No Brake on a Career break

No Brake on a Career break :

“You need to explain the gap in your career”, “Your skills are outdated”, “You can no longer get back to where you left” are some of the routine comments given by recruiters when a lady applies to resume her career after a break. These responses are not confined to any specific geographic location. The situation is the same across the world. In a fast changing industry like IT, a gap is frowned upon as technology and even work environment changes over a couple of years. A recent survey of women in business conducted by the London Business School reports that 70% of women are afraid to take a break; obviously in the fear of not being able to get back to their rightful place after their break. But in reality, that is not true unless the break is for a very long period of time. Working, especially in an IT/ITES company is like driving. How can one forget driving especially if one has been driving for a few years? The skill never gets forgotten. It requires practice to be able to get back to the current pace. Same is with working in IT companies. The tools might have changed. Clients might have changed. But the underlying principles don’t change. So long as one is keen to learn and get retrained, it should not be difficult to get back to work.

Over the last couple of decades, the percentage of women who opt to study professional courses and pursue a career has been on the increase. A significant number of them drop out after a few years either due to relocation or childbirth or other reasons. These are the women who have been trained, have survived the grind of working in demanding projects. Some of them have excellent academic records. Imagine, sixteen years of education plus five years (on an average) of work experience of so many, going down the drain. Not only the individual and her family stand to lose, but look at what the corporates and in turn the nation stands to lose?  If these women are reemployed it would no doubt boost up our GDP. Most women may want to come back after a few years. But what prevents them is their own fear of getting rejected and the discouragement they receive from recruiters. But all this is set to change.

With more and more companies coming forward to recruit experienced women with career breaks, drawing up a career roadmap with the second career is no more a distant dream for these women. What is now left is for the women to come forward to take up positions of responsibility, retrain and make it happen. Women need to take the initiative, come up with an action plan to make it work. Enough and more has been said about work life balance. If one could manage with the support systems and take advantage of the women-friendly policies companies have in place, making a come back is not difficult. Most of the top IT and ITES companies where anyone would want to work with have opened doors for women with career breaks.  Not-for-profit organisations like eWIT have initiatives that help these women find their rightful place in companies. So why hesitate? Take advantage of the situation and make the best use of it. http://www.ewit.co.in/vaapas_eventreg.asp