Looking for work after 26 years at home

[jpinal205]

Hi all. My old forum name was jpinAL but I couldn't sigh in. I'm down to one child homeschooling now and he doesn't need a lot of oversight. He's 16. I've been homeschooling for 20 years and have 2 college grads and will have 3 in college next year. I haven't worked outside the house since 1992, We've owned a hobby farm until recently. I do have a BA in math. I was teaching a few classes in computer tech at medical college before my first child was born, My work references are so old and I don't have a clue how to explain the last 20 years. Any experience I have is outdated. I really do not want to teach although I know that is an option. I'm rambling. We really need the added income after dh has had some medical issues, Any suggestions on writing a resume?

Thank you

[wintermom]

If you are interested in a professional workplace (especially computer tech), I'd enroll in a course/program in an area of interest so that you have recent education to include. Other than that, you can include any contract work and volunteer work you've engaged in recently that is relevant to the job you are seeking. 

[mommyoffive]

Have you thought of VIPkid?   

[marbel]

I was advised by a career counselor to do a functional resume (not chronological) and emphasize all the homeschooling tasks that translate to the workplace: researching, instructing, complying with laws, documenting, reporting...

However recently I read that a functional resume is a clue that the person is old and often the resume is just discarded.  

So I don't know. 

 

[Scarlett]

You won't be the first person to be out of the workforce while raising children.  So I would just be honest.  I guess getting an in person interview could be tricky, but there are jobs to be had. If you find you can't even get an interview I would look into some short term training so you will have something to jump off of.

[sheryl]

I'm right there too!  Listening to this thread! 

[Jenny in Florida]

On 4/24/2018 at 9:16 AM, wintermom said:

If you are interested in a professional workplace (especially computer tech), I'd enroll in a course/program in an area of interest so that you have recent education to include. Other than that, you can include any contract work and volunteer work you've engaged in recently that is relevant to the job you are seeking. 

 

On 4/24/2018 at 2:48 PM, marbel said:

I was advised by a career counselor to do a functional resume (not chronological) and emphasize all the homeschooling tasks that translate to the workplace: researching, instructing, complying with laws, documenting, reporting...

 

I've written on other threads about my on-ramp back to work, but since searching isn't working too well at the moment, let me try to briefly recap.

By the time my son, my younger child, graduated and made me obsolete, I had not held a full-time, professional  job in almost 20 years. I had made a couple of forays into part-time retail in the intervening decades, but that was the extent of my "recent" work experience. I knew for sure that, even if I could have been hired directly into such a position, I had no interest in going back to the technical writing/editing I had done pre-kids. What I really wanted was to work in something related to education.

I did a couple of things in the last year my son was home, while he was still technically homeschooling but didn't actually need much more than my physical presence and semi-regular reminders about assignments and scheduling, to try and set myself up for re-entry.

First, I took whatever free and ultra-cheap classes I could find to brush up my skills and give me recent things to put on my resume. Although I had used assorted software quite a bit during my homeschooling years, I wanted it to be clear at a glance that I was proficient with the basic stuff like Microsoft Office (and to have an excuse to put the names of some applications on my resume). So I took some in-person classes at the library and some free online classes in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. I also did a couple of education-related freebies through edX and Coursera.

I took the first part-time, work-from-home job I could find that related at all to what I wanted to do. In my case, that was online tutoring. When I started, I made only slightly better than minimum wage and was lucky to book 5 or 6 hours a week. At first, those hours were often available only in the middle of the night. But I kept at it and worked up so that I was pretty consistently working 15-20 hours a week (during the school year) and making a little more money per hour.

When my son was ready to graduate, I wrote a new resume. At the top of the front page, I featured my recent experience in a traditional, dated format. My formal education (basically, my 30-year-old B.A.) came next. Then I added a section for "training and professional development," in which I listed all of the technology and education-related courses I had completed in the last year. Finally, I summarized all of my pre-kids professional experience in a functional format, deleting all dates, under a heading that was something like "additional professional experience."

I sent it out to every strip mall-type tutoring/exam prep center in a 20-mile radius, along with a cover letter explaining that I was in the process of sending my last kid off to college and looking to get back to work.

I had multiple responses within days and was working within a month.

At that point, I still wasn't making what one would call a living wage, and I continued juggling part-time work at the tutoring center with the online hours. It took me a couple of years, during which I added and dropped a few other part-time gigs (test scoring, substitute teaching, teaching online writing classes for homeschoolers), to make a significant jump.

While taking the technology classes at the library, I found myself thinking I'd be good at teaching those kinds of classes. So I started watching the vacancies at the library every week. I applied every time one of the technology trainer positions opened and also any time there were positions that seemed like they were related closely enough to be stepping stones. On my fourth try, I got called in for an interview and was hired as a part-time trainer. I started with 24 hours a week (guaranteed hours on a consistent schedule, which was already an improvement for me), making about 50% more per hour than any of the other gigs had been paying me. I then moved up to 32 and, about six months ago, officially transitioned to full time. With each step up, I shed one of the other part-time jobs. 

So, it took a few years -- and I still haven't caught up to my pre-kids salary, even without considering inflation -- but I now have a "real," full-time job with a salary a single person could live on and benefits like health insurance and a 401k and paid vacation and all of that stuff.

[LucyStoner]

What kind of income are you looking to bring in?  How many years do you expect to work before retirement?  

If you don't want to teach, is there something tangentially related that you would like to do?  

[LucyStoner]

On 4/24/2018 at 2:56 PM, Scarlett said:

You won't be the first person to be out of the workforce while raising children.  

 

 

I am self-employed so my "interviews" tend to be less formal since mostly people hire me based on word of mouth referrals.  I have never had a potential client pass on me because I stated I left my last full-time position to care for my sons.  I've added 2 new clients in the last 2 months and one of those two new clients just introduced me to another potential client who I will most likely start working for soon.  Sometimes self-employment is a good option to get some recent references.  I am an accountant who specializes in non-profit accounting.  

[wintermom]

14 hours ago, Jenny in Florida said:

 

 

I've written on other threads about my on-ramp back to work, but since searching isn't working too well at the moment, let me try to briefly recap.

By the time my son, my younger child, graduated and made me obsolete, I had not held a full-time, professional  job in almost 20 years. I had made a couple of forays into part-time retail in the intervening decades, but that was the extent of my "recent" work experience. I knew for sure that, even if I could have been hired directly into such a position, I had no interest in going back to the technical writing/editing I had done pre-kids. What I really wanted was to work in something related to education.

I did a couple of things in the last year my son was home, while he was still technically homeschooling but didn't actually need much more than my physical presence and semi-regular reminders about assignments and scheduling, to try and set myself up for re-entry.

First, I took whatever free and ultra-cheap classes I could find to brush up my skills and give me recent things to put on my resume. Although I had used assorted software quite a bit during my homeschooling years, I wanted it to be clear at a glance that I was proficient with the basic stuff like Microsoft Office (and to have an excuse to put the names of some applications on my resume). So I took some in-person classes at the library and some free online classes in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. I also did a couple of education-related freebies through edX and Coursera.

I took the first part-time, work-from-home job I could find that related at all to what I wanted to do. In my case, that was online tutoring. When I started, I made only slightly better than minimum wage and was lucky to book 5 or 6 hours a week. At first, those hours were often available only in the middle of the night. But I kept at it and worked up so that I was pretty consistently working 15-20 hours a week (during the school year) and making a little more money per hour.

When my son was ready to graduate, I wrote a new resume. At the top of the front page, I featured my recent experience in a traditional, dated format. My formal education (basically, my 30-year-old B.A.) came next. Then I added a section for "training and professional development," in which I listed all of the technology and education-related courses I had completed in the last year. Finally, I summarized all of my pre-kids professional experience in a functional format, deleting all dates, under a heading that was something like "additional professional experience."

I sent it out to every strip mall-type tutoring/exam prep center in a 20-mile radius, along with a cover letter explaining that I was in the process of sending my last kid off to college and looking to get back to work.

I had multiple responses within days and was working within a month.

At that point, I still wasn't making what one would call a living wage, and I continued juggling part-time work at the tutoring center with the online hours. It took me a couple of years, during which I added and dropped a few other part-time gigs (test scoring, substitute teaching, teaching online writing classes for homeschoolers), to make a significant jump.

While taking the technology classes at the library, I found myself thinking I'd be good at teaching those kinds of classes. So I started watching the vacancies at the library every week. I applied every time one of the technology trainer positions opened and also any time there were positions that seemed like they were related closely enough to be stepping stones. On my fourth try, I got called in for an interview and was hired as a part-time trainer. I started with 24 hours a week (guaranteed hours on a consistent schedule, which was already an improvement for me), making about 50% more per hour than any of the other gigs had been paying me. I then moved up to 32 and, about six months ago, officially transitioned to full time. With each step up, I shed one of the other part-time jobs. 

So, it took a few years -- and I still haven't caught up to my pre-kids salary, even without considering inflation -- but I now have a "real," full-time job with a salary a single person could live on and benefits like health insurance and a 401k and paid vacation and all of that stuff.

Thanks so much for including all this information. Brava to you for going through this long process to get back into a full-time career!  

[Bear2K]

I have a degree from long ago as well.  It was decided that I would just get a part-time job that was about twenty hours a week.  My children are all 13+ and somewhat independent.  I am just around the 8,000 ish a year mark with my current retail job.  It's enough to pay extra on the house and for projects here and there.  I could have gone back into my profession but ment going back to college. My husband and I have both agreed not to have second careers when he retires from service.

[ThisIsTheDay]

For financial reasons, I went back to work part time after homeschooling for many years. I began by volunteering at my local library just one evening a week and was hired on a few months later.

I'd consider volunteering in a field that might interest you or transfer well to a resume, for starters.