Kids are back to school – is it the right time for you to return to work or study too?

There’s something about the change of seasons, the end of summer and kids returning to school that shifts our focus back towards ourselves and our goals. This is especially true if you have been thinking about returning to the workforce or studying again, September might just feel like the right month to start looking into it.

Dusting off that CV and updating or creating a LinkedIn profile are still of course as important as ever but you also need to have new fresh content to add to them. So where do you start?

Firstly, you need to ditch any self-doubt about how employers will view you, in fact to quote Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg “43% of highly qualified women with children are leaving careers for a period of time”.

You will find that with some planning and thought about what you want to do and where you want to go, your skills and qualifications you will have an action plan in no time and a lot of value to bring to many an organisation.

We’ve put together some key points below which we hope you find interesting.

Get Reading

Make Google your best friend and go online, download e-books and sign-up to any free employment or industry specific newsletters from the area you are interested in or have come from to get up-to-date on all the latest news and industry updates, terminology and trends. This will also give you a talking point for the next stage.

Reconnect with who you were

Before you left your professional life, get in touch or meet those old friends, colleagues and managers from your old job and read through your old references. It can be interesting to hear their perspective on what has changed or what the working you was like.

Take a course, webinar or workshop

Refreshing your skills is very important, especially in certain fields, like IT & technology, accounting and bookkeeping, HR management, and marketing, to name a few. Make sure to add them to your CV and LinkedIn page along the way to demonstrate that you are well equipped to handle the latest versions or information. You might want to look at enrolling in a local training course in Kerry where you can get out and about going to the centre on your chosen days or even learn from the comfort of your own home through distance learning.

Practice articulating your new skills

Without a doubt there will be new skills you have gained from taking time out to raise the kids. Managing the house and family will have fine tuned your multi-tasking skills, problem solving and time management skills to no end. If you carry your list with you backed up with examples, you can articulate these out loud to yourself whenever you have a chance. You will be able to deliver these effortlessly when the time comes be it with recruitment agent, potential employer or even friend.

Use real life experience as work references

This will help demonstrate what you achieved while on career break and will certainly help if your work references are a bit dated. E.g. if you volunteered with an organisation or perhaps you were an active member of the Parent’s Association at your children’s school or led a local fundraising campaign or initiative. You could also just start now and look at some volunteering roles which will then be happy to serve as references a few months down the road.

Participate in LinkedIn groups

Look for groups to join when you update your linkedIn page and become an active participant, you never know when a participant is looking for someone just like you and the beauty of living in Kerry is that you are bound to make connections that you know in real life!

Our team in Pitman Training Kerry have been working for many years with students looking to return to work after a career break and with an excellent training to employment rate of 92% of graduates working in better careers or earning more money within the same year, they have a lot of great advice to offer.

The training courses in Kerry are flexible and at times to suit each student so they can train part-time, full-time, evenings, weekends and from home. There is a wide range of areas to choose from IT, Technical training courses, Programming to Web and Graphic Design, Management courses, Digital Marketing, Accounting, Event Management, Medical Secretarial and Legal Secretary training.