I am a 47-year-old mother of four girls who has been out of the paid workforce for 18 years. Right now, I’m in full-blown job search mode to get back into it, so I think about my resume a lot.
Not surprisingly, getting back in has been quite a challenge for many reasons. But recently, after yet another informational interview, I realized my resume doesn’t represent who I am at all.
Sure, it has my degrees and all of the very impactful and important volunteer work that I’ve done over the last eight years, but it has a huge, gaping hole. It doesn’t include my most challenging, most rewarding, and most acutely painful work experience. It doesn’t include the work experience that changed me from a self-centered narcissist into a grown-up and made me into the person I am today.
My resume is missing my work as a mother.
Can you imagine if I included what I’ve accomplished and learned as a mother on my resume? Hiring managers would think I was crazy. They would send it to their colleagues as a joke and write, “You’ve got to look at this one!”
But as I thought more about it, I realized a lot of my experience as a mother would translate well to corporate America.
[Related: How to hire more moms? Corporate America needs to learn to share]
Conflict management and resolution: I had a child between the ages of two and four for eight years straight. I've resolved a lot of conflict, to put it mildly.
Creativity and tenacity: After trying many, many, many ways to get my daughter to sleep through the night over an 18-month period, I finally did. (The solution: I put her in the same bedroom as one of her sisters. Thirteen years later, all four of my daughters still sleep in the same room.)
Diplomacy and discretion in discussing difficult subjects: More than once I’ve had to call a fellow parent and tell her that her child shared thoughts of suicide with one of mine.
Empathy, patience and assiduousness: I’m seven years in on a total of ten years (in a row) of helping my daughters navigate the friend drama of middle school.
Humility: I've had my teenager tell me I don’t like or understand her and then had to put my own bruised ego aside to figure out how to convince her that isn’t true.
Project management skills: Planning and scheduling the logistics and schedules of four children in three different schools playing up to ten different sports; planning, shopping for, cooking and cleaning up after four meals (including snacks) for six people every day (even when I’m on vacation) for 18 years; planning and executing a budget that satisfies as many different people’s needs as possible for 18 years; planning and executing a variety of events where failure would mean disappointing those you love most (no pressure!) for a variety of ages, audiences and needs including birthday parties, all family and national holidays (Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.), classroom parties and team parties; coordinating all personal-care appointments, such as doctor appointments (well and sick), dentist appointments and haircuts. I could go on and on.
And my work ethic? Well, I’ve been parenting 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for 18 years, and I’ve got seven more to go. I think I’ve got a pretty strong work ethic.
I think we should live in a world where my parenting skills and experiences are viewed as a valuable part of my resume. But I know that right now we don’t. So while I’m not going to add my parenting experience to my resume, I am proud of the person that I have become because of it. It will make me a better employee than I was before I had children. I just need to find an employer willing to let me prove it.
