How do I explain the gap on my CV after a career break?

‘How do I explain the gap on my CV?’ is one of the most frequent questions we get asked. It’s a good question and one that causes many of our returners considerable angst. But, not anymore... 

Victoria McLean, CEO of City CV, ran a fantastic session on this topic at our Women Returners conference last year. And, we’re delighted she’s agreed to come back this year. The session is really interactive and packed with expert tips and insider knowledge of the recruitment market – it’s definitely not to be missed.

As a taste of what’s to come, we asked Victoria to give us her top tips for writing your return to work CV and making the most of LinkedIn. Here’s what she had to say:

Top Tip #1: Never undersell yourself on your CV 

I feel a lot of people, women returners in particular, undersell themselves on their CV. It’s not about bragging, but a stand-out CV really needs to demonstrate the benefits you’ll bring to an employer. Your added-value needs to sing out from every line. Most people find that a bit daunting at first, especially after a career break when so many women forget just how great they are. My advice is – don’t panic, we’ll cover loads of ideas in the conference session.

There are several ways to turn a gap on your CV into a positive selling point - make sure to include all the relevant skills and experience you've acquired. I'll talk about this in more depth at the conference. We’ll also be looking at how to hone in on those key strengths and skills. And, how to optimise your CV with key words to get past the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). 

Top Tip #2: LinkedIn is a valuable tool

When it comes to LinkedIn, I feel very few people are really making the most of it. That’s a shame because it’s a valuable tool. Around 99% of recruiters use it to search for suitable candidates and to check you out before inviting you to interview.

It’s really worth investing in your LinkedIn profile because it’s not enough to just copy and paste your CV. LinkedIn requires a different approach; it’s less formal and more dynamic than a CV. And, as you’d expect from a search engine run by algorithms, key words play a massive role. Your LinkedIn summary is the most important part of your profile and it should set out your business case with keywords and using all of the 2,000 characters available. It's really important to get the first two or three lines just right so recruiters are motivated to click 'see more'. 

Even if you’re completely new to LinkedIn, don’t worry. The conference session will boost your confidence and get you going in the right direction. If you’ve already got a LinkedIn profile but feel you could be doing more with it, we’ve got some ideas for that too.

Thank you, Victoria. We’re looking forward to learning more at your session. 

Victoria McLean, CEO of City CV, will be running a conference session on how to write a compelling, impressive CV and Linkedin profile, including how to position your career break. She will also be running a breakout session on Interview Skills.

Where & When? 

The 2020 Women Returners London Conference is on:

Monday 12 October 2020: 9.00am to 5.30pm (rescheduled)

Venue: 10 Union Street, London Bridge, London, SE1 1SZ – just a few minutes walk from London Bridge station.

This is our fourth annual London Conference especially for professional woman interested in returning to work after a career break. It’s a highly motivational and inspiring day packed with expert speakers, panels and workshops. 

This conference is for everyone looking to return to work after a break. It doesn’t matter what your professional background is or whether your career break has been 18 months or 18 years. Join us for the opportunity to meet informally with other like-minded women and our returner employer sponsors, including Amazon Web Services, Bloomberg, Credit Suisse, FDM Group, J.P. Morgan, O2 and St. James’s Place Academy.

Early Bird offer

Our Early Bird ticket offer is available. Book your ticket now to secure your place.

How best to use LinkedIn

Recently we spoke to Victoria McLean - CEO and founder of City CV – to find out the best way to optimise your Linkedin profile. But once you have followed Victoria’s excellent advice, what happens next? Do you know how to use LinkedIn to its full advantage?

We asked Victoria for some tips:

Connect with people – spend time making connections and growing your network. The more first-degree connections you make the more second and third-degree connections you will then have, which will increase your chances of coming up in searches. And, of course, building your network will encourage more people to connect with you directly.

Join LinkedIn groups – every region and industry sector have their own groups and they are a great way to increase your visibility and connect with people who may be able to help you achieve your goal. You’ll be able to raise your profile by posting and commenting in groups, and LinkedIn allows you to message other group members free of charge. So, if you see someone in a group you belong to who is already working in a job/area that appeals to you - or even someone who has hiring responsibilities - you can contact them for advice.

Join LinkedIn career groups – these groups are often set up by recruiters so that they can make potential candidates aware of roles they are recruiting for without having to use LinkedIn’s paid-for service. Use LinkedIn’s search engine to find these groups and join them so that you’ll be the first to hear about new opportunities – once you have optimised your LinkedIn profile, of course!

Use LinkedIn Jobs – you can search for vacancies by job title and location, state where you are in your job search and select what kind of role you are looking for – eg, full-time, part-time, contract etc. You can also set up alerts and save jobs that appeal to you. If you are interested in working for specific companies, you can also choose to receive alerts when they post new job vacancies. Your activity in LinkedIn Jobs is not made public.

Ask for recommendations and endorsements – recommendations are similar to testimonials or references and can be from former colleagues, bosses or clients – you just need to send someone you have worked with a friendly request to provide you with a recommendation. And when you have listed your key skills, you can ask first degree contacts to endorse these skills on your profile. Both testimonials and endorsements are a great way of validating your profile and showcasing your experience. If you’re nervous about asking for support in this way, why not offer to endorse the skills of others and provide them with testimonials if you can? More often than not they will offer to do the same for you.

Sharing content and posting blogs – sharing useful content or even posting blogs you have written yourself are great ways to increase your visibility and credibility. You could even set up your own LinkedIn group if you spot a gap and feel it would be useful for your job search/future career.

How to optimise your LinkedIn profile

Everyone knows how important it is to be on LinkedIn – it’s the top social media site for career and professional networking. And while most people do have a LinkedIn profile, it’s surprising how few know how to optimise their profile so they can maximise their chances of finding a role.

We spoke to Victoria McLean – CEO and founder of City CV – to find out what you need to do, as a returner, to make sure your LinkedIn profile becomes your hardworking ally on your return-to-work journey.

First of all, let’s understand why LinkedIn is so important when you’re looking to return to work after a career break or indeed for any subsequent job search. Well, here the stats are clear - and mind-blowing. Ninety-seven percent of recruiters/headhunters use LinkedIn as their primary way to source candidates; 85% of recruiters make their shortlist decisions based on LinkedIn alone and nearly 50% of engaged users of LinkedIn have hiring decision making authority.

“LinkedIn is your online marketing document. It’s your business case that needs to clearly demonstrate why you meet your future employer's needs and why they should hire you,” says Victoria. “Your profile is all about strategically aligning you to your target role,” she adds. It’s used in every part of the recruitment process.”

Victoria recommends starting with a blank Word document so that you can strategically plan out, format and spell check your information before you put anything online.

Here are the steps she recommends you take:

1. Carry out a detailed keyword research. This is where you need to start. Create a list of key words and phrases (key skills, expertise, job titles etc) that a recruiter or a computer algorithm is likely to use to find candidates like you. The more keywords you have the better. It doesn’t matter if you’re saying the same thing in lots of different ways - make sure you cover all your bases. Once you have a comprehensive list, use it in every part of your profile so that you can be easily found. And remember - keyword breadth and density is important.

2. Create a killer profile. The first things a recruiter will see are your photo, name, headline and location so it’s super-important to get these right. Make sure you use a corporate-type photo – professionally shot, if possible. When it comes to your headline, LinkedIn’s default is to use your last job title, but you can change this and create a brief, powerful picture of who you are and what you have to offer. You have 120 characters so try to use all of them wisely. Make sure you include your industry (or target industry) in your headline to increase your chances of appearing in recruiters’ searches. For your location, it’s important to say where you want to work, not where you live. Recruiters screen by location and if you leave this out, or have the wrong location, you could miss out on a lot of opportunities.

3. Craft your summary. This is the most important and valuable part of your profile and it should set out your business case. Find a tone, style and level of detail that suits you, make sure it is keyword rich and use all the 2,000 characters available to you. It’s completely up to you whether you use the first or third person when writing your summary, although Victoria says she prefers to use the first person. It’s really important to get the first two or three lines spot on so that recruiters are motivated to click on ‘see more’. One way of making sure you have used all your keywords is to have a list of your specialities within your summary.

4. Talk about your experience. Make sure you use job titles that are searchable (eg Marketing Manager not Brand Warrior). And double check that your job titles and dates match those in your CV. Use the first person and bullet points or short paragraphs – enough to entice a recruiter to contact you – but don’t copy and paste from your CV. Focus on the most important information and go back far enough so that former colleagues can find you.

5. Fill in your education details. It’s important to add your university (and maybe school) details as you’re likely to receive 17x the messages you would get if you left this section blank.

6. Detail your skills and expertise. You can add up to 50 skills and areas of expertise. This section is an ideal opportunity to use your keywords to say the same thing in different ways (to maximise the chances of your profile coming up in searches). LinkedIn will guide you and suggest similar phrases. Input the skills needed for your target role, putting the most relevant ones first. See if you can get endorsed by your contacts for these keys skills as endorsed skills will appear at the top of the list.

City CV will be running a LinkedIn Key Essentials workshop at our Women Returners 'Back to Your Future' Conference in London on 13 May. And a professional photographer will be taking LinkedIn headshots. These options are subject to availability, so if you are interested in either do book your Conference ticket now.

Updating your digital toolkit for your return to work

Are you worried that your digital skills may be out of date? Our guest blogger, Nikki Cochrane of Digital Mums, gives advice on updating your digital toolkit if you've had an extended career break.

Returning to work - whatever your situation - is a daunting process. Couple that with the dreaded imposter syndrome us women seem to feel more than our male counterparts and it’s a surprise any of us pluck up the courage to dust off our LinkedIn profile and put ourselves out there.

But as the well-used saying goes, knowledge is power, and in today’s ever-advancing world of digital, it’s confidence-building too. With government predictions showing that 90% of jobs will require some digital proficiency within 20 years but a quarter (23%) of adults still lacking basic digital skills, it’s time to take control of your career and bring your digital toolkit right up-to-date so you can dazzle prospective employers with your digital know-how and feel empowered in the 21st century workplace.

Here are Digital Mums' top 5 digital tools for surviving in today’s Brave New World: 

Slack 
"Do you remember when we used to send emails?"  Those are the words you’ll most likely be hearing in a few years' time. Email is dying in many workplaces and in its place are new communication tools like Slack, which operate like WhatsApp on steroids with the ability to set up public and private chat groups all under the same roof, share documents and link to your Trello board...
  
Trello

Post-its meets wallchart meets calendar. Finally there’s a collaborative tool that allows you to organise your weekly and daily tasks, tag in work colleagues, link to documents, colour code by priority (goodbye, highlighter pens), add notes and checklists to yours and other people’s boards and change priorities with a quick click and a swipe. It’s so effective at getting even the most disorganised organised that you’ll be using it to sort out your life admin in no time. 

TouchCast 

Forget standard video updates and past-it PowerPoints, TouchCast puts the fun into presenting. Best described in their own words: "TouchCast looks like TV and feels like the web". There’s a newsroom style backdrop for company updates or you can turn instant pro by using a green screen to transport you to any backdrop in the world. To aid engagement and bring to life presentations, you can share documents, web pages, and other media from within the video to get people interacting - the best way to learn. 

LinkedIn 

OK, so it’s not the newest of digital tools, but used correctly and it is your key to finding the job of your dreams. As well as making sure you’re picture perfect (your profile is 14x more likely to get views with a photo than without one), LinkedIn is all about attracting the right people and growing your network to achieve your career goals. As well as following companies you’d like to work for and engaging with people who can help you get there, share articles on your chosen subjects and spark conversations by adding your own spin on what you’re sharing to attract like-minded people. 

Google Suite 

Head in the cloud? That’s exactly where it should be in today’s working environment. Google’s free suite of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook equivalents are saved in the ‘cloud’ meaning you never need to worry about forgetting to press ‘save’ again.  It automatically saves as you go and let’s you share documents with other people to work on at the same time. You can even chat in the document while you’re working. Google Meet meanwhile, makes remote working less remote through group video calling where you can share screens to get as close as possible to an ‘IRL’ meet-up. 


Nikki Cochrane is co-founder of digital training academy, Digital Mums.

If you want to learn more about these tools and more, Digital Mums has launched a new 12 week course, the Digital Retox, which aims to empower women with digital confidence in the workplace. As well as updating your digital toolkit, you’ll learn how to develop your own personal online brand so you feel current, relevant and empowered to return to work. For more information and an Early Bird discount, click here.

8 Ways to use LinkedIn to get back to work

This week's guest blog is by Victoria McLean MD of City CV

If you are planning to return to work after a career break, you need to have all your job search documents ready. It’s not enough these days to simply tag jobs onto the front of your CV and hope for the best: the UK job market is more competitive than ever and if you have been away for any amount of time you really need to invest time and effort in making sure your CV meets current criteria and recruiter expectations.

Alongside a strong, standout CV, LinkedIn is a crucial element in your armoury and your LinkedIn profile has to reflect your excellent career to date. It needs to demonstrate your professional credibility, encourage people to contact and connect with you and, over time, attract the attention of potential hirers. It can also extend your network of influence – creating useful contacts and enhancing your online brand.

LinkedIn is the leading online professional directory of individuals and companies. Individuals use it for professional networking and to present to their world a ‘professional online profile’. It is also a major tool for job seeking.

To give a summary of why LinkedIn is so important for anyone returning to the job market, here are some important numbers:

•       Over 400 million users worldwide in more than 200 countries;

•       15 million users in the UK alone;

•       3 million company pages;

•       2 new users are joining LinkedIn every second ;

•       40% of those check in daily;

•       Most importantly, nearly 50% of engaged LinkedIn users have ‘hiring decision making’ authority.  

So how can you make your profile work for you?

1. Returning to work after a break - Include your break as a line in your work experience section e.g. 'Parental career break + dates'. You can briefly explain in one or two sentences what you did over that period if it's relevant to your professional profile or you can leave it blank. If your break was intentional, state this. It works well to refer to it in your 2000 character summary section with something like “Following planned parental career break now seeking to return to an executive marketing post.” Nice and simple and to the point.
2. Changing your career - The important thing is to develop and then stick to a good strategy.  Your LinkedIn is not just a history of what you have been doing; it should be targeted to where you are going. Spend considerable time thinking about your target role and transferable skills. What were you doing previously that could be advantageous to the new direction you are seeking?
3. Part-time roles or contracting - If you have had a lot of part-time or contracting roles detail them separately and make sure it is clear that they are contract roles. Unlike your CV where too many employers can make your CV look messy and inconsistant, LinkedIn lists them all clearly and you can be as concise as necessary.
4.  Take time to get it right - Don’t rush into creating a new profile. You are preparing your business case and establishing your credibility and so your profile needs to be well planned. The key is to take your time. If you feel your LinkedIn needs an overhaul then you need to allow time to do this. You have to be ruthless with content and remain objective throughout. Your profile needs to be strategically thought out, key-word rich and proof read again and again before anything is uploaded live.
5. Make your career experience count - Your work experience section lists your entire career history in chronological order. Here is an opportunity to sell your key deliverables and make them attractive to a potential employer. It’s vital to refer to your key words – key word density is super-important.
6.  Make connections - LinkedIn is all about linking and connecting with people you know and/or have worked with but also people and companies you might like to work with. Grow your network by connecting with head-hunters & recruiters, hiring managers, other people in your target sector, and industry leaders. Similarly, join groups connecting to your industry, participate in discussions and find out about the best jobs first.  
7. Shout about your skills - You will have used many skills when you were in paid employment so it’s essential to add these to your profile. Think about how you can say the same thing in different ways: Resourcing, Recruitment, Talent Management. You can also add any skills you developed or discovered while on a career break – many skills we use in parenting are transferable. People with at least five skills on their profile have on average 17 times more views. You can have up to 50 skills so make the most of the opportunity.
8. Include a professional photo - Don’t be shy. A professional photo (which means no comedy hats, glasses or cocktails) means you are 14 times more likely to get found on LinkedIn – and 35 times more likely to be sent a message. A head and shoulders shot is perfect.

By Victoria McLean, Managing Director of City CV who provide professional CV and LinkedIn writing services.