Advance preparation for your return to work

At the moment our household is in mid-exam crisis mode. With two teenagers sitting important exams, I'm supporting from the sidelines. Alongside making many cups of tea & stocking the constantly-emptying fridge, I've been doing what I can to help them to prepare. They're completely focused on revision, so I'm stepping in for the practical side - finding the missing compass before the maths exam, stocking up with black biros & filling the water bottles. I've also been encouraging them to prepare mentally - positively channeling their adrenaline and discussing what to do if they have a crisis of confidence just before an exam or start panicking when they can't answer the first question.

Advance preparation is similarly vital when you make the decision to get back to work: you need to start to prepare on three fronts - professional/technical, mental and practical.

Top tips: 1. Don't wait for a job application or offer before you start to prepare; 2. You may not have your mum to help you out, but do prioritise finding your own sources of emotional and practical support.

Professional/technical preparation

Bring your knowledge back up-to-date. Re-subscribe to professional journals, read related press, take update/refresher courses if you need to. Go to seminars & conferences. Meet up with ex-colleagues and talk shop again. Remind yourself of the old jargon and learn the new.

Mental preparation

For returning mothers, this is the moment to address any looming guilt feelings about leaving your children - as we've said many times on this blog, there is no need to feel guilty for working (see here for advice). 

Remind yourself of your motivations for returning and the positive rewards for you and the family: studies have shown that if we focus on the positive aspects of combining work and family life, we're much more likely to feel good about our work-life balance, and to overcome any challenges, than if we focus on potential work-life conflict.

Increase your energy and enthusiasm for your return by spending time with the people who are encouraging you to make this change, rather than those who are questioning or critical of your decision. Also take steps to build your confidence; don't discount yourself and what you can offer (see here for confidence tips). 

Practical preparation

Make time for your return by giving up other activities, such as volunteering work that isn't using your professional skills. Get practiced at saying 'no' to free up your day. Start to delegate more to your children and encourage their independence. If you're the default taxi driver, still ferrying your older children around, let them get used to public transport. Same with your partner, if you have one - start to hand over and share out more of the home responsibilities. 

Build your practical support networks. If you need to sort childcare, it's worth planning this as far in advance as possible. Don't wait until you have the job offer! And start to contingency plan too - work out what will be your back-up for your back-up childcare before the inevitable problems arise - line up other mothers & local grannies/students. If you don't have a cleaner, get recommendations now so you can avoid spending all your free time doing housework when you're back at work.

Think carefully about how work can fit with your life. Map out a balanced work week for you. When do you want/need to be at home & what for? And critically, work out what you are not going to do any more at home. What can you let go of or delegate? Don't be the mother sewing a fancy-dress costume at 2am when a cheap bought or borrowed one will do just as well. You'll need to be flexible about how this might pan out once you get into job discussions, but being clearer on your non-negotiables will help you to target the right opportunities.

If you're also a mother who tells your children the benefits of not leaving everything until the last minute, this is the moment to practice what you preach!

Related Posts

Once your have the job offer, you'll have built a great foundation for the next stage of preparation: Preparing for your first months back at work

Posted by Julianne

How to Shine in Telephone Interviews

One of the innovations in recruitment practice in recent years is the increasing use of telephone interviews. In addition to their use in standard job recruitment, many of the return to work programmes we support use them as part of the screening process when deciding who to invite for face-to-face interviews or to selective returner events. This is the case for the Bloomberg Returner Circle which we launched last week as well as for many of the corporate returnship programmes. 

If you've not had an interview for many years, the process may seem daunting, particularly if a telephone interview is a totally new experience for you. We are often asked for advice about how to handle them; in particular, the lack of personal contact can be seen as a barrier. Although telephone interviews throw up different challenges from the traditional format, with the right preparation and approach, you will be able to put yourself across well.

What's different about a telephone interview?

• Lack of visual clues: clearly, you are not able to see your interviewer (or vice versa). This means you'll miss out on the normal conversational cues about whether you have the interviewer's interest or are answering in the way they expect. Similarly, the interviewer won't have any visual cues about your engagement or enthusiasm for the role. This means you have to use other methods to ensure a good understanding.
• Length and format: telephone interviews are commonly shorter than traditional interviews and the interviewer is often working from a set of highly structured questions, with less introductory 'small talk' so it may be harder to build rapport.
• Nature of interviewer: as the telephone interview is part of an initial suitability screen, the interviewer could be a recruitment generalist who might not have detailed knowledge of the company or the role for which you are applying.

Preparation is key

As with all interviews, your preparation will be vital and all the advice we give in our other posts is relevant (see links below). In addition, you can do the following:

• Ask in advance about the interview format, length, types of questions and what the interviewer will be assessing (for example this might be a CV-based check on your match with the profile, an assessment of your motivations, or an competency-based interview).
• Think about your answers to common interview questions and make some notes, but don't write out a script as you will sound wooden if you read from it, rather than speaking naturally.
• Make arrangements to ensure that you will be uninterrupted (especially by children!)
• Give yourself time just before the interview to prepare mentally and physically. Have a pen & paper and a copy of your CV and cover letter in front of you to refer to. 
• Dress in business wear if it helps you to feel confident that you will project the right image.

During the interview ...

• Behave as you would in a face-to-face interview, with the same degree of formality. 
• Don't worry about silence, the interviewer is probably writing.
• You can check on your performance by asking if you have answered the question fully or if more detail is needed.
• Smile - you'll sound more enthusiastic and confident.
• Speak clearly and not too quickly.
• Sit up straight or speak standing up if this allows you to talk with more power and energy

... and make this your opportunity to stand out

To show your enthusiasm and commitment in a limited time:

• Provide clear, succinct and focused responses to the questions you are asked. Avoid rambling!  
• Keep your voice upbeat and fully of energy.
• Project yourself as the professional person you would like to be seen as, after all, you can't be judged any other way!

After the interview

• Make notes on what you discussed.
• Do send a thank you email as you would for any other interview.

Other useful posts:

Six essential steps for successful interviewing
How to prepare for competency-based interviews
Responding to "You're overqualified for the role"

Posted by Katerina

How to Prepare for Competency-Based Interviews

When you're facing a job interview after many years out, it can be difficult to know how best to prepare. It may be many years since you last had an interview and the structure of interviews has changed significantly in the last decade. One relatively new and increasingly common addition to the recruitment process is the use of competency-based interviews. These raise particular issues if you've had a long career break and if you have never encountered them before they can throw you off balance in an interview. The key to performing well is detailed preparation - this is not the moment to rely on 'thinking on your feet' as you may have done previously in less structured more conversational interviews.

What is a competency?
A competency is a particular quality that the recruiter is looking for in job applicants, covering both behaviours and skills. Common examples are:
.

Adapting to change Analysing Communicating Creating and Innovating

Decisiveness Influencing Integrity Leadership

Planning & organising Problem-solving Resilience  Team work

What should I expect in a competency-based interview?
The purpose of competency-based interviews is to allow hiring managers to determine, more accurately, your fit with the precise requirements of the role through a systematic assessment.  All candidates for a role will be asked the same set of questions about the competencies appropriate to the role.

In the interview, you will be asked questions to test whether you have the desired competencies, by giving concrete examples from your past experience. 

During the interview you will be asked a series of questions like these: 
Describe a situation when you [produced an imaginative solution]?
How do you [determine your priorities]?
Tell me about a time when you [motivated others to reach a team goal] 
Give me an example of when you [were faced with a difficult problem]

The key to answering these questions is by giving specific examples from your prior experience and not just discussing the topic in a theoretical, impersonal or overly general manner. The interviewer is likely to dig further into your example by asking specific questions to examine your behaviours and attitudes.

How to prepare for a competency-based interview
It is essential to put time into preparing and rehearsing your responses.

You will usually be told in advance that you will be given such an interview. The first preparation step is to identify what competencies are being assessed, to give you the opportunity to prepare your examples. You may be told of these upfront. If not, do ask for this information and, if it is not provided, analyse the job description and the company careers webpages to pick out the competencies highlighted there. 

For each competency, think of two examples which give good evidence of the competency area. Draft a reply which focuses on the actions you took in each example which led to a successful outcome. One of the common pitfalls in these interviews is to give too much explanation of the context and background and not to give enough attention to what you did which is what your interviewer really cares about. A useful mnemonic for structuring your examples is STAR: Situation - Task - Action - Result.  Your answer needs to include all four elements to be effective, with most time spent on Actions. 

Make sure that you are clear about and emphasise your specific contribution. Talk about what you did using "I did" rather than "we did". Your interviewer wants to know about you not the team.

Further advice for returners

• It is common for returners to underplay their strengths and skills, particularly after a long break. This is not the time for modesty or to underplay your role in achieving a task!
• Your examples don't have to all be recent, so don't be concerned if you have had a long break and are using a few examples from 5, 10 or 15 years ago. Just take time beforehand to remember as much as you can about the example so that you can provide enough detail about your contribution.
• Your examples don't need to be solely work-related. More recent examples from your leisure activities, studies or any skilled volunteering you have done are just as relevant to use alongside, provided they effectively demonstrate the competency asked for.
• If you would like some pre-interview practice and feedback to test out your examples, enlist a buddy to work with you or contact us about our interview coaching services.

Related post: 

Six Essential Steps for Successful Interviewing

Posted by Katerina

Preparing for your first months back at work

You’ve been offered a new role or returnship, you’ve updated your wardrobe and sorted out your household – but you might still be full of uncertainties and doubts about how you will actually perform and be effective. 

With a returnship you have 10-12 weeks to demonstrate your value to your potential future employer. With a permanent role, you feel the pressure to establish yourself quickly as a contributor. At the same time, it is essential that you return to work with realistic ideas about what you can expect to achieve in your first weeks and months. By having clear goals you will find it easier to focus your energy on those aspects of your working life which will have the biggest positive impact for you and your employer. The biggest pitfalls for returners occur when they become caught up in the need to prove themselves in every way (to their employer or colleagues) or to please everyone (at home and at work) which can quickly lead to exhaustion and resentment. A realistic assessment of what is possible for you to achieve can help to minimise the risk of falling into these traps. 

We recommend you concentrate your preparation in the following areas:

• Achievement (your tangible measurable impact)
• Relationships (identifying key people and starting to build connections with them)
• Brand (what values do you want to be known for)
• Ways of working (establishing your boundaries)

Achievement

Think about the tangible and measurable business requirements that you will be working on in your first three months. Hopefully through the interview process you should have developed an idea of what the organisation expects of you. You will need to clarify these expectations and to shape them into specific and tangible results. This will demonstrate your competence to your colleagues and in doing so will help you to build your confidence and credibility in your role.

Very early on, you will need to check your view of what goals are important with your manager’s expectations, to ensure that you are aligned with each other. You will also want to build into your goals, opportunities for quick results that will enhance your reputation as someone who delivers.

Relationships

As a returner, you won’t necessarily have as much time for social interaction with your colleagues as you might wish, so it is important to identify those people with whom it is essential to build rapport and concentrate your time and energy on these relationships. 

If you are new to the organisation and don't have an established network, you may need some guidance from your line manager on the key people for you to meet and connect with early on.

You will need to be smarter about how you start to build these relationships too, as you might not feel able to go out for drinks after work or for longer lunch breaks. Being new, or recently returned, gives you a perfect excuse to introduce yourself to people and to ask for their advice and their views on your priorities (even if you don’t agree with them!). And do try to organise your home-life so that you make it to a few social events, as this is a great opportunity to get to know your colleagues on a more personal level.

Brand

Having a break from the workplace can give you the space to reflect on your strengths, values and priorities and you can return to work feeling much clearer about how you wish to be known in the workplace.

With clarity on your strengths and values you can work out how to bring these to life in your new role.  How can you demonstrate your 'personal brand' as you work towards achieving the goals you have set and start building new relationships?  What will your priorities be?  And just as importantly, what will you let go of?

Ways of Working

Starting a new role is an ideal time to establish sustainable working patterns.  By thinking through in advance how you wish to work you can protect yourself from being drawn into the need to prove yourself or to please everyone. 

Ways of working includes considering whether you will work beyond the standard hours, either at home or in the office and if so, how often.  And if you are working flexibly, how far does that flexibility extend?  How prepared are you to keep in touch (by email or phone) or attend meetings outside your agreed work time?  

Everyone will have a different view of their personal boundaries, but it is important to define what yours are and communicate them clearly.  At the same time, your employer is likely to meet your willingness to be flexible with a similar response.

Last thoughts

Finally, the key to making your return to work a success for you, your employer and your family is to make sure that you keep time for yourself to recharge your batteries. Not only will you feel better for it, but you will have more energy for your work and your family if you can allow yourself the time that you need.

If you would like some help with thinking through your return to work approach, Women Returners is now offering a Preparing for your Return coaching package which will enable you to clarify your goals and create a plan of action.

Posted by Katerina

Six Essential Steps for Successful Interviewing

When was the last time you were interviewed? When it's five, ten or fifteen years since you last spoke about your professional achievements, facing an interview can be a daunting hurdle. With the arrival of 'returnships' in the UK, we are being asked increasingly for advice and support on interviewing skills from returners applying for these programmes. Morgan Stanley, for example, recently conducted 150 telephone interviews, with follow-on face-to-face interviews for successful applicants, to select their returnship programme participants.

While styles of questioning have become more structured, the basic goal of the interview process remains the same: the employer is trying to assess your suitability and fit for the role and their organisation. At the same time, it is vital to remember that you are also assessing the organisation for its suitability and fit for you.

The two key ingredients of successful interviewing are passion and confidence.  Both of these come from being clear about what you're looking for and what you have to offer.  If you believe you're a good fit with the role and organisation you're applying for, it will come across.  

Six Essential Steps

1. Research
You need to research all you can about the role, the organisation, the industry and the people interviewing you.  There is so much available online: company website, LinkedIn and Facebook pages; corporate videos; news articles; Twitter.  Your network can provide other sources of information which might not be publicly available whether your contacts are employees, suppliers or customers of the organisation, or in the same industry. The more knowledge you have and can demonstrate in your interview, the more impact you will have. For example, reading a LinkedIn profile will give you some idea of the interviewer(s) and could help you to find common ground.

2. Develop examples of your skills and competencies
You will talk most eloquently – and passionately - about those roles and experiences which are the highlights of your career, so pick one or two and decide what you want to say about them. The biggest change to interviewing in recent decades has been the prevalence of the 'competency-based interview'. You are likely to be asked to demonstrate the specific competencies or skills that the role requires (such as analytical ability, influencing senior stakeholders or teamwork), through detailed examples. Read carefully through the job description, identify the job requirements and think back through your experience to identify examples of your achievements which show these competencies. Examples don't all have to be work related: they can be equally valuable if they have come from education, sport, voluntary work or community activities. 

Avoid doing the following:

• apologising that the situation was a long time ago or saying 'Back in 2001', just say which role it related to
• spending too long talking about the detail of the issue you faced and not long enough about the successful action you took. Your interviewer is more interested in what you accomplished than the intricacies of the background story. 
• talking in the third person when it was you who did the work (and not your team)! Use 'I' as much as possible, otherwise you can appear overly modest, even unconfident.

3. Prepare answers to typical questions
These include:

• Why do you want this role?
• Tell me about yourself.
• What are your strengths and development areas?
• What else would you like to tell me?

These questions have two things in common.  They are all open questions and they are all an invitation to you say precisely why you are the right person for the role.  In preparing your answers, think about what you most want the interviewer to remember about you when you leave the room.

4. Rehearse
If you've not been to an interview for a while, it can feel strange to be talking about yourself in the way that an interview requires, so it is a good idea to practise saying your answers out loud. You may find it helpful to role play the interview experience with a friend or another job seeker. If you have someone whose perspective you trust, feedback on how you are coming across will be useful. 

5. Prepare your own questions 
Remember that interviews are a two-way process. While the interviewer is assessing your suitability for the role and organisation, you need to be doing the same.  Make sure that you ask the questions that will help you to decide if the role and organisation is a good fit for you and your requirements. You will also show that you have done your homework.

6. Send a Thank You
Always send a thank you email. Not only is this good practice, but it gives you a further opportunity to reinforce your suitability and enthusiasm for the role.

Additional resources
Further ideas on help with re-building your confidence
Women Returners now offers interview skills coaching 


Posted by Katerina

Making the most of the summer

With Wimbledon and the World Cup behind us, you'll probably be thinking about the long summer ahead and how to fill all those weeks until school starts again. You're unlikely to be thinking much about how you can get yourself back to work, at least until the summer is over. However, the summer can provide you with time to step away from your usual routine, to think and reflect and to implement some changes at home, all of which will lay strong foundations for your return to work. At the same time do take time to relax and recharge so that you are refreshed and full of energy when autumn comes around.

Here are some ideas of helpful and simple activities you can do during the summer:

• Create a network chart

Even if you aren't ready to start networking, it is never too early to start creating your network chart. Divide your chart into three distinct categories on which you list everyone you can think of from different phases of your life: people from your past (your school and university classmates as well as former employers, colleagues and employees); your present (fellow parents and people you meet through voluntary work, hobbies or neighbourhood); and future (networks and groups you have yet to join). This is the kind of activity you can do all summer long, adding names as you think of them. Even if you start the summer thinking that you don't have a network, you'll be surprised how your chart grows.

• Get clearer about what will fulfill you and what you might do next

Whether you have too many choices or too few, a useful way to think about what to do next is to think back to a work role (or part of a role) that you found fulfilling and reflect on what made it so. Our recent post describes a process for uncovering more about what gives you fulfillment.  As these factors are related to your deep values, they will continue to be of great importance to you in the future. By working out what's important to you, you'll gain motivation to search for your next role. And you can identify clues about what you want to do next: there might be elements of a previous role that you can craft into a new one or an idea for a business or a desire to retrain in an area which interests you.

• Practise your story 

If you are going away somewhere and meeting new people that you are unlikely to see again, this provides a low risk way to practice telling your story. You can test out an answer to the dreaded question of ‘what do you do?’, refine it and get used to saying it. Telling your story might even lead to a networking opening, as I discovered when telling my story to the father of a family with whom my family had shared a hot, dusty and uncomfortable beach buggy ride.  He turned out to be a partner in a big four accounting firm and after the holiday introduced me to his head of HR, a great addition to my network.

• Prepare your family

The summer is a great time to make changes to the family routines and responsibilities away from the hectic schedule of the school year.  If you're hoping to go back to work, you'll need to prepare your family for the changes that will be required of them.  For younger children, this might be a new kind of after school care or route to school.  For older children, you might want them to start taking responsibility for organising their sports kit, making their own packed lunches or doing laundry.  You'll know best what adjustments you will need your family to make, to support your return to work, and the more preparation they have the easier it will be.  Read our posts on combating guilt feelings if these get in the way of making the changes that will help you. 

Have a good summer, rest and recharge.  We'll also be taking time to relax and recharge and will be back in a month's time.

Posted by Katerina