ALUMRISE

For those on the outside looking in – either seeking non-traditional positions or seeking a full time return, what are the implications?

I think there’s a few:

1. Stop hunting so aggressively where others are hunting – it simply may not be the best use of your limited energy and time
2. Start using services targeted specifically at you and your unique lifestage – the wonderful silver lining in the noisy online and offline job market today is that there’s a host of interesting companies focusing on niche segments – like moms, retirees, returning workers, career changers, etc. They are simply more likely to focus on your unique challenges and needs – and connect you to other solutions that can help. At ALUMRISE, we are building a series of partnerships with niche solution providers to bring you services we believe can help you, whatever your work life stage – stay tuned to see those come to life
3. Job “hunting” feels good, because it’s active. It’s hard to put yourself out there passively and wait – but if you target the right services and communities online, that profile you to the right employer audiences, passivity in online hunting and profiling will leave time for the most important way to target your energies – actively connecting with real people who can point you to opportunities that you may not have considered, not searching ad-nauseum online

We aren’t the only ones that have been saying for a long time that the job market isn’t just in a down “bit” – HR guru and ALUMRISE advisor Libby Sartain shared in a recent post that there is a big and important shift in employment patters and contracts. (ps: She’s been known to call our business an ebay of employment). She notes that as a new “consumer of work,” as a professional you should get yourself ready for a new way of working, whether you’re mid-career, early-career or a late bloomer returning to work after a retirement or lifestyle hiatus.

By looking at work differently than your job-seeking peers, you actually may open yourself up to the true opportunities that fit and fulfill. After all, even when a job is found, that’s just the beginning of the road to satisfaction and success.

The new reality is that full time employment is quickly being replaced by a marketplace model where jobs of all shapes and sizes will connect you to employers of all shapes and sizes. At ALUMRISE, small a team as we are, we’re passionate about finding those outside the workforce the right solutions, and the right work life fit.

That’s because we believe that when jobs fit better, life works better – for both employers and professionals outside the workforce. 

Tell us what YOU think.

Tanya Mehta, CEO & President Tranverse Leadership LLC

Guest Blogger Tanya Mehta, CEO of Transverse Leadership LLC, shares the second part of her series on professionals navigating career change. In the first post, Tanya shared the questions: 1. Do I really know what makes me tick? and 2. Do I have a clear sense of bridge jobs and mid range career goals?

NAVIGATING TIMES OF TRANSITION, PART 2

3. Have I created a community of supporters?
 
It is not uncommon for me to have clients call totally demoralized having sent out 500 resumes wondering why their phone is not ringing.  In times of transition, you need to be exceptionally strategic about how to approach and target opportunity and the most effective place to start is with the people who are familiar with the caliber of your work and talent.  Make a list of everyone you have worked with that can speak with some depth about the quality of your work.  Develop an action plan to reach out to each of these individuals to discuss opportunities and how you might proceed.  Ask them for their support in mentioning you to their networks and thinking of you when opportunities arise.  Further, I always encourage early career professionals to reach out to their professors as they often are linked to loyal alumni who are willing to make time for talented students. 
 
It’s important to be gentle with yourself as building a community of supporters happens over the span of you career and is a reciprocal process.  Be willing to help others, make introductions and open doors for those in your network and you will benefit greatly when you need advice, short term freelancing gigs or someone to give you a much needed break.
 
4. Can I articulate my unique value proposition?
 
Imagine being lucky enough to have a chance encounter in an elevator or on the subway with a senior leader at a company you are targeting – how would you present yourself? Could you articulate your value proposition to their organization in a 20 second elevator pitch? This is a critical question to be able to answer well.  I can’t tell you how many of my clients slave over the perfect resume and cover letters but get totally tongue tied when having to articulate what they are currently doing, what they have worked on, where they are heading and strengths/weaknesses in their leadership style. 
 
The fact that you are in transition is nothing to be ashamed of yet many let that emotion get the better of them – millions of people are in your shoes and its important to remember that being prepared and learned optimism are your best allies.  Its not about being overly aggressive or sales-like when talking about your talents and capabilities — what I am suggesting is that you exude a sense of confidence that gives a vital message to the person meeting you – I am qualified, I am competent, I am excited about your company and I feel we are a great fit for the following reasons i.e. I am a person you should consider interviewing.  Think carefully about what you would say – practice in front of a mirror if you have to.  At the end of the day the impression you make is often as important as the credentials you have.  Embrace it and use it to your advantage.
 
 
5. How am I nurturing myself?
 
This is the most important question of all.  Very often talented and goal-oriented individuals going through major career transitions feel that they don’t deserve a break or a splurge unless they have the results to justify it.  It’s true that perseverance and focus are vital to emerge positively from times of transition but it’s essential to step away and refuel in order to have the energy and perspective to keep going.  This is where your self discipline and awareness are vital as rejuvenating means different things to every person – a walk in the park, road trip with your kids, dinner with an old friend or solitude with a good book – figure out what works for you.  Making sure that you are making time for activities that center you will make a world of difference in terms of the quality of your outcome. 
 
I end with GE CEO, Jeffrey Immelt’s words as they epitomize the attitude that resilient and highly successful leaders across the globe have in times of adversity — “I’m an optimist. I’ve always believed the future is going to be better than the past. And I also believe I have a role in that. The great thing about human beings, myself in particular, is that I can change. I can do better. If you can get up every day, stay optimistic, and believe the future is better than the past, those few things get you through a lot of tough times.”
 
So view this time of transition as a gift – a chapter in your life that was game-changing.  Keep dreaming big and make some time to think through your own responses to the above five questions – you might be amazed at what you uncover.
 

To view the first post, click here.

Career changers: Join ALUMRISE

Tanya Mehta, CEO and President Transverse Leadership LLC

ALUMRISE Guest blogger Tanya Mehta is President and CEO of Transverse Leadership LLC. A leadership coach and consultant specializing in executive development, Tanya has special passion for coaching early career professionals looking to accelerate their leadership trajectory as well as women returning to the workforce.  Her 10+ years of expertise span talent development, succession planning, corporate training and executive education at leading corporations including Sun Microsystems, Hilton Hotels (the Waldorf-Astoria), The Walt Disney Corporation and Starwood Hotels and Resorts. Prior to founding Transverse, Tanya held the role of Director, Business Development at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (Executive Education) where she consulted with senior Fortune 500/Nasdaq 1000 leaders on a broad range of executive education needs for their senior teams and high potential leaders.

In this, the first part of a two-part series, Tanya explains how navigating career transition can be eased by answering 5 critical questions. Today we feature the two most critical questions for a professional to ask themselves.

NAVIGATING TIMES OF TRANSITION EFFECTIVELY
Critical Questions To Answer

Are you going through a tricky patch on the career front?  Don’t despair – what follows are some key questions you need to look in the mirror and ask yourself. Answering them with brutal honesty can very well help you get back on track sooner than you expect and perhaps even take your career in a direction that is more personally fulfilling and to heights you never imagined.

 1. “Do I really know what makes me tick?”
 
Anyone laid-off, on boarding after maternity leave or trying to break into a new industry can identify with the rollercoaster of frustration, exhaustion and (hopefully) eventual euphoria that major career transitions often bring with them.  If you can look past the tumult of these phases, one gift that emerges is that of time. A departure from the daily grind enables you to reflect and focus and presents a valuable opportunity to uncover what really makes you tick!  Now I don’t mean to make this sound simplistic because no one I have ever coached or worked with loves every aspect of their job.  However, the role to which you devote the majority of your waking hours has to provide some innate happiness and deep sense of purpose – you will never be really great or motivate others to be really great at something you are miserable doing.
 
You might have been working in the same industry for the last decade but what aspects of your work did you really love? What kind of role would make you feel fulfilled? How do you visualize your professional life 10 years from now? Have the audacity to dream about how you could earn a paycheck doing what you love.  Don’t despair if you feel like a totally blank slate when asking yourself the question of what really makes you tick.  Leverage the knowledge that close friends and colleagues have of your talents and strengths and test the waters through a range of short term projects.   For additional perspective consider taking a leadership assessment or working with a career coach.  It does take effort to uncover the answer — the operative point is to have the courage to seek it.  
 
 
2. “Do I have a clear sense of bridge jobs and mid range career goals?”
 
Winston Churchill once said “success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”  Oftentimes people feel paralyzed by career transitions because their expectations are out of touch with the reality of their situation and the broader economic landscape.  Focusing on your vision is vital but you are not going to get your dream job as a fashion buyer right out of undergrad or your story on the front page of the New York Times because you are a stellar writer.
 
Every career path from medicine to management consulting has rites of passage – you have to have the patience and use critical experiences to learn and grow while keeping your eye on the ultimate goal.  Be proactive about figuring out what the key stepping stones to your dream or “destination” job are.  The best way to do this is to talk to as many people doing the kind of work you aspire to do and ask very specific questions.  How did they start out?  What did they wish they had known?  What were the most critical learning’s they had in their early roles?  Where do they think the industry is heading? Using this information, you need to develop a very clear set of actionable mid range goals and target bridge jobs. 

Look out for a follow up post next week, featuring three additional key questions on navigating change. You can check out a detailed spotlight on Tanya and her services at www.alumrise.com

Blog readers: I wanted to share the news that in case you aren’t already a member, we recently launched our Facebook Fan Page and our ALUMRISE Twitter presence. I’m sharing below the note I authored to thank our growing fan base, because it tells a story about where we are and where we are going that you may enjoy reading, and that I hope you take the time to react to it, by leaving us a comment.

This was published to our Fans Friday June 12, 2009 … July and our full media launch are just around the corner. These are exciting times for me personally, and for our dedicated team.

Facebook Note: June 12, Authored by Aassia Haq, CEO & President - ALUMRISE Inc. “Thank you for taking the time to join ALUMRISE’s Facebook Fan Page. We’re happy to welcome you to a space where you can learn about upcoming benefits and changes to our application and come along with us on an exciting journey. We’re excited to see our membership grow with every passing day.

When ALUMRISE first began evangelizing its vision and predictions for the workforce — we privately shared with key leaders at major Fortune 500 entities, organizations and partner firms, the thought that the workforce was on the verge of an elemental shift. The shift was to be driven by changes in demography – growing workforce populations either entering a new post-corporate, retirement lifestage, taking time off in the middle to raise children or care for aging parents, or the plethora of new workers who would believe that work and life should somehow more flexibly, fluidly fit better together. We also shared the view that organizations would radically change how they hire and find professionals to get work done. We got a lot of attention and some raised eyebrows.

Fast forward to today. Even to our prescient team and focused application developers, the reality of the vision surprises us. Work contracts are every day shifting from fixed to flexible. Organizations are hiring in a variety of ways, from a variety of professional and lifestage backgrounds, to fill an ever-changing set of business goals. They seek functional competency, flexibility, and more simple real-time access to the professional marketplace. The full time job is changing into jobs of all shapes and sizes.

And, instead of the 15 million we estimated initially for our ALUMRISER population of professionals outside the workforce in the U.S., today the actual number is closer to 30 million not formally employed, but still seeking opportunity and projects or jobs that fit.

We are here to serve each and every one of you better and look forward to sharing some big and exciting news and key application updates as we complete a full splashy media launch this summer.

Is the summer of 2009 the end of work as we know it? Or the beginning of a process that takes each of us – employer and professional - one step closer to a work life that works?

Whether you’re hiring or seeking, we hope that you find that our unique ALUMRISE profile, our fitting search that matches on a variety of important criteria in a simpler way, and our two-way marketplace connectivity, deliver on our simple vision that when jobs fit better, life just works better.

If you could be served by joining ALUMRISE (it’s free), or know someone else who could benefit from our platform or many private organizational offerings, please do share us on – email, Tweet, share our blog, or send an ALUMVITE from our marketplace itself – because every little bit helps our company. Our team (do check out our new digs in the Photo section!) comprises members of the workforce we seek to serve – experienced executives who have moved beyond traditional corporate roles; young mothers juggling work and family; midcareer flexers seeking a new balance; and professionals coming back on track after a circumstantial exit beyond their control. That is what makes us authentic and what will make us succeed in helping each and every one of you.”
- Aassia

Ps: We’d love to grab our vanity URL for Facebook, so please do help us reach 1,000 members so that we can be www.facebook.com/ALUMRISE to each of you. Invite or spread the word on your page – if each of you invites 10 friends, we’ll get there before we know it. (And yes, we already submitted our “hold” on our handle and have heard back from the Facebook team).

Thank you to those who have followed our blog, noted and commented on our vision or shared a unique perspective. We value you and will continue to blog to provoke your thoughts and comments. Perhaps you’d like to be a guest blogger too, like our friend Libby Sartain? If so, please send a note to us we’ll work to make it happen.

Since joining Twitter, I’ve been getting into the free-flowing online “jobs” discussion. I recently followed an interesting thread about whether the new workforce generation will move to a model of 40 jobs in 40 years.

Whether or not a Gen Y professional will actually racks up that number of jobs isn’t the key point I took away (though a greater majority than we think may end up falling into the serial category) – what was more interesting to me was the idea that it was 40 “jobs” as the qualifier.

As ALUMRISE readies to move beyond its technology launch into go-loud (yes, we’re officially moved into our new office in Plano, we’re inking contracts, re-doing the site for user input, readying press releases), we’ve also been honing in on what makes us unique so that we better communicate that to new introductions and existing members like you.

Why I found the discussion above particularly interesting? It’s because our team here at ALUMRISE believes our mission is creating a unique space that supports jobs of all shapes and sizes – connecting and achieving better fit for professionals to employers of all shapes and sizes. The traditional career job hasn’t gone away, it’s still very important as a stabilization center for entities - but it’s role in each of our individual lives, may well have permanently shrunk. A confluence of technology, globalization, shifting employer practices and a renewed focus on broadly relevant cross-industry skills, means we’re going to be about gigs & fits.

What does that mean? It means I believe we may well be moving to a world in which we well may well have 40 gigs in 40 years.

Some gigs will continue as part of each day or week – long term gigs. (p.s.: I think parenting or elder care fall into this category – they will always take a certain part of our day and should be acknowledged as such). Others will be short term – volunteering; internships or returnships; mentoring; or coaching. Some will be fixed (3 years, full time). Others more lenient (such as: when I need you, for the next 5 months at $120/hour).

At ALUMRISE we believe our task as professionals will be to figure out two things:

• Our income needs
• The total available time or capacity we have to generate it

We should each plan to among these variables to get to right gigs & fits equation - including our unpaid gigs! And as employers of professionals, we should recognize that this is an emerging factor in the equation for where a professional will want to work.

What do you think? Agree or disagree, I hope you consider this a point of debate - do share your comments or reactions.

Join the marketplace! http://www.alumrise.com/alumsignup.aspx

Ps: Stay in touch with us by signing up for our RSS feed and newsletter so we can share some new tools ALUMRISE is developing as part of the launch of our social presence (we can’t help it, we’re watchers and analyzers … we take our time to trigger things like a Facebook fan presence). Our hope is that new tools we introduce will help you make fit happen, whether you’re a professional seeking a job of any shape or size, or an employer figuring out how to find the best fitting professional for your work need.

Jobs, economy, health, wealth, security. These are the themes I heard echoed across three regions of the world recently – South Asia, the Middle East and Europe – during three enlightening weeks of travel abroad.

Interestingly, I fell into somewhat esoteric, philosophical conversation late one night around the idea that the recent global economic crisis has led to a true discrediting of the world order. 

It got me thinking. If the last century was about the prevalence of two competing systems – communism, and capitalism, with passing nods to socialism – it is becoming unclear what governing tenets will prevail in the coming one and how the system will evolve.

Today, it’s certainly clear too many are falling outside the important, social net that keeps our world healthy. Whether it’s the millions losing jobs and baseline security in the previously secure U.S. market, or the many millions who never had that security in the first place across the poverty-stricken, crime ridden developing world, have enough now fallen outside that the system faces a genuine threat?

Here’s my position or thought … for what it’s worth. The functioning of stable, liberal democracy and a world order as we know it today is based on satisfying enough people enough of the time by taking care in a meaningful way of the needs both primal (home, health, food, water) and emotional (culture, expression, art).

The bell has rung to begin the exam to figure out how to save, or evolve our world system. The mandate for any evolution of the system – with no prejudice for governing names or ideologies – should be that we do a better job of protecting and securing the baseline needs of more of the people, more of the time. Are we close to satisfying even a meager 50%; will we pass or fail?

Note to system architects: primal needs matter greatly when you age, or during the early years of life – stages that much of the world are now in. We are not a middle-aged world concerned only with freedom and wealth. We are a young-old world concerned with health, security and the proper nurturing of changing life stages.

We need to lay the foundation of a more humane evolution of our governing world systems before we rush to protect ideology. I’m not arguing against or for free market capitalism or for any recreation of something like communism. Frankly the older I become, the more boring I find pure ideology.

Instead I’m simply saying that our system needs to recognize the changes occurring in our world, and do a better job of evolving to fulfill the needs of ….

• A newly minted retiree without a pension or healthcare in the U.S., no savings, and no family member with a job
• A young mother in Dubai whose husband will be deported next week with a home that has depreciated 50%, she lives in a car
• An engineer in Pakistan who wants a real world-class education in every sense
• An artist in Eastern Europe whose livelihood depends on enough people having the time or interest to travel and think about art, because their bellies and pockets are full
• An so on

Jobs, economy, health, wealth, security. Better linking the economic engine to the social net.  Whether you’re in the US or elsewhere, aren’t these the things that matter most?

Whether or not you’re looking for a job or flexible position today, you’ve probably been a part of some conversation about online identity.

This is such a rich topic that one post can’t possibly do it justice, but I’ll throw out some themes and then dig deeper as I see responses.

I know personally I’ve had numerous discussions about a series of topics, like:

Should I post personal or family photos online, e.g. at Facebook?

I enjoy seeing others’ photos and feel its only fair to share. But I do worry about who’s looking at my photos online, and whether I’m being judged by a future business partner, employer or potential employee … More confusing: as business contacts join my personal Facebook site, will I need to segment? The more I need to “manage” convenient tools, the less they become convenient … so what does that mean as I comingle more and more?

Should I write a blog and if so, what’s the point of the blog… and uh-oh there’s Tweeting

My answer: I blog and tweet, but it’s organic … Haven’t quite gotten to a “strategy” really. Will get there eventually. I remind myself that I do need to pace myself. As a team we often talk about that – under-doing is so much better than much ado about nothing. If you are newly thinking of blogging, taking it slow may be a good approach. I won’t even get into Twitter… Still figuring that whole world out but finding it fun to stumble upon interesting user-sifted info (ps: A useful post from The Talent Buzz blog on how a targeted jobseeker might use a service like Twitter )

How should I be using LinkedIn or other networking tools?

I personally use these tools sparingly to understand who’s viewing me online, because it matters to my business. But then again, I am not what you’d call a power networker. I do think LinkedIn is a convenient rolodex manager, and the same is true of Plaxo or other networking tools. ALUMRISERS, do carefully manage activity and self promotion if you extend professional network use beyond simple rolodex management - it takes time investment to achieve success

With so much of professional and personal life moving online, here’s a personal bottom line fear/prediction: It’s already the wild, wild west of information and it’s only going to get more crowded and confusing as people put more about themselves out there. Sure, “Search” or “Sift” models like Google or Twitter help people find each other. But there’s a growing place for more controlled, private tools like ALUMRISE – we can help certain types of opportunity seekers stay targeted, simple, and focused on just the key end result (e.g. hire, employ, earn, succeed).

For What it’s Worth: My Advice to ALUMRISERS
1.  Segregate your employment world from your personal online, if you’re not ready to comingle
2. Keep it simple (less is more)
3. Keep it in control (Facebook vs. MySpace) and
4. Keep a sustainable pace (Tweet or blog to say something, not just to do it)
Please …. let us know if you have advice for us to share! 

A Recruting Guru’s take: Read a colleague’s thought for the day. I think John puts it nicely when he speaks about Social Media and he’s been following the online recruiting world for a whole lot longer than I have!

Dodging taxes has been in the news since the Daschle debacle.  Unfortunately, little missteps can hurt a big career.

The biggest misstep of course is a working family hiring help – or “Nannygate,” quoting a funny comment from a friend and colleague that I came across on Facebook the other day.

It’s common knowledge that despite “knowing better” many public officials do hire off-the-books household or childcare help and suffer the consequences when it comes time to take public office. So why do they do it? Surely they “know” better, right?

Let’s face it - Nannygate is the dirty little secret that many working families today could not survive without, whether or not they are public officials.

The math on child support and working families decrees that the trued-up cost of even average help can keep a productive contributor at home. In many cities, women must earn up to $15/hour (before taxes), simply to cover the cost of hourly help with family needs. Many bright and talented contributors decide it’s better to cease to work and stay home. If they find a more cost effective solution that creates some support and residual income – such as a fixed-price childcare helper - many take it and worry later about any consequences.

In our society today, mothers and fathers alike are forced to develop their own creative solutions to step the gap created between longer commuting and work day schedules and the shorter school day. These range from the “live-in” invisible housekeeper/nanny, to the paid or unpaid grandma or grandpa, to hiring some college kid to drive kids between school and afterschool programs to keep kids occupied until the family can get home. The horror of latchkey households and child predators has made it harder to allow families to send even older kids home alone after school.

So why can’t we find better solutions as a society and government to support our families and help keep the economy on track? ALUMRISE believes we must band together as a society to find better ways to support working families, either by improving childcare math and/or creating social systems to help such as better subsidized, safe, after-school care. (Let’s think about elder care, here, too).

We also believe that promoting natural, logical private sector solutions — such as creating opportunities that better tie to real family days and family lives, via more flexible arrangements — is a pure and noble goal to strive towards.

Companies also are wising up to this approach, based on a combination of skills shortages and cost needs and starting to realize the “ALUMRISER” is not a second-choice solution, but instead a viable and powerful flexible resource in a changing economic landscape.

If nothing at all is done, frankly, we’ll all cease wanting to aspire to goals such as Public Office and Becoming the Next President and instead be quite content with being the next victim of “Nannygate.” What a crying shame.

On inauguration day, we invited a few friends over for a casual evening get together to watch the taped ceremony, with one small caveat: they had to share a prediction for the future – what the world will look like on Jan 20, 2010, 4 years from our evening together.

Predictions ranged from tongue-in-cheek to serious, but they included:

• A baby in the White House – this one came up twice. Moms, are we asking for an even more family friendly First Family?
• 8 years of Obama – there was a real certainty that this family will be re-elected whether or not the economy is on an upswing because of the media and general public’s growing adoration
• Universal Healthcare – Both versions came up – that it will happen, and that he’ll fail trying, but the point came down to this: whether you think he’ll succeed or fail, healthcare is the next mortgage crisis and a seminal moment this administration faces
• Rising costs and falling confidence – Some felt the market decline was not easily reversed and a bigger government was going to only exacerbate the problems facing the U.S. today

My own prediction wasn’t very well thought out (post too many slices of cake) but it went along the lines of this:

In times of distress, what has made America consistently great is not the reality on the ground, the structure and its malaise, but a grand, irrational defining vision

Put another way, whether or not U.S. GDP and debt reduces or increases, should Obama be able to uplift Americans to recreate a vision, (like a Man on the Moon, a Peace Corps, or the amazing power of the Internet), I believe he’ll again put Americans on the path to U.S. regeneration.

He certainly has the opportunity and has available great, defining goals such as health, wealth and environmentally friendly prosperity from which to pick.

I’m not of the camp that U.S. power is waning, never to rise again. A good book to read that expounds on a more balanced view of future U.S. influence is Fareed Zakaria’s  The Post American World. It’s central idea is the “rise of the rest,” but certainly not the fall of the U.S.

I believe a new age of potential U.S. power and influence is dawning. But this is a promise only realized if the human and intellectual energy of people – not just some, but most of the people – is harnessed. Human energy dissipated, is market decline and life’s labor lost. ALUMRISE as a company believes that people of all life stages, ages and experiences can contribute toward a more productive economy and society. That’s our simple vision.

Later this year, I’ll be working to release a long-held dream – a novella tenatively called “It’s All About MHE: Why Managing Human Energy Should be the New Imperative for Individuals, Companies and Countries.” ALUMRISE was conceptualized as a human energy solution, one of many that are today available or could be created to improve the lot of each of us individually, as well as improve our economic and social productivity and satisfaction.

Why I’m predicting better things for 2010? Because I think Obama gets human energy.

Let’s hope I’m not wrong.

What do you think?

I was asked recently by a local Dallas Moms Web site, started by a former coworker and Mompreneur, to share some tips on the challenge of finding a new opportunity or returning to work after a hiatus. Really got me thinking. Here’s what I had to say to the members of Moms Out Loud:

You’ve probably read or heard advice about returning to work, including resume tips, dress tips and interviewing guidelines. As someone who left the traditional workforce to raise a child and pursue a personal dream of creating a business for others like me, ALUMRISE — I found that much of the advice, while practical and helpful, didn’t completely meet the mark.

The advice often assumed certain things about me and others like me:

We are completely confident about our decision to return to the workforce. Now we just need to find a ‘job’

The portrait of the mother I often speak to via my role at ALUMRISE needs to find meaningful work to fit her life stage, but is continually re-evaluating. Some days, she’s ready to conquer the world. Others, she’s dealing with a sick child and an upside down house, and a job hunt is the furthest item from her mind. The concept of a ‘job’ is a difficult one for many moms. They are looking for meaningful work and residual income. But traditional jobs can often be a square peg in a round hole for the at-home mother.

My Tips:

• Turn this potential drawback of daily indecision or re-evaluation into an opportunity. Find job sites or solutions that showcase a variety of both permanent and flexible opportunities and ad-hoc opportunities like completing tasks or doing short term projects
• Don’t wait for the perfect “job” – seek opportunities that fit your day, week, or month. And do it now! Often, these can turn into the perfect long term position
• If you find you struggle with balance, look for flexible positions, even if you trade off some pay or promotion opportunity
• And do look at the type of work that suits your new situation – for example, working with a start up, or a small business, or in retail. A traditional corporate position could be financially rewarding but create personal stress in scheduling and workload, so be honest with your own limitations before starting a search

We are self confident and able to articulate our skills. We are thick skinned at parties and in social gatherings when eyes glaze over as we describe our former work and current job needs

What I’ve observed is that even the most self-confident mothers experience mood swings, self-recrimination and doubt, when they consider a return to the workforce. They react to the lack of interest or reinforcement and support from others, and take it to heart. Many retract and decide “work is not for them,” even though they are smart, intelligent, and strong contributors. It’s a self defense mechanism. So even while paying lip service to a job hunt, such a mother may be damaging her own chances by giving mixed messages about the consistency and belief in her own abilities to succeed in a job or a part time position.

My tips:

• Find someone who is a personal fan and supports your intelligence and desire to find meaningful work. Look to them for advice and counsel. Don’t expect support from those who don’t know you and your strong experiences and ability to contribute
• Keep your hunt targeted and close and do use online vehicles that can help promote you beyond your own social circle — members of your own circle may subconsciously only see you via the lens of mother or wife or daughter in law. Use sites especially those created for informal workforce members, like a Moms group, a flexible gigs site or a site like ALUMRISE designed for the non traditional workforce
• It’s not easy to banish self-doubt but the greatest danger is to let good opportunities pass you by, by talking down your abilities or abilities when you do find someone interested in working with you. Be specific and factual about your goals, and ability to contribute. Don’t be apologetic!

We have a life plan and are working on it. Motherhood is a detour or hiatus but not the final goal

Most mothers drastically alter their perception of parenting, only after they have a first child. For some, it happens with a second. Suddenly, parenting as a “detour” from real life, is replaced by a growing realization that parenting is as much the business of life, as a paid position. Employers may find it hard to hear this message – and many moms are stuck trying to deliver a message that they need a firm balance between parental responsibilities and paid employment.

My tips:

• Talk about the positives of parenthood as qualities for an employer. These are qualities such as your perseverance, your patience, your ability to work hard, and your ability to juggle tasks on a minute-by-minute basis
• Talk about your own desire for a flexible position and be willing to discuss how that could benefit an employer, for example in a pay trade-off
• Be honest about the role of parenting in your life. You may be surprised that your candor impresses an employer. After all, they may be juggling the same issues as you. Honesty is an important way to establish the right rules of engagement, increasing chances of success for both sides

Starting or completing a job hunt is hard, especially when you are torn between competing priorities. But if you start by addressing some upfront, personal barriers, the battle can be won.

Happy hunting Moms!

Aassia Haq is a midcareer mom who left the traditional workforce to start ALUMRISE. She currently serves as CEO of the business. The photo was taken in her garden, in between a business meeting and an infant meltdown. Unfortunately, she hasn’t had time to take a better photo yet.