Have you taken an extended break from the workforce? Maybe you took time off to stay at home with young children or to care for ill or aging relatives. Perhaps you even opted for a “career sabbatical” to pursue a lifelong dream, such as earning an advanced degree or living abroad.
If so, you’re not alone. Every year, millions of people voluntarily leave the workforce for the reasons cited above or something related. LinkedIn even has a built-in feature that allows you to formally list your break.
5 Tips for Relaunching Your Career
Here are five tips for relaunching your career after a break from Carol Fishman Cohen, cofounder and CEO of iRelaunch.
1. Define Your Career Goals. Reflect on your career aspirations and identify where you can add the most value to an employer. Determine if you want to return to a familiar role and industry or pursue a new direction.
2. Research and Network. Use LinkedIn to learn about the career paths and credentials of people with your dream job. Consider reaching out for informational interviews to gain insights and expand your network.
3. Enhance Your Knowledge and Expertise. Volunteer in roles aligned with your career goals to hone your skills and gain resume-worthy experience. Consider enrolling in a professional certificate program or taking a course, especially one that includes a capstone project.
4. Prepare and Practice Your Elevator Pitch. Write up and memorize a short script to use when introducing yourself to people you meet while networking and interviewing. Practice it out loud until you have it down cold.
5. Consider a Career Reentry Program. About a third of companies in the Fortune 50 offer career reentry programs (sometimes called “returnships”), which are designed to help individuals transition back into the workforce with tailored training and mentorship. Check with companies in your area or consult this list of programs.
However, when you decide to return to the workforce, you may find that re-entry is not as easy as you thought. Many employers have preconceived notions about workers who take career breaks, including that your skills will have atrophied or that you’ll be unfamiliar with the latest tools and technologies.
“I was applying to jobs where I felt I was a good fit, and they weren’t considering me,” says Remya Janakivallabhan, a customer success manager who took three years off to stay home with her two young sons. “Potential employers would say, ‘Maybe you’re not up for the job, or maybe you’re not skilled enough.’ I felt like I wasn’t qualified because I had taken that break. It was tough.”
But there are strategies for overcoming these obstacles — an increasing number of resources and programs designed to help individuals make their way back into the workforce after a break. If you’re currently facing this challenge, read on to learn how others have navigated this tricky situation and the different options currently available.
The Birth of Returnships
Although people have been returning to work after a break for as long as there have been jobs, the formal concept wasn’t widely recognized until early in the 21st century.
“I came off an 11-year break to raise my kids and returned to work at a Wall Street investment firm in 2001,” says Carol Fishman Cohen. “The concept of ‘return-to-work’ programs didn’t exist back then. No one was talking about it.”
Eventually, a few companies (especially financial firms such as Goldman Sachs) started programs to recruit these kinds of workers in the mid-2000s. The term “returnship” emerged and gained currency.
Cohen saw this trend gathering strength and decided to get involved. She teamed up with fellow Harvard Business School grad (and early returner) Vivian Steir Rabin to write a book — "Back on the Career Track," published in 2007 — and form a company dedicated to helping people return to work after a break. They called it iRelaunch.
“We started out just raising awareness and doing conferences about returning to work,” says Cohen. “Then, in 2012, I wrote an article for Harvard Business Review (“The 40-Year-Old Intern”) to document the emerging trend of creating short-term, nonbinding work arrangements for these ‘returners.’ This allowed companies to kind of try out people who are returning to work after a career break.”
These arrangements still go by different names and have different requirements. For example, the programs may differ in stipulating how long the individual needs to have been out of the workforce, or whether the person is guaranteed a full-time position upon completion of the program.
When she learned about the returnship concept, Janakivallabhan was encouraged to continue her efforts to reenter the workforce.
“I was feeling demotivated in my job search, but when I saw these return-to-work programs, I felt more positive,” she says. “I read the stories on iRelaunch about people who had taken breaks of 5, 10 or even 15 years and went back to work; it was a ray of hope for me.”
I was feeling demotivated in my job search, but when I saw these return-to-work programs, I felt more positive.
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Remya Janakivallabhan, customer success manager at SAP
Reskilling After a Break
Zarina Mazieva took an eight-year break to focus on raising her four children. When she started thinking about returning to work in 2016, she realized she’d need to update her skill set.
“Technology was moving at a rapid pace, and I knew I wanted to switch fields,” says Mazieva, who had previously worked at a bank in the Seattle area and back in her native Kyrgyzstan. “I thought, ‘Okay, so what skills do I need to achieve that goal?’ And I made a list of what I needed to learn.”
First up on her list were project management skills. “I figured that I was already doing this at home — managing the family budget, schedules and home projects,” she says. “But I had no formal training, so I researched it and decided to enroll in the UW Certificate in Project Management.”
The next area of emphasis for Mazieva was boosting her technical knowledge. After finishing the project management program, she enrolled in the UW Certificate in Full-Stack Development With JavaScript.
“I was thinking, ‘What else do employers want? What am I missing?’” she says. “Since we have a lot of tech companies in this area, I figured I’d need coding experience, and the UW had a certificate program for that, too.”
Even though her only experience writing software code had been two decades before (back in Kyrgyzstan in the 1990s), Mazieva found that the UW program provided solid support for students. “Many students didn’t have any coding background, and they were able to finish the program with help from the tutors that the UW provides,” she says.
“We believe that technological obsolescence is a temporary condition,” Cohen notes. “Whether people are learning a new office management system or they're moving into an engineering or IT role, we have hundreds of success stories on our website showing that this isn’t an insurmountable issue.”
Leaping Back Into the Workforce at Microsoft
I was thinking, ‘What else do employers want? What am I missing?’ Since we have a lot of tech companies in this area, I figured I’d need coding experience, and the UW had a certificate program for that, too.
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Zarina Mazieva, product manager at Microsoft
After several years of UW certificate programs and other skill-building and networking, Mazieva’s hard work paid off. In early 2022 she was accepted into the
Microsoft Leap program, which offers a 16-week immersive training and internship experience at the company.
At the conclusion of the program, she successfully applied for a full-time position and now works as a product manager on the Microsoft Azure team. Things are going so well that she earned a promotion earlier this year.
“I’m in my dream job; I cannot believe it,” she says. “I thought this journey would take at least five years, I achieved my goal in basically three years. My husband thought I would have to go back to school and get a computer science degree, but I decided to give the UW certificate programs a shot, and it worked out.”
Support and Training for Returners
One hallmark of returnship programs is the crucial support they provide you when you’re making the sometimes-tricky transition back to the workforce.
“We work with employers to create the coaching and training given to participants throughout their returnship,” says Cohen of iRelaunch. “These include things like lunch-and-learns, where people in the organization describe different parts of the business, or talks by employees who relaunched their careers in the past and can offer tips and advice.”
The other big part of a returnship is the mentors and “buddies” that are assigned to participants. This support was huge for Janakivallabhan when she took a returnship position at enterprise software company SAP.
“If I had a question, I could always ping my mentor or buddy and they would answer it or set up a call,” she says. “They told me, ‘No question is dumb; ask whatever you want.’ Not only did I have three people at the leadership level at SAP checking on me, but I also had regular check-ins from iRelaunch, to ensure I was doing okay. The support really helped me transition and feel comfortable.”
Her returnship went so well that Remya applied for a full-time role as a customer success partner at SAP (which has offices in the Seattle area). She accepted an offer in mid-2023 and has been very happy with the position.
“I can honestly say this is the best job I’ve ever had,” she says. “It feels like a family here, and that motivates me to work hard and deliver my best effort.”
Future Expansion
As more organizations successfully hire great employees through returnship programs, the concept is gaining mainstream acceptance. Cohen estimates that hundreds of companies nationwide now offer such programs, including about 12% of the Fortune 500 and more than 30% of the Fortune 50.
And it’s not just for-profit organizations that have jumped on board. In 2021, Utah started its own returnship effort for state government agencies, and the results have been extremely positive.
“In less than two-and-a-half years, we’ve hired 60 returners to jobs at different state agencies,” says Shay Baker, program manager for Return Utah. “And we have a 92% conversion rate returnship to long-term employment.”
I wasn’t even sure I was ready to go back to work, but I decided to try a returnship with the [Utah] Department of Commerce. It turned out that I loved it, which is the case for the overwhelming majority of our returners.
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Shay Baker, program manager for Return Utah
Baker herself was one of the first participants in Return Utah. She was at home with a new baby (her third child) when she read about the pilot program and decided to inquire about it.
“I wasn’t even sure I was ready to go back to work, but I decided to try a returnship with the Department of Commerce,” Baker says. “It turned out that I loved it, which is the case for the overwhelming majority of our returners. And eventually, I took this role with Return Utah to help grow the program.”
Baker and Cohen are among many who hope to see the returnship concept continue to grow. Both have been advocating for the creation of a program like Return Utah for the federal government, which would bring further legitimacy to the model (not to mention access to a huge pool of federal jobs).
Overall, they say the benefits of returnships are clear for everyone involved.
“As a society, we attach significant importance to what you do for work,” says Cohen. “Going back to work is not just about money; it’s very validating for relaunchers. They are extremely motivated. And the employers we’ve surveyed have been equally positive about the results of these programs. So it’s a real win-win.”