All right, it's 2:30 and we're going to start. We are live
here
it's Carol Fishman Cohen from iRelaunch
and I am here to answer all your questions
questions. We've had questions already come in from a number of
different sources. We're going
to try to get to all of them today and you
can also put questions on in the comments
section will try to get to know some of the
questions that are coming in as as I'm talking.
so first of all for those of you who are celebrating
Ramadan I know it's the first day of Ramadan
I want to say Ramadan Kareem to all of you
who are celebrating. Remember we're having
this conversation in an ever-changing situation
situation - every day brings new news. Just a few minutes ago the unemployment numbers are predicted
to go to 12% by year-end that was just posted
and we're in conversations with employers
all the time who are running return to work programs
so there's a lot of discussion going on as
you can imagine for those programs that are
happening this fall. Programs may run virtually,  they may
run in person, we don't know yet and also it's possible some will get pushed off a quarter but we are hearing activity, as far
as recruiting activity that's opening in the
fall we're seeing a lot of that proceed as we
expect. But again it's changing all the time.
But the other piece of it is that most of
us are not getting hired for these programs, so much work as we we're doing to have more companies offer
more programs most of us get hired directly, as a one-off hire, like I got hired when
I returned after my 11-year career break. And
the other thing I wanted to say just as an
introduction is that we have a unique perspective at iRelaunch because this is not our first recession, this is a
very different kind of a downturn but we have
been through a recession before. We were a much younger company
but I remember distinctly that as we rode
into the depths of that recession and back
out again more companies, every time we had a Conference, more companies were sponsoring, even if they had hiring freezes going on, because they were forward-thinking and pipeline-building. So I wanted just wanted to point that out
and we're seeing that again in the conversations
with companies. They are looking beyond  this
even though they're facing the reality of
it right now. Let's get right into some of
the tactical questions. One of the questions
that came in was about LinkedIn. Should we want
relaunchers include their pre career break position
in the headline, should they write about their
their post career break target role? Something else? Any advice on positioning
a relaunch in the summary section and
also what if I'm deciding between two directions?
So let's talk about that first and let's
talk about a few scenarios since there are
lots of questions in that question. One is
explain who you are and what you're doing
and forget about the career break as far as
the headline for your LinkedIn summary is
concerned. So let's say let's say you were
a creative director and you
want to go back to that field so your headline
could be descriptive, it could be it could be
"Experience creative director with deep expertise
in campaigns for consumer products ranging
from toothpaste to containers. So that's what
you are. You want to state it in terms of what
your experience is. So let me say that again,
"Experienced creative director with deep expertise
in campaigns were consumer products ranging
from toothpaste to containers. So that's just great way, distinct way of putting your headlight out there
and talking about who you are and what you do. The career-break piece is irrelevant  here. Now if you're
pursuing two career directions, I think a good example is our very own COO, Kellie Van who is a relauncher herself,
but I'm not even focusing on that part of her LinkedIn, I'm focusing more on her having both
a strong operations background and a strong
creative background and so her headline could
be "Multifaceted professional with diverse
work background both in operations and logistics and in managing creative teams." So that leaves it open
that she could go into different directions and.. So that's the headline part
The Summary part, and we will post some of this in the iRelaunch Return to Work Forum afterwards
so you can see some of this language but I was looking at her summary
and just lifting from it, it could be something
like "As someone with an entrepreneurial
mindset," which, she wrote this, "I'm a multifaceted
professional with a diverse work background.
Early in my career," and I'm  paraphrasing
here but I'm also reading from her profile. "Early in my
career I was part of the founding teams at
two startups where my work spanned operations
HR and creative. I then worked at more established
companies including J Jill, Wayfair and Living Proof
where I was able to focus on my creative passions
and as art director,
a role that included managing high-functioning design teams with marketing
departments and establishing processes  to improve workflow efficiencies."  So again, we'll copy and paste this so you can
see, but you're seeing that she's communicating
of two different skill-sets tnere, even on the creative
side - she is talking about managing teams and
improving workflow efficiency. So that's how
you would approach, that's an example how you would approach two different 
career directions,
Okay so another question  that came in was, "In the last
downturn how did," ...  oh I also wanted to say hi
to some of the people who are coming online
on and I see I see Judy, I see Richard, I see Jean, I see Abbey,  Ellie, Paulette, Kevin, Yvonne,
Dana - people from all over the country  -thank you all for joining, so let's move to this
question about in the last downturn how did
relaunchers
get jobs? Exactly what did they do?
So this is a real question. Hi Christina from
Orlando, hi Teresa. So what did they do? First
of all, and this is so relevant right now, they
got specific! They got really specific on their
skill set and what they were looking to do
and this is not an easy task. We talk about
this in Roadmap, we talk about this in "Assessing
your career options"
in that session that we run at our iRelaunch conference
this takes a lot of time and reflection. Very
very, but a very specific targeting
of certain roles. So that that's very important. The other thing that they did is  they become subject-matter experts
all over again in their field. So that means there, like what I did, I lo oked at my old
finance books (I was in finance) I looked at the old transactions I worked on, I talked to my colleagues
from 11 years before to find out what's
what are the new acronyms that are in use,
where the new products, how do they all work?
One great thing is get in touch with your
own colleagues and  find out who the experts 
in the field are now. You know, they will tell
you who they follow and then you should be
reading everything that that those experts
are producing because you want understand
what all the current issues are in your field
so books, articles, podcasts, websites - make sure
that you understand what the controversies
are in your field, get very - and the more you
study this, the more conversant you'll be the
more confident you'll feel. The other thing
that people did before, in the downturn,
is they were relentless about their job search
process, but they were not obnoxious; so yes
they would look up who the person was 
who posted a job, so maybe they found a job
they're interested in on the actual company
career site,  but then they went to LinkedIn
to see if it was posted there and ask to connect to the recruiter who had posted that job.
Hold on a second. Video's paused and now-is it better now? Ok, alright, great.
So I'm not sure sure how much there we missed, but I will keep going.
 
So I'm talking about
the relaunchers in the last downturn and
them being relentless but not obnoxious.
So that means that they are pursuing, they're
following up, but they're not pinging a person
every single day saying, "you know I sent my resume, did you get it, did you get it?", or  after the first
interview you know checking in every day. They were very
measured in the timing in terms of their  follow-up
and very appropriate and polite every time,
because they're recognizing that in these
difficult environments the recruiters themselves
are under a lot of pressure and the recruiters
are getting mixed, they're getting mixed messages
from their own companies in terms of what
the priorities are and which jobs 
are proceeding and which got filled and you
know whether they're changing directions; there
can be a lot of like bombardment and conflicting
internal direction that they're getting so
when  you are not hearing back from someone
then that doesn't mean anything about
you. It has nothing to do with you.
And you have to keep reminding yourself that. So that is the other piece, is that people from the past who were
successful in getting jobs during downturns 
were relentless - and I am sorry they were patient
they were patient because they knew this process
took time and they know that the process going
is going to take longer right now. But I also want to say just because it's taking longer doesn't mean there are
no jobs available. So they also didn't get,
they weren't encumbered by a negative
context about "well the economy is terrible
and no one is hiring." That kind of thing - they didn't get derailed by
that kind of macro picture that was going on in the
background. They were focused on finding a
job even if the economy was terrible. So think about
this - you only need one job and even when companies
were laying off with the economic picture
is very dire you can go on to websites and
see brand new postings, you can see companies
that have jobs available. Let me give you an example
of my favorite websites because it's about
in academia where a lot relaunchers don't think
to look is called hercjobs.org hercjobs.
org and that website on right now has about
35 thousand on it. 345 of them were posted today. So you would think, "is that possible?" You're hearing all of
this negative news about colleges and universities
they don't really know what's going to go
on in the fall, are they even going to open,  are there hiring freezes you know, hits to their endowments
yet in on that site which is opportunities
at academic institutions across the country
345 got posted just today. So I want
you to feel encouraged by that. I mean of course
there are there going to be industries that are
just slaughtered let you know airlines and
hospitality industries , travel related industries - really really tough right now,
some big layoffs there in the startup community, venture funded companies and also the big ones.
But at the same time you're also hearing about medical and
healthcare and consumer goods and food supply
and virtual and tech and eCommerce, 
those sectors that are hiring, and there are
plenty of lists out there of those companies
that are hiring. So the thing is, though, note to see when the jobs are posted
if it's an old posting or not. Another thing
that reaunchers during a downturn did was
to make sure that they got certifications
or recertifications that they need for a job.
So for example we had a manufacturing engineer who wanted to be in quality engineering
and she had an 11-year career break and she realized
that every job she looked at required Lean
or Six Sigma certification so she had to get
that before she could even apply for a lot of
these jobs. So think about.
Think about whether a new certification could be helpful to you. Someone asked, "how can we
be updating some of our soft skills now? How
can we be getting up to speed, you know there's this certification I really like in anti-money laundering
the ACAMS online certification program and
we've had people switch fields from media to
finance by taking that program and get hired
or re-up their skills in this very specific
area in anti-money laundering, or in  compliance
related areas in finance and there's a lot of focus on that right now.
So maybe that's part of what you're doing
right now is you're spending time doing course
work and you could do free coursework. You
can look at edX or Coursera - all sorts of courses
soft skill courses on there and also a huge
range, thousands of courses, and you can take them all for free
and I would spend some of my time right now on that and I would put them on my
resume and Linkedin profile that I'm taking
these courses even if I just started them
you can put them on that you're currently taking them. And then the other thing is that they check with their alma mater to
find out what kind of Career Services were
being offered and I'm watching what is being
offered right now for current students because I know maybe some of you even have students who are home because they
had rescinded job offers or because their
summer job process all of a sudden just started
and it's really really hard and I'm looking at some comments right now, like "it's so hard
right now with our kids at home of all different ages" -  totally understand the need to vent
I hear that. And also our our adult children
who have employment issues of their own at
the same time that we're trying to relaunch. So this schools are really beefing up their virtual offerings
right now for current students and I have
to speculate that that's going to spill over
into their alumni populations which really
needs their support right now so check with
your alma mater see what they're offering.
And then here's a really important one - the
one the people who were successful because
they were relentless about going after their
jobs they were also ignoring the naysayers. Oh Paulette, thanks for saying this - she says her
undergrad University just started a new online alumni connection program- that's great. And Christine, I'll make that
comment about the free courses - about that
you don't get a certificate or the test that
you take,  but we have had people complete those
courses (the free version) and it was the most
important to the employer that they completed
them as opposed to getting the official certification
or test at the end so I can see the benefits
of both. But anyway getting back to
this ignoring the naysayers - so you have to
ignore people who are going to say
to you, "oh isn't everyone looking for a job
these days? Good luck with that!" You know? So
you might go public with your job search, you
might have people react like that to you, it's
probably because they've got their own anxieties
and they're feeding that back to you so you
have to filter all that out and the people
who were successful were able to put those
kind of comments aside and keep going forward with their job search. They also didn't get hung up on level
- they weren't so worried about what level they came at. And we have a really good  article on this, in Harvard Business review,
I wrote this article about relaunchers who
were senior before who came in at much more junior levels.
We caught up with them, where where
are they now that they've been back in the workforce for a number of years, and their message across
the board was just focus on getting in and
don't worry about what level it is - and that
actually dovetails with a question that came
in, where someone said you know I've got this
job opportunity; it's like 2/3 the salary that
I was making before (this is a question that came in to us earlier)
after a five-year career break and the question
was that the paid time off is
like 10 days/year, and so it feels like not enough
to me. Do I still take the job and
can I keep looking for other jobs? And I would
say the answer is yes, you absolutely take
that job. You get in the door, take that job,
learn everything you can, produce the best
work you can produce. See how it goes. It may turn out that you like that job a lot better than you thought you were going to like it.
And also,
the other question  of that is, 'Can I continue to look for a job, even while I've taken this job,
because I think that some of the terms of
this job or not are not that good. And like,  is there
something wrong with that?
It's almost like it's an ethical or moral issue. Like it's just not
appropriate. But the answer to that is, most managers
and recruiters and people who arel working will
say, "everyone is always in play." Anyone who's
been managing for a long time will say even the people who are not looking could get approached
by a headhunter or a recruiter and get a you know
"an offer they can't refuse" kind of thing.
There's nothing wrong with looking around while you have a current role
and again I say immerse yourself in that role,
do your best work, it could turn out you like
it and then maybe they give you more vacation
days, or a promotion or money later and that's
all a good thing and it's totally fine to
keep looking. Now there was a question related
to that about there's something on LinkedIn
where on your profile it pops up
and says I like to make an appointment with
this person. Like if a recruiter wanted to
interview you. The question was how do I do that
because then they know I'm looking. But anyway, I think there's probably a way to
turn that off and we need to find out. I don't
know the answer and how to turn it off but we're
going to try to find that out. Okay let's see " "Sometimes
they won't even talk to you for those lower
level jobs. Do you think with so many people out because of COVID, that has changed? Yes I do actually and I
think that the experience that companies have
had, and the world has seen, by people being brought
back to jobs after retirement and other situations where people are
just immediately reintegrated into the workforce, I think it's going to change
everyone's mindset and I think, just like virtual
work, now, all of a sudden everyone is saying "why were we even in an office in the first place?"
and it's having all of the employers reevaluate the whole idea of working virtually, so that is one changing mindset but I
do think that that people will talk to you
about lower level jobs. I also think it's up
to you to educate them. And to say "I intentionally
sought this job out." I actually wrote an article
for Fairygodboss and one for Harvard Business
Review about why people take lower level jobs
than what they left and it's for
so many reasons. Sometimes we simply want to
less stressful jobs. We want to deliver - and this
is what you can say,  "my priority is to deliver
excellent results to my employer and I intentionally
sought this role out because I know that I
can do this and manage my life outside of
work. This was an intentional choice on my part. And at my
current life stage it's the perfect match.
So use some language like that to educate
why you're looking for a lower-lower role. Let's see
Oh okay - I hear, "thank you for for the comments
about the pressures of being home and trying
trying to manage what's going on at home with what's
going on with your relaunch and how it's impacting
your relaunch." So we can talk about some of that
more on the Forum itself. I just want to make
sure that I'm getting to some of these other tactical questions 
that, oh yes, and here's one. So we have a
discussion going on on the Forum right now
about references. So someone said, you
know, and we've had this come up before - someone
said, "I'm at the point now where they're asking for references"
and we always get this question, "how do relaunchers get references from their
old colleagues or their old boss when they had a 14-year
career break and a) they don't know where their boss is anymore, b) the person's retired ..
in a few cases where people took like 20-year career breaks, sometimes their managers have died, but really it's more the situation
where they've been out of touch. So we have had so many relaunchers
get back in touch with her bosses from 10, 14
years ago. And half those bosses (and if you look at the thread - there's a thread right now on the Forum
about this with a lot of people saying this) that, you know what? I got in touch
with my boss from 14 years ago, totally remembered
me, wrote a reference, and it worked for me.
But the other thing is that we - people are
lobbing in comments about can you do a volunteer role,
like a substantive, pro bono volunteer role,
that you're doing specifically because you want
the reference from the person or the company that
you're doing the work for? So we're actually seeing relaunchers almost trade
like a Consulting project for a reference
specifically in this kind of situation. And
then you can also include a character reference
in the mix.
Maybe from people you volunteer with in the community,  or at one of your kids' schools. All right
let me just double-check here. Oh yeah, we had another question that came up
about working in the ... about being worried about
having to have face time in the office. Now
of course this is going to be different now with COVID,
but let's say we moved back to the old way of doing things and people are focused on face time again.
And this person was worried that they're a single parent, they have to leave
by 5 p.m. everyday to pick up their kid. And they're used to working 12-14 hours a day
in their industry, which was the fashion industry before their career break.
So this is ... first of all think about how long have you
been on break? Has the industry changed? It may change significantly now after COVID with everyone working virtually,
but if you ... wait till you get
the offer, and then it's perfectly fine to
say that your priority is to contribute your
best work to the organization and do your
most excellent work. You want to be able to
view your work day as a long day - and so for
you, your workday could start at 8 or 9 o'clock, it's going to take
a break between 5 and 9 p.m. and then it's
going to continue because you need to be able
to make that up pick up and get your kids your kids settled. But
it does not have anything to do with your
level of dedication and commitment and the
work product that you're going to produce.
So I think you get the offer first and then
you have that conversation and then you see
what the reaction is. But I think it's
a perfectly appropriate to bring it up and
also talked about how you view your work day
and that you would be available for urgent
messages and accessible for emergencies or important things during time of day,
but that you would organize your
work day in that way. Perfectly appropriate
conversation. All right, "talk about resume software
on company websites Does it weed out resumes if it shows a gap? What if a volunteer role shows up ..."
So Maureen thank you for asking that question. So you should
you will have to fill out these online applications
where you have to account for all of your time
and yes I would put a volunteer role in there in the same way that I might put paid
work in there. And the other thing though is
that once I applied for that job, and this
is going to be the case with pretty much any
job, is that it's not going to be enough to
apply through that system and you might get bounced
back and bounced out of that system and get
an immediate rejection, and I still wouldn't
assume that that means you're really rejected
especially with big companies. We've had relaunchers
get rejected out of these auto systems and
then they go find someone who knows someone or an old colleague, or if they used to work
there - we have a great story about someone who used to work at a company, I won't name it right now and went to our
conference and met people at that company, applied
for a job she thought she was eminently qualified
for - immediately got rejected! She could not believe it. So she
went back and she said. "I am so qualified for
this" and she talked to one of her old colleagues. They
put her application back in - she got the job!
So it could be, if it's a very big company - you get rejected by the auto-system - go through a side door. Go
to a person who knows another person who can
walk your resume over. And sometimes you'll
say, "well you got to apply" and you'll say, "well I did apply and it's just
rejecting me because my career break, but I'm
so qualified for this role." And see if -
that's how a lot of people circumvent the
system and get considered for these roles.
Practicing soft skills,  hi Kevin, tips for practicing soft skills after a career break.
So I saw that question come in. I wasn't exactly sure what you meant about soft skills. Did you mean
like multitasking and project management or I thought maybe you also said something about
like the interview process, like interviewing virtually or uploading videos or those kinds
of newer job search activities. So I would say
definitely contact your alma mater see if they
do mock interview practice. See if they have resources
for you in terms of, can you talk to alumni?
who are in your field? Maybe not to get a job, but just to practice more having conversations about it.
Oh Kevin thank you for clarifying - how to interview and presenting yourself for public speaking.
Oh I'm glad you brought that up because
I have mentioned in the past that Toastmasters
is a really good place for people to go during
their relaunch while they're in their job search.
The organization toastmasters.org where people
are working on their public speaking abilities
because most of the people in these Toastmasters
groups are working and Toastmasters is a worldwide
organization and you put your zip code in and there are chapters meeting everywhere.
It's relatively
inexpensive and they meet every other week and
so I just looked up today to see are they
continuing to meet online and answer is yes
so I would definitely tap that as a resource
for you. Yes we're going to end soon and when we can
run another one of these to answer more questions. I see Christine saying Toastmasters is awesome, that's great!
Yeah how can we make ourselves stand out as relaunchers when millions are now unemployed?
How do we position ourselves as competitive? It's everything I'm talking about. Figure out exactly
what your skills are. Become a subject matter
expert all over again. You can do that right
now. And don't get derailed by thinking that
you're any less qualified than someone who
hasn't had a career break. COVID is going to  change a lot of things about the job search but you want to
use your networks, go public with job search, use this time to reconnect with people that you haven't reconnected with in a long time.
Just check in, how are they doing? And that is going to be a great way to
segue into "well how are you doing?" and you
can explain what you're thinking about, but
make sure you know what you want to do and you're really specific about it. So I would
say put that out of your mind that you can't compete with people who haven't had career breaks.
We're always in that situation. It can be more exaggerated right now, maybe it can take longer,
but it's not going to change the core strategies that we use to be successful.
All right,  so I think we're going to wrap up now.
Thank you everyone for attending. We will, oh, I see everyone, Katia, Theresa, yes Abby, we'll
try to have it I don't I don't know if we're
going to have it every other week
- we'll try to have it on a somewhat regular basis - be in touch with all of you. And the
answer, Katia, is absolutely yes. Keep applying during this period, but also keep finding individuals who ...
you know - make it personal.  Someone who still can be that personal handoff on your resume.
Thank you
so much! It's been great to connect with everyone.
I'm so glad you were all on, and we will do
this again .
