Your Return November 24

Issue 8 I November 2024

Support and inspiration for career returners

Welcome!

Welcome to our November edition! As the leaves fall and the days get chillier, we’ve been busy getting ready for the launch of our new Career Returners Community in December!

Next month, we will be evolving from the Career Returners Professional Network to the Career Returners Community. Our Community will be a global social network and go-to support hub for professionals returning to work after a career break, providing connection, support and practical tools. We’re excited that this will be available via a mobile app for ‘on the go’ connection as well as an online members’ area. Watch this space for more details coming very soon!

One of the topics that’s increasingly popping up is AI and how it can help you in your job search. If you’ve not yet tried experimenting with any AI tools, our blog will hopefully demystify it for you and help you to get started with a free easy to use tool.

Contributors Karen Danker Head of Coaching

Liz Mearns Deputy Head of Coaching

Lauren Wilson Senior Coach

Faith Ruto Senior Coach

Karen Braakman Senior Coach

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We’ve got a double dose of returner inspiration for you this month. Our success story features the fantastic Elba Lovelace-Francis who embarked on a comprehensive training programme to become a Train Driver with GT Railways on her return to work. We loved her continuing belief in herself that kept her going through the intensive assessment period as well as her joy in being a positive role model for her young daughter.

Our podcast mini-series on career change wraps up this month with the inspiring story of Ajay Sahota who switched role and sector from food tech to business management, after her career break. Resolved to use her business consulting and MBA skills developed during her career break on her return to work, Ajay shares how she resisted the urge to return to her original career in the face of challenges trying to find a role in her new area, eventually finding the perfect role at Leidos via their returner programme.

Continuing this theme of career change, our ‘Ask the Coaches’ section shares five practical tips to guide you, if you’re considering a career change on your return to work.

Happy reading!

Career Returners Coaching Team

Your Return Brought to you by:

Contents

Sponsored by:

NOVEMBER 2024

3 How AI Can Help With Your Return To Work Knowing how and where to get started in your return to work can sometimes be the hardest step. We look at how AI tools can help and ideas to try out!

9 Ask the Coaches How do you go about changing careers on your return to work? We offer five practical tips to get you started!

6 New Podcast Episode Hear our inspiring chat “Move Forward and Embrace Growth” with Ajay Sahota who held firm to her goals to change role and sector

7 Elba’s Return to Work Success Story

10 Webinars & Events Details of our next exclusive members’ webinar where we’ll be hearing returner stories and offering expert advice on returning to work after ill health, and our new exciting ‘Return to Work Accelerator’ Programme launching in 2025!

Elba shares how she successfully applied to become a train driver, the value of connecting with other returner peers and how much she loves her new job

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Advice BLOG

When you’re looking to return to work after an extended break, knowing how and where to get started can sometimes be the hardest step. If you’re in need of a helping hand, artificial intelligence (AI) tools might just be the thing to help kickstart your journey.

What is AI AI is technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity and autonomy. There are lots of AI tools to choose from and here’s a few popular ones: ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google) and Microsoft 365 Copilot (Microsoft).

What can AI help with AI can help you with most aspects of your return to work journey from generating different job ideas to explore, understanding what skills and experience are required for different roles, helping you think about your transferable skills, refining sections of your CV or LinkedIn profile and generating typical interview questions for different roles to help with your interview prep!

How to get started If you’re completely new to AI, then we’d recommend getting started with one tool. ChatGPT is free to use, intuitive and user friendly so is a good one to experiment with. Google ‘Open AI’ and this will take you to their home page where you can download ChatGPT, set up a free account and get started. You’ll be greeted with a ‘What can I help you with’ open box, and this is where you type in your question or ‘prompt’ that you’d like to ask. The more specific and detailed your prompt, the better response you’ll receive. Once you’ve asked your first question, you can then ask additional questions to help you refine the information you’re receiving.

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Advice

BLOG

Prompt examples

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Making a career switch or change: ‘I'm a qualified accountant but would like to work in compliance and risk roles in the insurance sector. What skills and experience will I need to develop?’ ChatGPT generated a list of skills and experience to develop with helpful examples of how to build it, different courses and certifications that might be helpful, as well as steps to making that transition.

Identifying transferable skills from career break activities: ‘I'm an experienced project manager. Whilst on my career break, I volunteered at my local church, helping with fundraising events in the community. What additional transferable skills did I build during my career break that I can bring with me to my next professional role in the finance sector.’ Here ChatGPT generated a long list of skills and then detailed how these might transfer across to different roles. It also illustrated how you might position these skills and experience at interview.

Tailoring your CV to a specific job: ‘Please tailor my CV to this role: copy and paste your current CV (removing all personal data), then copy and paste the job description.’ Chat GPT can help you to tailor your CV to the specific role you’re going for, ensuring your CV contains the key words that will be screened for automatically by

an organisation’s applicant tracking system.

This will hopefully get your CV through the first screen and in front of a human! Do check for accuracy though and that what’s captured accurately reflects you and your experience!

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Creating a dynamic personal profile on LinkedIn: ‘How would you improve my LinkedIn Profile: Copy and paste current LinkedIn About section.’ ChatGPT does an impressive job of taking your current text and optimising it for clarity, keywords, storytelling, and engagement. It gives tips on what to include in your LinkedIn headline, what skills to add in the skills section to improve keyword visibility and reinforce your expertise, and different ways to engage on LinkedIn.

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Generating typical Interview questions: ‘What are some typical interview questions that might be asked for this job: Copy and paste Job Description from relevant jobs board.’ ChatGPT generates a list of questions for the different skills and expertise sought. It also lists different behavioural ‘competency’ questions, i.e. tell me about a time when… as well as ‘why are you interested in working for our company’ questions. As a bonus, it also creates a set of questions that you could ask your interviewer!

A word of caution….

While this all sounds fantastic, we do want to sound a cautionary note! Never put personal or sensitive info or data such as your name, address, mobile number, financial info etc into an AI tool. AI tools train on the data that’s input so your personal data won’t necessarily remain private!

Do view AI as a tool to assist you, not to do the job for you. It will respond to your prompt with a detailed answer – some of the detail will be relevant to your skills and experience, but some won’t be.

Always take what’s shared, check for accuracy and then adapt it to make it authentic to you and bring it to life with your real examples of strengths, skills, experience and achievements.

Read more in our Back to Your Future Blog 5

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Inspiration PODCAST

The Podcast to #InspireYourReturn

“At any given point in time, you will always be faced with two directions. You could either go back to safety, continue doing what you've always been doing, or you could move forward and embrace growth.”

We’re thrilled to bring you the third and final episode of our latest mini-series of our Career Returners Podcast on career change in midlife!

This episode features the inspiring Ajay Sahota who successfully changed role and sector, moving from technical roles in the food sector in India and the UK to a business Listen to Ajay’s management role at Leidos, a technology company. clip

Hear how Ajay held firm in seeking out a business management role on her return to work, looking for an opportunity to not only use her pre break experience but also the business skills and experience she had developed during her career break through her own consulting work and MBA.

Listen to the full episode

“I am really proud of the example that I'm setting for my children and like I look up to my father, I hope they look up to me and say, it can be done. You can pursue your dreams and you can reinvent yourself in any

A big thank you to longer lives thinktank Phoenix Insights for sponsoring this mini-series and for convening the Careers can change campaign.

Career Returners is proud to be part of the Careers can change campaign, aiming to inspire people to see that their careers can change successfully, in many different ways.

stage in life..”

Catch up on previous episodes in our Career Returners Podcast

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Elba’s Success Story “I still can't believe I'm doing this!

I’ve really enjoyed learning something new, and I love the driving”

Elba Lovelace-Francis Trainee Driver GT Railway 3 year career break

I started my career in customer services at William Hill. I was a cashier and my role also involved managing the shop. I worked there for 7 years, and it was fun. I was responsible for customer service, managing the till and I enjoyed building rapport with customers. I often spent time working alone in the shop and got comfortable with my own company, which has been really helpful in my new role!

I took a career break in 2020. It was the pandemic, and then I had my daughter and so in the end I took a career break of 3 years, which was longer than I’d anticipated.

During this time, I reflected on what I wanted to do, and decided that I wanted to pursue a career that provided more stability and was well paid.

I had considered a career as a train driver before but I was pregnant at the time, so I didn’t pursue it. But I continued to think about it, and when the ad came up again in 2023, I knew I had to go for it! I researched it online and joined a platform called The Rail Forum, to ask lots of questions and hear back from people in the industry and I decided to apply.

“The classroom was great - like going back to school and you realise that your ability to learn just comes back to you.”

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Inspiration SUCCESS STORY The application process was straightforward questions on your relevant skills and why you think you’d be suitable for this role - and I was invited to an assessment day. The assessment day was really quite intense, and the activities tested your concentration skills, attention to detail and your ability to multitask – all key skills for being a train driver! I think these are skills you either have or don’t have and so if it doesn’t go well, it’s probably not the right role for you. I got past this, a few more interviews and a medical screening, and then I was delighted to be offered the job!

“I think all the research that I did helped me to understand what they were looking for and to be specific in my answers at interview.”

I’d never applied for something like this before and it was amazing to be offered the job. It was a great feeling! I think all the research that I did helped me to understand what they were looking for and to be specific in my answers at interview.

I started in August 2023 and the first 6 months is spent in the classroom with your trainee driver cohort. There are 6 modules to learn, including how to handle the train, customer service, traction, and emergency situations.

The classroom was great - like going back to school and you realise that your ability to learn just comes back to you. My trainer was great and made the learning enjoyable and my peers became like a little family – so supportive and helpful. We set up a WhatsApp group and would message each other with questions and someone would always answer. Now we’ve left the classroom, I love seeing my classmates out and about driving their trains – it’s nice to have that connection with people who started the journey with you at the same time.

“It’s nice to have that connection with people who started the journey with you at the same time.”

I now have to build my 225 driving hours, the practical stage of our training, under the supervision of our driving instructor. Once that’s done, there’s one final test to do and then I qualify and get my key!

I still can't believe I'm doing this! I’ve really enjoyed learning something new, and I love the driving. It’s great when you get loads of little kids on a bridge or on the train platform waving at you and waiting for you to sound the train horn as you go by! And it's important to me to be a role model for my own daughter – I’m looking forward to her coming into work with me one day when I’m qualified and to show her that this is a possible career path.

“For other returners looking to get back to work, just go for it, whatever you want to do!”

For other returners looking to get back to work, just go for it, whatever you want to do! Do your research, learn as much as you can about it and believe in yourself!

Read more inspiring stories in our Success Story Library

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Advice

ASK THE COACHES

Our coaching team is on hand to answer your questions!

I want to change careers on my return to work. What tips do you have?

Returning to work after a break, especially while pursuing a career change, can feel daunting but it is completely achievable with the right approach. Here are 5 practical tips to get you started:

Reflect and review your skills and interests Look back at previous roles, both in your professional career before your break, and the roles you undertook during your break, e.g. volunteering, PTA or school governor, setting up your own business, studying, project managing a house build or relocation, or caring for others. Reflect on what you enjoyed about those roles, what skills you developed and what you're interested in now and jot down your thoughts to inspire you as to what you could do next.

Research and upskill You may need to upskill or reskill if you’re changing role or sector, but before you dive in and spend money, talk to people in your network who are doing what you would like to do to test the reality of your ideas and understand more about where the opportunities may lie. Research courses and training related to your desired field there are lots of free opportunities to upskill so do check out the September issue of Your Return, Ask the Coaches section.

Build experience When you’re venturing into a new area, seek pro bono or volunteering opportunities to build experience and contacts in your new area. This will give you examples to draw on in job applications and at interview and will help to boost your professional confidence in making the switch!

Tailor your CV and LinkedIn profile Update your CV and LinkedIn profile to highlight your transferable skills and relevant experience, including relevant keywords to help get you noticed and pass the automatic tracking screens favoured by recruiters. Reach out to new contacts on LinkedIn via tailored messages to broaden your network in your new area.

Keep hope alive!

Make sure you speak to people who will encourage you and back your ideas, not bring you down! Listen to podcasts and read success stories to build you up. We launched a brilliant podcast mini-series this year on career change so do listen for inspiration as you launch into this next career chapter!

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Webinars & Events 2025

2024

New ‘Return to Work Accelerator’ Programme In the New Year, we’re delighted to launch our new group coaching ‘Return to Work Accelerator’ Programme. In this 6-week programme, we’ll take you through every aspect of your return to work journey including exploring job options, building a compelling CV and LinkedIn profile that captures your professional experience and transferable skills, growing your network to help you optimise job opportunities and prepping for interview. At each stage we’ll show you how you can also use AI to help get you started and generate ideas and helpful prompts, to accelerate your return to a fulfilling career.

More details coming soon!

Career Returners Webinar Series 2024: Returning to work after ill health 27 November, 11am - 12pm (UK time) Online Are you returning to work after a career break for health-related reasons?

If so, then this webinar is for you.

Join us as we share returner stories and experiences, expert advice and positive and practical steps you can take to move forward on your return to work journey.

Lauren Wilson, Senior Coach at Career Returners, will be hosting the session. She'll be joined by:

With Iuliana Udangiu, Business Analyst, Jo Yarker, Professor in Occupational Psychology & Managing Partner at Affinity Health at Work Lauren Wilson, Career Returners Senior Coach

27 November 11am-12pm

Iuliana Udangiu, Business Analyst at EDF, who returned to work a year ago after taking 4 years to recover from ill health Jo Yarker, Professor in Occupational Psychology and Managing Partner at Affinity Health at Work.

Jo is a leading expert in the field of workplace health and wellbeing, driving academic research, strategy, and practical solutions in the area of returning to work after long-term illness, including cancer, long covid and burnout.

In this webinar we will cover: The various challenges and hurdles of returning to work after a period of poor health or illness Rebuilding one's sense of identity and self-perception after an illness related career break Re-evaluating life and career priorities Tips, strategies and practical suggestions to navigate the return-to-work process in a proactive and constructive manner.

Registration closes at 11.59pm (UK time) on 24 November.

Book

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