According to a Pew Research study, around 29% of moms are stay-at-home moms in the USA.
With an unsteady work timeline, and certainly zero-vacations, the stay-at-home mom job is considered as one of the most hard-working jobs where organizational skills, patience, and resilience are often undervalued.
An updated resume is imperative before applying for a job when re-entering the workforce after being a full-time stay-at-home guardian.
According to Harvard Business Study, “Stay-at-Home Moms Are Half as Likely to Get a Job Interview as Moms Who Got Laid Off.” and with the ever-changing job market and growing competition, filling out a job application after a significant career gap might seem a dreadful task.
In this article, we will guide you on how, to begin with creating a stay-at-home mom resume to get shortlisted for interviews and land your dream job.
1. Modify your resume
Incapable management of employment gaps in your resume is one of the biggest reasons for employers to send your application to the rejection list.
Many ATS software also sorts applicants on the basis of uneven work history resulting in sending your resume to the deadly black hole.
A tailored resume decreases your chances to get rejected by the ATS and lands it straight on the recruiter’s desk for further consideration.
Changing date format
Below is an example of how you can tweak your work timeline to efficiently manage irregular employment history:
You can choose not to include month details in your stay home mom resume while writing the work experience section. Example: “2015 – 2024.”
Including relevant experience
Replace the employment gaps with part-time/freelancing work, or entrepreneurship experience, to treat the employment gap in your work experience.
2. Pick the Right Resume Template
There are three types of resumes job seekers use to apply for jobs:
● Reverse-Chronological Resume:
Write the work experience in reverse chronological order, from the most recent experience to the earliest.
● Combination Resume:
As the name suggests, the combination resume format uses the reverse chronological method to list the work experience as well as provide dedicated space for highlighting the skills similar to a functional resume.
● Functional resume:
Functional resumes focus on the candidate’s skills and group them together by type. (e.g., Sales, marketing communication, project management).
This resume format is an ideal choice to handle the employment gaps, as it does not focus much on the work history.
Different types of resume format tend to focus on different sections of the resume.
No matter how skilled you are and what resume format you opt for, creating a section to showcase the key skills while highlighting industry-related keywords emphasizes your expertise and builds an instant rapport with the hiring manager to boost your chances of getting shortlisted.
Recruiters favor candidates with the right set of technical skills to reduce the candidate training time and increased work productivity just after the joining period.
Lastly, bold the important keywords throughout your resume and club related-experiences under skills in the work experience section. For example:
Blog Writing & Editing
- Researched and crafted 150+ blogs for different blogs in accordance with client’s requirements
- Scrutinized junior writer’s blogs through 3 rounds of proofreading to produce high-quality content
3. List certifications
Any certification(s) that you have completed should be mentioned in the certifications section of your resume.
It will help enhance your educational qualifications and professional experience.
Relevant certifications will make you a stronger candidate as it shows that you went the extra mile to go and get certified (even though your target job does not explicitly demand it).
As a result, it will give you a better chance than other applicants to land an interview or the job.
Your certification section must include the following details:
- Name of the Certification Course
- Name of the Affiliating Institution
- Location of the Institute
- Dates of enrollment and completion of the course (month and year)
The above points should be aligned using the format that we have mentioned below:
{Name of certification} | {Affiliating Institution} | {Location} | {Date} (in month and year format)
4. Build Digital Portfolio
With 79% of individuals using social media platforms for searching for jobs, the internet is the best tool to harness as a stay-home-mom job seeker re-entering the workforce.
Consider creating a personal portfolio website and include all of your work experience, skills, and achievements in it.
To generate fresh job opportunities, LinkedIn is an ideal platform to connect with like-minded professionals and find your way out of the unemployment phase.
Start creating engaging content and connecting with other professionals over a project or an industry debate to expand your network on LinkedIn and boost job search.
5. Write a Cover Letter
If your resume is Batman, then your cover letter is Robin.
A well-written cover letter is a powerful tool to emphasize your skills, major achievements and manage your career gap.
Additionally, you can include side projects, freelance,& volunteering experience, along with transferable skills relevant to the job in your cover letter.
Strengthen your application tailoring your cover letter to the specific job you are applying for by including job-related skills and keywords
Key Takeaways
Finding a job is definitely challenging. But, with the rise of remote work in the twenty-first century, it has become easier for stay-home-moms to enter the workforce.
Here are the key takeaways:
- Tailor the stay-home-mom resume for the specific job
- Change the date format in work history to effectively manage employment gaps
- Cover the employment gaps with part-time/freelance work experience
- Pick up the right resume format for stay-home-mom resume
- List latest certification courses in the stay-home-mom resume
