Returning to Work After a Career Gap- Societies Negative Impact on Returners

Did you know that 20.7% of people leave the workforce to care for their children? And did you know that after two-years or more, 71.8% of those who were still unemployed were women? Returning to your career after a gap is a daunting task but MARS Solutions Group has been tackling this societal disconnect in the workforce for almost four years.

This article will focus on three individuals who were initially accepted into the MARS Returnship Program, graduated, and went on to be hired internally by MARS Solutions Group. The three program participants included in this article were in different Tracks or “areas of study,” IT Track (Full Stack Developer), Data Track, and an Administrative Track.

The former Returnship participants, now all full-time MARS employees, came to the Returnship Program seeking career advancements after having varying degrees of gaps in their resumes. Returning to work as a full-time employee, created additional tasks to juggle for Mina a participant training in Full Stack Development now employed as a Client Success Manager, as she was both a mom and full-time college student who had been away from the workforce for three years. With an over a five-year career gap, MARS current Senior Technical Recruiter, Priyanka experienced both excitement and nervousness prior to beginning the cohort as she had been “out of the corporate world for many years.” Returnship and Marketing Manager, Valerie, the participant for the Administrative Track arrived at MARS with a seventeen-year gap in her career due to raising a family and relocation. Prior to being hired internally by MARS, her initial plans post Returnship were to return to either full or part-time work. An extra area of concern for her was that her, “husband occasionally travels for business,” so she “needs to be accessible and have a flexible work atmosphere.”

When a person considers reentering the workforce after a gap, they are faced with a multitude of questions. Such as: will I need childcare, are my skills out of date, how do I explain my gap, how does my gap transfer to today’s workforce?

Rachel Morar, Connectr’s COO says this, “Women returning to the workforce, particularly if they left to start a family, come equipped with a host of additional skills.  These include increased productivity, efficiency, empathy, and a new capacity to multitask.” Morar continues, “These individuals are also likely to be extremely motivated. Making the emotional decision to spend time away from their children means they will be determined and committed to getting the most out of their time at work. As a result, they’re amongst the hardest-working individuals in the team.”

Society at large is seeking individuals with experience to grow the job market and boost the economy, but they are overlooking a huge group of ready, willing, and fully capable people who will not only fill their company’s needs but are coming to the table with a work ethic that is unmatched.

“There’s this industry that says, ‘We don’t have enough talent,’ and there’s this talent that is just waiting to get back to work.” (Hagit Katzenelson) A survey conducted by CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey concurs, “Fifty-two percent of all small business owners said that it has gotten harder to find qualified people to hire compared to a year ago…Twenty-nine percent of small business owners also said that they have positions that have been open for at least three months that they’ve been unable to fill…”

The statistics don’t lie. The three Returners interviewed experienced the same situations when examining whether to reenter the workforce. Resumes that were ignored, education and previous experience that is blatantly disregarded all in the name of a career gap. The assumption that a gap equals a lack of hire-ability.

Rachel Morar states, “Clearly, more needs to be done. It’s the proactive businesses that recognize and invest resources into attracting, hiring, and retaining women returning to work. They will be the ones reaping the huge rewards that this overlooked talent pool offers.”

MARS Solutions Group understands this dilemma, and they have literally “put their money where their mouth is.”  They have seen a pool of talent, invested their resources into reskilling and upskilling this talent and then hired the talent.  Returners are finally beginning to be seen as an essential workforce, but still have a mountain to climb; their time, education and skill sets will go a long way to fill the hiring gaps.

Partner with MARS Returnship today for your diverse hiring needs! https://getreturnship.com/contact