIn profile. But what you may people do these days think to put in their LinkedIn profile, but what you may not realize is that you can do a hyperlink to your profile. You want to make it easy for the recruiter and the hiring manager to find you. You want to put the hyperlink on your resume, even with it being a PDF document, you can have a hyperlink and that way all they have to do is click on it and it takes them straight to your LinkedIn profile.
Christina:
The other couple little things in the contact information is that you don't need a street address anymore. If it's been a while since you've applied to a job. I know we used to always have you know our whole street address and city and state and all of that. But the reality is recruiters aren't going to be sending you a letter, they're going to be sending you an email or a phone call, so you don't need to have that street address, but you do want to include the city and state to kind of give them an idea of your location. And then for your email, you want to make sure you have a professional email address, so you don't want something like you know mom to three boys, so you want to have something that's professional and include your name. If you don't have that now, go ahead and set one up with Gmail, and that'll be for your career, for your job searching. So those are just some really basic tips for the contact information.
Christina:
So the second mistake that I see people make is not having clarity and not including their target job title. So this would go right underneath your name and contact information the target job title that you want, and you're not going to label it target job title. You're just going to put it down. If it's public relations director, that's what it is, even though currently you're not working in that role and maybe you've never even had that role. But that's what you're going to put as your target, because that identifies you as what you're aiming for.
Christina:
And again, this is the biggest mistake that I see career returners make they start the resume before having clarity. I've got to start my job search, I got to get my resume ready, but if you don't know what you want to do, there's really no point in having the resume work done, because, just like when you're going on vacation, you need to know your destination in order to know what to prepare for and how to pack. So are you going to be packing a bathing suit and shorts or are you going to be packing a winter jacket and snow boots? It depends on what your destination is. Same thing with your resume. It depends on your destination ie your target job of how you're going to write your resume. So you have to have that clarity piece and when your resume is unclear, when you are unclear and therefore your resume is unclear about your desired goal or it's too wide open, well, you're relying on the recruiter to figure it out for you and, quite frankly, that's not their job. Their job is you know. They know that they have a job opening, which is a problem the employer needs to have solved. They need to find the candidate who can best solve that problem. And if you're just wide open and you can do everything, it makes it hard for you to stand out as a candidate. You need to be more specific about what you offer and what you want.
Christina:
Okay, the next topic is how to address the career gap. Not having clarity is the biggest mistakes I see career returners make. How to address the career gap is the biggest question that returners have, and many returners just start with their last paid job on their resume under employment history, whether that was three years ago, five years ago, 15 years ago, 15 years ago. And it leaves an employer wondering like, well, okay, that was a decade ago, what have you done since then and how are those skills current? And here's the thing you need to fill that gap. Don't leave it up to them to figure it out.
Christina:
You need to fill the gap on your resume and I think this will help with the mindset piece, because I know I struggled with like well, how do I put that as a stay-at-home mom? And and what about my volunteer stuff? Where does that go? It doesn't go into work history, right? Because I wasn't paid for this. It's not one of my jobs. So I think this helps with the mindset is just to use experience as a header and you drop the reference related to work. So it's not work history or work experience, it's just experience.
Christina:
Or you can also use the word relevant experience, which is what I did on my resumes, and then you're going to put that career break directly on the resume under experience, as if it were a job. I know that feels strange. You want to answer the questions. How did you fill the time? For me, even if it's just very simple, you elected to take a career break while raising your children. That could be it. If there are any relevant accomplishments, you'll want to include those and also reference how you're preparing for return to work. In my case, it was pursuing my SPHR, which is Senior Professional and Human Resources, in case you're curious, sphr, which is Senior Professional and Human Resources, in case you're curious, kind of leading into that the accomplishments leads into number four. So the mistake common mistake number four that I see career returners make is not including all relevant experience. So keep in mind, whether you are paid for it or not, experience is experience. Let me say that again Unpaid experience is experience and it belongs on your resume in the experience section.
Christina:
List it in the same way you would a paid role, and this could be life experience or volunteer experience. So life experience or volunteer experience? So life experience. People are like what are you talking about? And maybe you had to navigate two cross-country moves or an international move and all of the things that go in with that the budgeting aspect, the timeline, the project management, the coordination, the setting up in a new community with the schools and doctors and everything you need to do to make that happen. Those are skills and experience that are relevant to a whole range of different jobs. Here's one that was relevant to my family. I negotiated a $10,000 surgery as medically necessary with the insurance company, and this is relevant because I was going for human resources jobs where I'd be managing employee or employer benefit programs. So it demonstrates that I am a consumer of benefits. I'm a savvy consumer and I know the ins and outs of how the insurance industry works, and so it was a relevant experience that that belongs on my resume. So those personal accomplishments fit here, as well as volunteer. And, on a side note, if you're not currently volunteering, now is a great time to start volunteering Okay, and then kind of the opposite of that one of including all relevant experience that people will leave those off because they think they're not important.
Christina:
This is mistake. Number five is that you want to make sure you're only including relevant experience. So let me explain what I mean there. Your resume is a marketing document, not a historical one, and what I mean by that is that you don't have to list everything you've ever done or every job you've ever had. You only want to have everything that's on your resume pointing towards your target job, and so if there's something that you've done, it might be an accomplishment even something that you've done or that you're very good at but you don't want to do that in your next job, don't include it on your resume. This is not a historical document, it is a marketing document.
Christina:
So the examples that I have there for myself is payroll. There are two different jobs where I had my hands in payroll every two weeks. So there are two jobs where I had hands on with payroll and I was good at it, but you know what? I didn't like it and I don't want to do payroll again. So, even though I was good at it, it is not going to be on my resume or my LinkedIn profile. You're not going to see that there because I don't want to do it again. So that is not relevant to the job that I'm going for, so I'm not going to include it.
Christina:
Another example is right out of college, it took me about six months to land my first career job. I worked at Chili's as a waitress. You will not find Chili's and my experience waitressing on my resume, because it's not relevant to the types of jobs I'm going for. Let me back up, though, because if I was going for a job say it was a human resources job, but it was in the restaurant industry then yes, I would include my time, my six months time as a waitress at Chili's, because that would be relevant. Be saying like, hey, I've worked in this industry, I know what it's like to be torn and pulled in five different directions at once, because I'm managing five different tables and they're all at different needs and timing and all of that. I know what it's like to be a server because I've done it. I know what the industry is like because I've worked in the industry. So if that were the case, I would add my history of working as a waitress at Chili's onto my resume. But if I'm not going for that industry and I'm not going to be a waitress again, then I don't need to include it. Even though it's part of my history, it's not part of how I'm marketing myself.
Christina:
Okay, so to summarize and maybe you saw I'm curious to know if you saw yourself in any of these mistakes if you're working on your resume but not including your LinkedIn profile link, a link to your LinkedIn, Okay, you want to make sure you have both the profile and the link. Number two not having clarity in your desired job target. So that's the work you need to do. First, be really super clear so that everything on your resume is pointing to that job target. Number three is not including the career gap. That's a very common mistake that people just skip it altogether. They don't even include it. They just start where they left off years ago. So you want to put something in and fill that gap with your narrative.
Christina:
And then number four, not including relevant unpaid experience. And, as we talked about, the keyword here is relevant. You want to make sure you have your relevant experience included, whether it was paid or not. And then the fifth mistake is including irrelevant experience, things that don't matter for the job that you're going for and things that you know, yeah, they're part of your history, but they just you don't need to include them. All right. So I hope that's helpful.
Christina:
And if you are in the situation where you are getting ready to go back to work and you're ready to get your dream job and you want an HR insider's eyes on your resume, I am opening up five spots on my calendar in May for one-on-one resume reviews.
Christina:
Spots on my calendar in May for one-on-one resume reviews it's unique because I myself am a stay-at-home mom returner and I'm an HR insider. So I've been on both sides of the interview and recruiting table as a candidate and on the hiring side and I can help you troubleshoot potential problem areas, enhance your strengths, all with the goal to increase your interview request, if you are interested in learning more about this service, send me an email. It's Christina at HerNextChapterscom and we can talk about it. All right, so that's everything for this episode. I hope it's helpful. Good luck to you in your search and we will talk to you next week. Good luck to you in your search and we will talk to you next week. 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.