So you have taken the past 5 years off of work to raise your child and now you are ready to return to the workforce. Now what?! It's a competitive market out there and having a 5 year gap doesn't help things, but here is a tip to help you get started.

What I want to share with you, you will need to draw from both your professional experience as well as your experience from being a parent and staying at home. The tip is simply this: Work Experience Stories. WES are short stories about either how you overcame an obstacle, resolved a major challenge, negotiated a better deal, or a host of other corporate-related topics. These stories have a simple format: the issue, the body of the story, and the result. Let's look at 2 examples, one from your former corporate experience and one from your more recent parenting experience.

Example 1
(Issue) “ I remember at my former company I was having a hard time with a vendor. (Body) We were getting shipments late and our customers were becoming frustrated with us. I decided we should seek a new vendor. So after contacting and interviewing 3 potential new vendors, I selected one and placed an order. (Result) The new vendor actually had a higher quality product at a lower cost. Additionally we never received a late shipment from them and as the icing on the cake, our orders from our customers actually went up 18%.”

Example 2
(Issue) “While I was out of the corporate life, I got involved in the neighborhood association in my housing development. We were getting complaints from the residents that the snow removal company we had wasn't doing a thorough job. (Body) I talked to the owner of the company to let her know about the complaints and she said she would take care of it. She ended up bringing more equipment and a bigger crew after the next storm. (Result) Our residents were extremely happy with the results; the crew was in and out of the community fast and had done more thorough work than before. We haven't received a complaint since.”

You can see that you are going to want to come up with stories that are relevant to what work you want to pursue. Remember, just because you weren't paid for something doesn't make it any less work! In fact, often the opposite is true! Think about the last time your best friend needed help moving!

Come up with at least 3-5 of these stories and have some from both your career as well as your experience staying home. Write these stories out and read them through until you have them down-pat!

Right now you are thinking “Enough already! What do I do with these stories, Dale?!” The answer is 'informational interviews'! What are informational interviews? How do you secure informational interviews? Who do you do informational interviews with? You can find the answers to all of these questions and more in my NO COST job seeking ebook located at http://www.smallbiz-mechanic.com/ebook.php

Dale Robert
http://www.Career-Mechanic.com