Home > Advice and Support > Career Toolkit

Career Toolkit

How to boost your confidence

Lack of confidence is the first of the three main hurdles you are likely to have to overcome on your road back to work since the other two, childcare and flexible working, will only be a possibility if you feel you are capable of getting back into the workplace.

The longer you stay out of the workplace the harder it can be. Technology has often changed, the world moves much faster these days and work is a wholly different ballgame when you are also balancing the demands of children than it was pre-pregnancy.

Confidence can be regained, however. For instance, you can do courses to brush up on on new technology – many FE colleges offer these free of charge. However, to tackle the underlying causes of lack of confidence you may need a more fundamental review of your motivations and skills, both in work and in life. Because motherhood has tended to be downplayed, for instance, the skills that are gained in parenting often pass unnoticed. There are many, however, that are immediately transferable to the workplace.

So instead of worrying about the blank spaces in your cv, consider rewriting it to emphasise the skills you have acquired rather than sending in the traditional chronological list of jobs and training. Many people do this nowadays and it gives you a chance not just to stress any skills you might have gained before going on maternity leave, but also skills acquired as a result of having a child or through voluntary work.
Interestingly, the kind of skills women acquire from parenting are just the ones that many companies are looking for. Here are some examples of the kind of transferable skills you have no doubt acquired:

Communication skills: Getting a toddler in a tantrum out of a supermarket in a hurry develops all sorts of negotiation talents. Ditto trying to get a small child to understand why they cannot have everything they see in the toy shop. Adults usually understand where you are coming from.

Multi-tasking: Mums are well trained in doing a huge variety of things at the same time, for instance, cooking the dinner, organising playdates and dealing with a cut knee, simultaneously.

Time management: There is nothing in working life that gives you more training in time management than getting small people to school or to an appointment on time, particularly when, inevitably, they need a nappy change just as you are about to go out the door.

Budgeting: Mums are usually in charge of the household budget, including sorting bills out, getting things fixed for the lowest price and teaching small people the joy of low-priced treats. Consider this as equivalent to being an accountant for a small business.

Organisation: Children are anarchists by nature. Trying to organise work and reasonable adults is nothing compared to rounding up people who run or crawl off in opposing directions and write all over the walls just after you have painted them.

Diplomacy: No amount of dealing with difficult customers is as hard as getting two siblings who want each other's toys to kiss and make up.

Consider yourself as having been on some sort of advanced course in office skills...

Related articles:
News and blogs
Advice and support
Features

Related tags: New job | Skills