Hidden Gems of the Workplace? Relaunchers

Interview with Carol Fishman Cohen, Co-founder, iRelaunch, Co-author, Back on the Career Track.

These days, it seems you can hardly scroll past a tweet or walk by a bookshelf that isn’t trumpeting our information-age “new economy!” and accompanying “new” ways to work. But what’s behind all the shiny, hopeful book covers (and blogs)? Is it really possible to stray from the path you choose early on? Can you really take time off, re-train, or switch careers? In this economic climate?

Meet Carol Fishman Cohen. She’s done it all–Harvard MBA, investment banker, author, business owner, and stay-at-home mom–but not necessarily in that order.

In 1985, Cohen graduated from Harvard Business School and immediately set about climbing the corporate ladder, first working in manufacturing and then in corporate finance. Five years later, the investment bank she was working for collapsed–mmhm!–while she was on maternity leave with her first child. With no company to return to, she decided not to look for the “next big job.” She wanted to have more kids. So she did–three more over the next five years (which Cohen semi-jokingly refers to as “reproductive hibernation”). Cohen tried part-time and consulting, but left the workforce entirely by the time she had her fourth child.

About nine years into full-time motherhood, Cohen started to get restless. So what was a smart woman with a nearly decade-long resume gap to do? Why relaunch a career at Bain Capital, of course! From there, Cohen switched gears once again, co-founding iRelaunch, a company that provides career reentry programming for employers, universities, organizations, and individuals.

Since her successful bounce back to careerland, Cohen has become the poster-woman for relaunching: Harvard Business School published a case study on her experience and she’s the co-author of Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work. Read on for some honest advice and fresh analysis on taking career breaks.

You successfully launched a career at Bain Capital after 11 years out of the workforce. How’d you do it?

I knew I wanted to return to work but I had no idea how I was going to do it. I had just started a two year term as PTO President of my kids’ elementary school and I was putting in 25-30 hours a week as a volunteer. So I made two promises to myself. One was that I would look to return to work after my term was over and two I was going to look for a full time job because I felt my volunteer work was already like a part time job. I didn’t think I needed to ease my family into my working by taking another part time job – we were already there. I relaunched my career by taking a demanding, full time job at Bain Capital, a private equity and investment management firm.

What were the challenges of relaunching your career?

Eventually I realized [Bain] was not the perfect match, but I stayed for a year. What happened that made me leave? One thing is that I didn’t do a full career assessment while I was on career break. I thought that because I had come from a finance career I should naturally return to finance. It wasn’t until I was well into my job at Bain that I realized I didn’t really want to do financial analysis anymore. The bad news was I had involved a very progressive employer who was willing to hire me after a long career break when I could have avoided the situation entirely if I had assessed my career options first. So this is the crucial step that anyone returning to the workforce should absolutely not skip.

The other mistake I made was assuming that the volunteer work I considered equivalent to a part time job was not viewed that way by my kids. To them, my volunteer work was invisible. Their perception was I was home all the time and then suddenly, I was home on nights and weekends, and that was hard for them. If I had been working in this job since they were born, then that would have been their world – no problem. Same if I had continued to stay home. It was the transition from one situation to the other that created issues and I should have managed it more carefully. Of course these are the lessons we pass on to others just starting their relaunch in Back on the Career Track.

There has been a lot of media attention on the recession’s disproportionate impact on men and how women are now the majority of the workforce. What is your take on the recession’s impact on women?

We have definitely seen an increase in women participating in our return to work programs because a spouse/partner is newly unemployed, or because the couple is worried about the spouse/partner’s work status. We have seen situations where a couple with kids decides whoever can get a job first is the one who will be the dominant breadwinner and the other one will manage the household while looking for supplemental income in a more flexible, part time position. Or else they both look for full time jobs and put the kids in day care or in after school programs. We think the recession has made women at home return to work earlier than they might have planned.

A somewhat related question: Is re-entry for women (and men) who have been out of the workforce easier or harder these days?

Of course it is harder for everyone, career break or no career break, because unemployment is so high. But returning after a career break is easier now than say 5 years ago because there is less stigma attached to taking a career break. This has been fueled in part by the interest in the pool of talent on career break from large, prestigious companies, and the media attention you mentioned above. Part of our mission is to trumpet return to work success stories, not only to motivate people on career break who want to return to work, but even more importantly, to motivate employers to hire them.

The more examples of how relaunchers become effective contributors to their employers, the less risk employers will see in hiring them. We believe not only is there minimal risk to hiring relaunchers, but that employers should be seeking out relaunchers to hire. Relaunchers are a gem of the workforce - fewer maternity leaves, fewer spousal relocations, a more mature perspective. Their responsibilities are lessening at home and they are in a high energy phase of their lives. They have an enthusiasm about returning to work precisely because they have been away from it for a while.

One more indication of the growing interest in people returning from career break is the explosion of formal career reentry programming we’ve seen at employers, universities, government agencies, foundations and organizations. At iRelaunch we track career reentry programs worldwide and found we could only identify 9 programs before 2005. We are updating our list right now, but the last update in July of 2009 identified 62 career reentry programs. We have also seen a big jump in the number of companies that want to sponsor our return to work conferences.

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While the relaunch concept is short of revolutionary–the point, after all, is the get “back on the career track“–it’s an important step in helping individuals realize there’s no one way to have a career and helping employers see there’s no one way to build a workforce.

Come back tomorrow for Cohen’s list of “best practices” for individuals who are trying to get back into the workforce after voluntary time away and her advice to Gen Y.

In the meantime, check out The Career Relaunch Forum, a one day return to work conference to be held March 11, 2010 at UC Irvine.