Back to Work
Workplace Reentry Women:
their Top Ten Strenghts

Women going back to work often sell themselves short, partly because of society’s view that if you’re not in the paid workforce you are “doing nothing”.

The other part of this equation is because after a few years of dealing mainly with children and duties around the home, many women find own self esteem and self confidence is low as to what they have to offer when they go back to work.

But as any savvy employer knows, a woman returning to the workplace brings with her extremely valuable skills and qualities.

Here’s a Top Ten List of the Gifts, the Blessings, the Strengths that Women going back to work bring with them to the workplace ….. whether they know it or not!

1. Multi-tasking: Any woman running a home, and family has to be able to at least 16 different things at one time!

Next time you see young mother in the grocery, with a couple of small children take the time to observe how many tasks she in undertaking at one time.

Probably these will include remembering what she has to buy, finding it, putting it in the buggy in a way that young hands can’t find and destroy, squish or smash it, while making sure one child doesn’t climb out of the buggy, and the other doesn’t run off and get lost.

She has to make sure the one who’s on foot, doesn’t load up the buggy with unwanted items, dissuade them from crying because when she says no to the candies in the candy aisle….

And that’s all before she gets to the checkout, where neither child wants to wait, and then getting everything and everyone back out to the car.

Skill 1 for your resume: Multi-tasking

2. Problem Solver, Handling Emergencies, Troubleshooting:

This is a skill any mother going back to work takes with her.

Small problems seem like big problems to small people!

Mum has to handle endless ‘emergencies’ and some real ones too, not to mention problems such as how to get the peanut and jelly sandwich out of the VCR (or even worse, the DVD player!)

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what an at home mum has to deal with.

Skill 2 for your resume: Problem Solver, Extensive experience Handling Emergencies, Troubleshooting

3. Management, Initiative, Self Directed:

She manages the family, the house, the meals, and everything else around the home. She has no instructions, no training, and no expert to turn to (unless her own mum.)

These are excellent qualities to take back to work.

Skill 3 for your resume: Ability to positively Manage others, takes Initiative, Self Directed

4. Organized, Inventory Control:

Where is it? How much do we need? Keeping track of everything and anything is her job too.

How do we get Jason to softball and Janet to ballet at opposite sides of town at the same time?

Skill 4 for your resume: Organized, Inventory Control experience

5. Creative, Innovative, Lifelong Learner:

Finding ways where no ways have been found before (to mess up the Star Trek saying atrociously!)

This needs to be done, how are we going to do it? If there’s something you don’t know that you need to know – you learn it, you create it, you invent it.

Wow! What boss wouldn't love that?

Skill 5 for your resume: Creative, Innovative, Lifelong Learner

6. Money Management, Budgeting:

Whether rich or ‘financially challenged’, money still has to be managed and budgets still have to be maintained.

Whether it’s just the weekly grocery bill or when to buy a designer outfit, budgeting is always part and parcel of the job.

Skill 6 for your resume: Money Management, Budgeting

7. Reliability , Stable, Sense Of Responsibility:

Kids trust implicitly, and are totally reliant on mum to be there when she says she will, and take care of what they need taken care of. Even the most unreliable of women become much more responsible when she has a family to take care of.

This belongs on any back to work resume.

Skill 7 for your resume: Reliability , Stable, Sense Of Responsibility

8. Event Organization:Ah, those parties. Birthday parties, Christmas parties, picnics, even holidays – mum is in charge of organization, making it fun and getting everything ready and put together.

Skill 8 for your resume: Creative Event Organization on limited budget

9. Mediator, Interpersonal Skills:

Kids fight! Mum has to calm the waters, reinstate order, arrange compromises, and do it all with a very unsophisticated audience who just want what they want.

Skill 9 for your resume: Mediator, Excellent Interpersonal Skills

10. Coach, Mentor, Teacher:

Mothers teach by instructing, helping and also by modeling the behaviour the want.

Mothers can teach people who don’t want to learn it, and get it established as a habit.

Now that’s a skill!

Children learn more from their parents than from school – albeit different things most of the time. Never underestimate a mother’s role as a teacher.

Skill 10 for your resume: Coach, Mentor, Able to give instructions clearly and concisely.

So there you have the top ten skills.

All are directly transferable into the workplace.

For any women who had been at home for a while, there are many, many more. But hopefully this will get you started on all the amazing skills you have a acquired when the world thought you were "not working."

The chances are you learned more in that time that most people who were in paid employment!

But this is just taste of the wonderful gifts a workplace reentry women brings with her when she goes back to work. Don’t feel you have nothing to offer – instead celebrate your wonderful gifts and abilities and share them with the world.

Consider every skill you come up with and ask yourself how that could fit into the workplace, how to word it to it "sounds right", then get it into your resume and off you go as one of the best trained workers on the planet!

When you come to putting together your resume, you will do best with a skills based format. What goes into your resume? What stays out?
Read about the different types of resumes and their advantages.

Need more help getting ready to go back to work?

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