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No Going Back
Anna Connery from London has an
exciting job in retail which she loves, but it wasn’t always the case.
Four
years ago she was working for a top city bank and looking for a way
out. “I
felt like a machine,” she says. “I was going to work, doing long hours,
coming home, eating, sleeping and
doing it all again the next day, just to pay my mortgage. I wasn’t
happy and
felt unfulfilled. I really felt I needed to sort my life out.”
A few years earlier, Anna had
indulged her passion for interior design by attending evening classes
and had
since toyed with the idea of changing careers into something that could
utilise
this interest, such as retail buying and merchandising. Her opportunity
came
when she was made redundant. “It would have been easy to remain in
banking but
I decided I had to try to make the change into retail otherwise I
wouldn’t have
made the most of the opportunity. It was now or never.”
She spent three months visiting a
careers advisory service that advised her to gain some shop-floor
experience,
helped rewrite her CV and offered tips on approaching retail companies.
“I
honestly couldn’t have done it without them,” she says. “They gave me
the
confidence to market myself and the guts to go for it.”
Six months after being made
redundant, Anna landed her first role in retail with Allders Head
Office and is
now assistant merchandiser for homeware at Debenhams Head Office, and
hasn’t
been happier. “Looking back I don’t think I would have made the change
if I
hadn’t been made redundant. I now think ‘thank God’ that I was!”
The first hurdle in returning to
work after a break is choosing what you want to do – do you go back to
what you
know or use your career break as an opportunity to try something new?
“Returning to work is an excellent time to take a good look at what you
could
achieve in the short, medium and long term,” says Siobhan
Hamilton-Phillips,
Senior Consultant Psychologist at Career Psychology Ltd. “When you are
out of
the job market for a while you will notice the things that you miss and
the things
that you never want to do again.”
Once you have homed in on an area
of interest, it pays to do your research. “Select an area of employment
where
you know you have something to offer,” continues Hamilton-Phillips.
“Learn
about that particular sector from relevant magazines, newspapers, web
articles
and products or services offered. Don’t rush into a job; cut and keep
job
adverts that appeal to you.”
The next step is to get guidance.
“Having an intelligent plan to guide you in the right direction will
give you
confidence and reduce the stress caused by worry over making the right
decision,” says Hamilton-Phillips. “Select an employment agency that
you feel
comfortable with and who are supportive. A good agency will inform you
of the
skills and experience essential to a job with their clients. They will
help
present you to their client with an updated CV.”
Finally, show employers that you
have benefited from your break. “In an interview, relate your
experiences to
the demands of the job,” says Hamilton-Phillips. “What positive
contribution to
your life did the break allow you to experience that will now be an
asset in
the workplace? It may be that you found part-time work and increased
some
skills, took a short course to learn something new, travelled and
organised a
trip for yourself and others. Ask yourself how have you changed? Have
you
matured? Are you more organised? Can you handle stress more easily?”
And, just like Anna, once you see
your career break as an opportunity to open new doors, you could soon
find
yourself in a job where you’re much happier
For more advice
on returning to
work, how to write your CV and how to handle interviews, visit www.jobsite.co.uk
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