In A Career Crisis After Kids? Here’s What To Do

Our working life ebbs and flows over time, and it’s quite usual to wake up one day and find yourself in a little bit of a career rut. Perhaps you’ve been in the same job for a long time, or maybe you’ve started a family and have been wrapped up in focusing on your child for a while.

Whatever the reason, you may suddenly find that you’ve taken your foot off the gas and you need to kickstart your career again.

You might have lost some ambition along the way, been derailed by a personal crisis, had a dream job that slowly turned into a nightmare or feels like you’ve hit a ceiling in your current path.

The start of a new year is a good time to take stock and really think about where you want to go and what you want to achieve. So how do you go about refinding your fire and moving on to new adventures in your working world?

Revamp Your CV

It all starts with the sell. Crafting a great CV is very worthwhile as it’s the primary tool you will use to get seen by HR departments and get your foot in the door for interviews if you are looking to move on from your current job. Start by going through your current document and bringing it up to date.

Make sure you include your latest and most relevant experience, any projects you want to showcase, any training you’ve done recently, and also highlight your key skills.

Give the design a refresh too, and make sure everything is concise and clearly presented – you may only have a few seconds for this document to make an impression when you apply for popular roles with hundreds of other applicants.

There are recruiting software, cush as Applicant Tracking Systems which might look for key-words in your CV, so make sure to make all of your expertise and skills relevant and denoted. 

Asking a recruitment consultant for their advice and help can be very useful – they see hundreds of CVs a week and will be able to let you know what you should make stand out, as well as knowing all the latest vacancies in your field. 

Use Online Tools

When you find a job you’d like to apply for, scan the advertisement for certain key terms and make sure that you match these in your application documents – large companies often use software to match applicants and do the initial assessment of who is suitable.

And don’t forget to make the most of your LinkedIn profile – you can apply for lots of vacancies and mark yourself as interested in new situations, as well as joining LinkedIn Groups to do some networking.

Consider Retraining

If your job hunting is making it clear that your skills are out-of-date or not suitable for the roles that you want to go for, it’s time to consider some further training.

A lot of courses can be taken online these days, so you could start by investigating free sources such as Google Garage to sharpen your digital marketing skills. If that’s not enough, you can move on to researching types of courses, even drilling down into mba concentrations once you decide that might be beneficial.

Retraining doesn’t have to mean quitting your job and studying full-time, as there are so many options available with evening classes and online courses to add to your skillset.

Jeff Campbell

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