The LinkedIn “Stay At Home Mom”​ Feature — A Recruiter’s View

I want to tackle the recent announcement LinkedIn made about a new “Jobs” option they are rolling out about being a stay at home Mom (or Dad, because I personally know at least 4 families with stay at home fathers, and let’s also not discount parental caregivers). I am explicitly discussing long-term absences from the workforce and NOT covid19 job losses. Just to be clear.

Remember this: your resume/LinkedIn profiles are tools TO GET YOU THROUGH THE DOOR TO TALK TO SOMEONE.

If you are looking to return to the workplace after a caregiver hiatus, using this new feature is certainly an option. But I’m going to give you some food for thought (and other actionable ideas.)

1. It is illegal in the US and Canada for employers to ask you about your marital status or family situation. If you choose to share it, that opens up an avenue of discussion you may not want to and once open it cannot be shut down easily again. (You can certainly use this as your own screening “in” tool/litmus test when looking at companies).
2. You are giving organizations/people a reason to screen you out. This feature advertises competing priorities from the get go, it signals that a potential employee has already assumed the primary role of “oh my gosh something happened I need to leave” or the “I need to able to leave no later than 4:15 every day to pick my child up from school”. I’m just being honest, especially during this very high time of unemployment with millions of highly qualified candidates on the market.
3. Recruiters don’t generally consider staying at home as a caregiver to be a “job”. It is a choice that families are able to make. (No matter how your slice it, unless you are applying for a nanny, paraeducator, a childcare job, or maybe a delivery driver — it is not relevant except maybe for an extremely small business, where the “budget” is slightly larger than a single family household, or there are only a “few” employees.)
4. If you are a parental caregiver, you have probably developed skills dealing with healthcare issues. These may be something you can highlight for health care industry positions (navigating Medicare/Medicaid, acting as a case worker for your parents for example.)
5. If you took time out of the workforce for your own medical needs and you share that on your resume/LI profile, you are telling employers that you are potentially expensive to insure.

Trying to “hide” or “upsell” your caregiver status generally backfires. “Domestic Engineer” or “Project Manager” or “CFO/CEO” or other misleading titles — they don’t work, to be perfectly blunt and honest. They are not clever, they don’t show initiative. Just stick to “personal sabbatical” with your dates out of the workforce, and leave it at that. We cannot legally ask for embellishment other than what is listed on your resume.

The SINGLE biggest reason why it is so difficult for stay at home caregivers to return to the workplace is the deterioration of functional career skills. If you are out of the workforce more than 12–18+ months, then the likelihood that your industry has changed is relatively high (DEFINITELY highlight continuing credentialing credits on your resume/LI profile during this time). New software programs, new processes, possibly even new laws/compliance requirements. As a recruiter, I am happy to put qualified candidates in front of hiring managers. In tech, I am generally hiring software engineers, or other technical titles. If someone is going to send me a resume showing they have updated skills, that is going to potentially include nano-degrees, updated portfolio/github URLs, a bootcamp, a self-driven project like an app, relevant volunteer work, etc. I recently did hire someone that had been a SAH parent. They prepared for two weeks for the interviews on skills that were rusty, and had taken a bootcamp in the last 18 months. But that is the exception rather than the rule — most candidates bomb the functional phone screen with the hiring team.

You can look for what are called “returnships” — these are paid “internal” bootcamps to help returning caregivers polish up their skills. But they are still fairly rare and almost all in tech.

A few years ago, I wrote a piece geared for those adults planning to take time out of the workplace with the plan of eventually stepping back in. There are lots of ideas that you may want to consider instead of highlighting “stay at home” parent/caregiver. Perhaps this will spark some additional considerations for you. It was inspired by a friend of mine that left a highly challenging career at Microsoft to be a SAHM, then her spouse left her after a decade and with two young children (I was able to help her network back into the workforce; we originally met professionally). I see this quite often in older women — they were a homemaker and stay at home parent, and their marriages dissolve and they are left needing to find a job after 10, 15, 20 or more years out of the workforce.

#sahm #stayathomemom #stayathome #returnships #bootcamp #resumetips #linkedintips #usinglinkedin

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Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.