Resume Tips for Stay-At-Home Moms Looking to Return to the Workforce

Don't let society make you feel as though just because you're a mom or just because you've been a stay-at-home mom for three years that you are not pressure out here in these job search streets. Hey y'all, hey! Welcome back to the official Thompson Resume Writing Company YouTube channel where I share weekly tips and hints on how to update, refresh, and or prepare your resume and LinkedIn profile for your job search along with some career advice, some job search tips, and some personal stories of my own. I am Tameka Thompson. I am the owner and resume writer at Thompson Resume Writing Company and I specialize in transforming bland, lackluster resumes and LinkedIn profiles into powerful selling tools that help corporate mid-level management and executive professionals land interviews two times faster. Yes, I do that. I do all of that and then some. If you are new to my channel, welcome and I'm so happy that you're here. I hope that you enjoy this video and you find the content valuable enough to go ahead and hit the subscribe button below. If you are a returning subscriber or a returning viewer, thank you so much for always continuing to show my content some love. Thank you for dropping, you know, comments in the comment section. Thank you for sharing the videos on like social media and thank you for telling your friends and family about the channel so that they subscribe too. I love, love, love it so, so much. For today's video, since it is the month of May and May is all about celebrating moms and awarding moms and recognizing how awesome and amazing moms are, today's video is going to share some resume tips specifically for stay-at-home moms who are looking to transition back into the workforce and back into the job market after taking some time off. Let's get right into it. And really quick, I have to give a special shout out to my mom. She watches every single one of my videos, you guys, without fail no matter how terrible it is. Thank you mom for always sacrificing for me and being the literally the best mom that I could ever ask for. I don't even know what I would have asked for in a mom but you have more than exceeded all of that and then some. I would not be the business woman I am, the career woman I am, just the woman I am in general today without all of your love, all of your support, and all of your encouragement. You inspire me every single day and I love you so much and I hope that this does not make you cry. I don't want you to cry, I want you to smile, but happy Mother's Day in advance mom. I love you. If you didn't know, there are roughly 23 million working moms in the United States and they make up roughly 72% of the entire workforce and when I say these women are killing it, these moms are killing it, I mean just that. They are working full-time jobs, part-time jobs, doing gig jobs, taking on contract roles, taking on individual projects, and sometimes even running their own small businesses all while raising their kids and I stan, I love me a bad mama jamma okay. And then you do have some moms who choose to take a step back from their careers and take a break from the nine to five, the eight thirty to five thirty, the nine to six, or whatever the full-time hustle and bustle is to focus on raising their children and manage their households and there is nothing wrong with that. And regardless of the reason why they choose to do this, they should not be shamed for it, they should not be judged, and they should not be viewed any differently. They still have value and they're still pretty busy. Like stay at home moms, I don't know how you guys do it. Literally trying to manage my own home and work and it's just me is a lot. I do not know how you guys do it with like one kid, two kids, sometimes three kids. It's a lot, like how are y'all surviving? But once stay-at-home moms decide that they are ready to get back into the job market for whatever reason, so maybe baby is now headed off to daycare, or baby is now headed into kindergarten and first grade, and now you're ready to get back into the workforce, or maybe you just feel like it's just that time for you to just get back into it. It can be a little challenging, so a little challenging. So first things first, it's like how do you put stay-at-home mom on your resume, right? What do you include? What tasks and responsibilities? Should you have one there? Should you give yourself the title of stay-at-home mom? And then number two is that it can be a little intimidating and sometimes stay-at-home moms are apprehensive to explain the true reason why they may have taken some time off to raise their children. So maybe they may not feel comfortable outwardly just straight up saying yeah I took some time off to be a stay-at-home mom because they're afraid of mom bias which is very real. And sadly there is a lot of stigma that stay-at-home moms face when they are trying to get back into the job market, when they're searching for jobs, when they're going on interviews, and even once they start the job the moment that someone may get wind of the fact that they are a mom or that they're a mother or that they took some time off of work to raise their kids, instantly sometimes they get judged and they get viewed through a different lens. Sometimes they face questions from recruiters or interviewers about if they're really ready to get back into the market. So are you really ready to like part ways with spending time with your kids all day? Which why should that even be a question? I mean obviously if the person is applying to the job clearly they're interested. I don't even know why we have to dig that deep into it. And then moms do face questions about their dedication and if they're truly committed to you know the role 100% even though they're a mom. Which I don't even know again why that is a thing because moms are some of the best project managers, task managers, time management people that I have ever met. Okay especially my mom she will manage like a gazillion things all at once like most moms do. And then lastly moms are questioned sometimes on where work falls on their list of priorities which I don't even know why you would expect me to choose my job over my kid because obviously and none of these questions are cool. Like I don't like bias. I don't like stigmas. I don't like discrimination period. That is not something that I've ever stood for. So last month on my channel I talked about ageism and how people can face age discrimination during their job search. Mom bias is no is no exception. Like bias stigma is out. It's trash. It's garbage. It's whack. All of those things but we have to acknowledge that it does exist. So if you are a mom who has decided to take a step back from your career for whatever reason it's okay. It's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. I am here to tell you that it's fine even if other people say something completely different. Here are some resume tips exclusively for you. So number one is to list stay-at-home mom on your resume as you would any other job. So just on your resume how you have your former positions listed you have your titles. So if you were accounting manager, a brand manager, a marketing manager, a hospitality manager you can give yourself the title of stay-at-home mom or you can give yourself maybe like um the last your last name plus household plus manager. So me my last name is Thompson. I'll use myself as an example if I was a stay-at-home mom I could say you know Thompson household manager. And you can also use your last name plus the household as the company name. So again using myself as an example if I were a stay-at-home mom returning to the workforce my job title would be stay-at-home mom or Thompson household manager. Company name would be Thompson household or Thompson home or maybe even Thompson family home. There's a couple of different variations you can use but those are the three that tend to be the most effective. You'll also want to include the month and the year that you took your hiatus to put a dash and then do current. So if you took your hiatus in March of 2020 it would read something like you know Thompson household manager, Thompson family household, you know March 2020 through current. So do provide a time frame of when you started your stay-at-home mom hiatus or when you took your career hiatus. Don't not put anything there because if your last position is the only thing that's on there and maybe that was two years ago obviously they are going to have some questions and you're going to have a huge gap on there that needs some explaining. Number two is to outline some of the responsibilities that you do as a mom for your job description. So for whatever reason again I don't know why people think that stay-at-home moms are chilling all day like they're just laying on the couch sipping wine, sipping mimosas, watching I don't know Real Housewives of Beverly Hills but stay-at-home moms probably work just as hard if not more than the average or a regular schmegular employee and these are facts. As a stay-at-home mom there is probably a lot like a lot lot of things that you are doing all day especially if you have multiple kids like maybe you have three or four kids or maybe more than that plus a dog plus a cat you know plus your husband or maybe you have you know a family member or a loved one who is also staying with you. There is a lot that you have going on and there is a way to convey that on your resume. Here are some tips and maybe some examples for you so if you are caring for a newborn or maybe you have twins or something like that talk about the number of bottles that you prepare you know every day because at the end of the day that is a responsibility you're you're responsible for feeding this child, keeping it healthy, keeping it alive and making sure that that baby is taken care of from the moment like all I was going to say from nine to five but no motherhood is like a 24-hour thing. My goodness you can tell that I don't have kids but um you are responsible for that child all day every day and so you are doing a lot to make sure every single need of that child is met and taken care of. You can also talk about the activities that you take your kids to so if you have kids who are in soccer or in badminton or who are in baseball or football or track you can talk about the activities that you take your kids to and all of the things that you have to manage as a you know a sports mom or a soccer mom or a dance mom because I do know that that has its own set of responsibilities within itself so you have you know meets that you have to go to you have uniforms that you probably have to order you know you probably uh network or team up with the other parents on certain initiatives maybe you're doing fundraisers for the team you can include some of that in there as well. Talk about how you manage the family budget right so nine times out of ten not always but moms are typically in control of household spending so you're managing all of the money that's coming into the household and you're allocating where it goes so you can talk about how you set you know the household budget for food and for target runs and for clothes and stuff for the kids and maybe managing repairs you know for the house or for your home. You can talk about the number of bills that you pay and how you keep all of the accounts in good standing and you make sure all of the bills are paid on time. Maybe you're managing different doctor's appointments right especially if you may have a child or children who have special needs that comes with a whole new set of priorities and responsibilities that you as a mom have to manage and maybe you're managing multiple appointments throughout the week that is something to include on your resume and again going back to you know maybe if you have a newborn maybe you're managing you know the different schedules of the checkup appointments or the that or the vaccination or the different shots that baby has to get and just managing your kids schedule overall so maybe you drop them off at school at like 7 30 a.m or eight o'clock a.m you're up super early you know cooking the kids breakfast making sure that they're out to the school bus on time and then you pick them up at three o'clock so within that six hour gap you know what else are you doing you can talk about you know how you do laundry that's all multitasking and time management and for additional context you can also include the age of your kids so sometimes moms feel not 100 comfortable sharing the age of their kids or even saying that they have kids in general again because they do face that judgment but to provide some context of maybe the amount of work that you are doing each day everyone knows or everyone should know the amount of work and care and time and commitment that a newborn takes so if you can say you know i'm a stay-at-home mom and the primary caretaker for a five-month-old someone may know oh my goodness you know she's probably doing so much every single day or you know what i'm the proud stay-at-home mom of a four-year-old and a six-year-old if you want to take a step further you can always include their names as well again do not be ashamed to boast about being a good mom a damn good mom at that especially if you're managing all of these tasks while keeping your kids healthy keeping them safe keeping them alive making sure that they're taken care of and then doing all these things around the house so again doing the laundry paying the bills making sure the house is clean making sure there's food in the fridge like you know paying your property taxes managing you know the lawn care like there's a lot that goes into you being a stay-at-home mom you're just not sitting around twiddling your thumbs you're doing stuff and so on your resume you want to convey and clearly communicate the types of things that you are doing and don't think that those things don't have any value right so there's this notion that you know stay-at-home moms or just stay-at-home moms and they don't have a lot of value and they don't have any skills that could not be further from the truth there are some stay-at-home moms that i know that are some of the best negotiators and again time managers that i have ever met and there is 100 value in the things that you do even though you're not in a traditional you know corporate nine-to-five type of environment you don't need to have a full-time job to feel like you have value as a stay-at-home mom you do please remember that number three is to give a brief one to two sentence overview of the reason why you decided to become a stay-at-home mom so of course when a recruiter or a hiring manager is going to read your resume and see that you've decided to become a stay-at-home mom they may come to conclude they may come to some conclusions and or they may just want to know the reason why and you can just give a very brief statement you don't have to go into super detail if you don't want to you don't have to overshare but just give a general reason why so maybe you are a first time mom and this is your first child and maybe you just really wanted to be there for baby in the first you know two years of their life to be a hands-on parent to give yourself time to adapt and maybe that you know maternity maternity leave just wasn't enough time for your body to heal and you just realize like hey i really just want to focus 100 on motherhood or maybe you have been a working mom for several years and you have just decided you know what it's time for me to take a break you know maybe my daughter or my son is headed off to i don't know high school or maybe junior high or maybe they're going into elementary school and maybe you just want to be a more hands-on parent because you realize that you haven't been maybe you realize you were missing milestones or you weren't able to be available for extracurricular activities so maybe you missed some dance recitals or some plays or some basketball games that's okay too just give a brief one-liner two sentence max on why you decided to become a stay-at-home mom and doing this and being this transparent up front just eliminates the hiring manager jumping to conclusions or asking you these type of questions in the interview you can also include that one-liner or that brief little blurb in your cover letter as well so they can read it in your cover letter before they get to your resume and they already know it they're you know they're up to date they're up to speed and then they you know also read it again in your resume so in the interview that may be a question that they have that they may be able to skip now so you've kind of knocked out maybe two to three or even one to three questions regarding why you decided to become a stay-at-home mom and again for whatever the reason do not feel ashamed do not feel you know like you have to hide it there is nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home mom list it proudly list it confidently and you never know if the recruiter is also a mom that can automatically be a way to build rapport and to get the conversation off on a good foot and to allow them to maybe extend a little bit more compassion or a little bit more empathy because they're able to relate to you and vice versa it can work to your advantage and i'm all about using anything and everything to your advantage when it comes to getting a job number four is to list mom groups and organizations or communities that you become a part of as a mom or that you are a member of as a mom so think local community groups think facebook groups think you know maybe the pta or any type of school-based organizations that you're part of again going back to the dance mom um example so maybe you are on the board or maybe you're a really active member in helping the kids get ready for their recitals or maybe you drive um the little pickup van to pick all the kids up before practice and you drop everybody off and you take them back home that's something that you want to put on there because contrary to popular belief it does count as experience and it also demonstrates communication collaboration teamwork and being able to work as part of a group virtual groups and in-person groups so i know there are a lot of like facebook groups out there and then you have like there are some youtube groups and then you have all types of online communities right it doesn't matter if it's virtual or if it's in person if you are a member and you're active and you're helping plan events or you're helping you're you're attending all of the events and you're just very hands-on and you're at every single event and you're doing every fundraiser maybe you're printing flyers that's something that you want to put on there lastly if you have received any awards or any recognition or any kudos in these groups so maybe you were the primary reason why the bake sale you know sold 24 percent more cookies this year because you started using instagram stories to promote it right maybe uh with the dance team you were able to boost audience participation or audience attendance by 30 by you know getting family members of the kids who are dancing more involved or something like that i'm just riffing off the top of my head but if you received any recognition if you played a crucial part in the group succeeding something or really accomplishing something you definitely want to put that on your resume number five is to include the fact that you are a returning mom or a stay a stay-at-home mom that's getting back into the workforce in your professional summary so either in the first line or the first sentence of your professional summary or your professional overview or the first bullet whichever one that you're using make it known that you are a mama who is ready to get back into the game just go ahead and tackle that head on you don't have to have the recruiter or the hiring manager read all the way through your information get to your experience and then see that you're a stay-at-home mom again put it in the cover letter put it you know in your targeting statement and then go ahead and put it in your professional summary so you're making it known like hey i'm ready to get back into the swing and things or swing of things i've taken some time off but i'm ready now i'm returning you don't have to say anything along the lines of you know stay at home mom returning to the workforce looking for a new opportunity to da da da because then it sounds like an objective statement and that's not what we want you want to go ahead and just have it in the first sentence but then launch directly into your values so maybe you know a returning uh a stay-at-home mom returning to the workforce with you know 10 years of experience in marketing uh and experience managing 24 million dollar budgets just have that as the beginning but then jump right into the value and jump right into all of that quality information and last on this list number six is to choose the best layout that is going to highlight your experience and your skills so there are several types of resume formats and layouts the most popular is chronological specifically reverse chronological and that is when you list your jobs from the most recent down to you know the the first one or the beginning one and then you have a hybrid resume which is a blend of both and then you have a functional resume which more so focuses on types of experience that are grouped together so if you have been in accounting for seven years and then you were in marketing for three years and now you're looking to transition into i don't know let's say electrical engineering again going off the top of my head then you may use something along the lines of a hybrid resume maybe not a reverse chronological resume because having that last position first they may be like okay well she was a brand manager or she was an accountant why is she looking to you know do something like this however if you are going back into the workforce and you're continuing along the same career path so you were a marketing manager before and you're going maybe for a marketing director role then you are going to want to use a reverse chronological format because obviously your experience is already in alignment with functional and hybrid resumes they are typically used for people who are transitioning careers or people who have like a lot of different types of experience so again maybe you were an accountant for two years maybe you were a brand manager for three years and then maybe you you know did electrical engineering for two or three years and then maybe you bopped over to i don't know marine biology for four years those are some examples where you may use a resume format that's different from the typical reverse chronological resume but regardless of the format and the layout that you ultimately select you definitely want to make sure that it starts out with that hard-hitting professional summary y'all know i love me a really good value-based keyword enriched professional summary and then you also want to make sure that you have your related skills and competencies and your related education certifications um educational accomplishments licenses and things like that and of course if you are part of any organizations professional memberships you want to have that on there as well and just as a rule of thumb so that you know your professional summary should be no more than three to five sentences or three to five bullet points and you should be displaying at least seven skills but no more than maybe 12 to 15. So those are some simple resume tips for stay-at-home moms who are looking to craft a new resume to go ahead and get right back into the job market. I hope that you found this helpful and please do not get discouraged right like don't let society make you feel as though just because you're a mom or just because you've been a stay-at-home mom for three years that you are not pressure out here in these job search streets and that you are not able to perform in the workplace like no you have value even though you may have taken some time off you may not be up to date with certain systems and software but you definitely still have some value and you definitely still have a lot to bring to the table. If you enjoyed watching this video or if you found it helpful and you learned something new go ahead and give me a like go ahead and give me a thumbs up and feel free to comment below if you know something in this video or a particular tip stood out to you. If you need assistance with your resume and you are a stay-at-home mom I am accepting clients for the month of May feel free to email me directly at hello at thompsonresumes.com you can also visit my website at www.thompsonresumes.com. Lastly I would like to encourage you to please subscribe to my Tameka's CareerTE newsletter list. I'll go ahead and drop the link below for you to go ahead and sign up. I do send weekly emails that provide resume LinkedIn and career tips and hacks as well as notifying my email list as soon as a YouTube video drops. Also if you want to go ahead and connect with me on LinkedIn my profile name is Tameka Thompson. You can also follow me on Instagram at underscore Tameka Thompson and again shout out to all of the amazing moms out there. I feel like you guys only get true recognition during the month of May but moms are amazing. I've seen firsthand with some co-workers like just how they sacrifice for their kids and how their kids motivate them at work and motivate them to you know get through the work day and even put up with certain things. Moms truly don't get the recognition that they deserve all the time so again if you are a mom and you're watching this video shout out to you round of applause to you because I am more than confident that you are probably doing an amazing job and I hope that you found this video helpful and that it provided you with some tips on how to craft your resume for your upcoming job search. If you need additional job search support or just need some job search ideas I highly recommend checking out the job search playlist that I have on my channel. I do have a lot of videos on there talking about how to create a tactical and intentional job search strategy and some job search mistakes to avoid. Go ahead and check them out if you do need that type of content. Thank you guys so much for watching especially if you made it to the end of this video and I will see you all next week with another video that is either going to help change or upgrade your entire career, resume, LinkedIn life. Bye you guys!