Even as the economy begins to rebound, many of the working parents who left the workforce and wish to return face challenges, like explaining career gaps on their resume.
LinkedIn recently added several new job titles to better reflect all of the possible reasons why parents and others might have been out of the workforce. To help working parents utilize these titles, FlexJobs has compiled key strategies to make the most of these new title options, as well as why expanding the range of job titles to include stay-at-home parents matters.
FlexJobs' career coaches are experts in helping job seekers navigate their return to work after taking a break.
What Are the New Job Titles and How Do They Work?
Before the update, the only job title option for people who had opted out of paid work was “homemaker.” However, this term doesn’t accurately describe everyone’s situation. To better reflect all of the possible reasons why people stay out of the workforce, LinkedIn has added several new job titles. The new titles include:
· Stay-at-Home Mom
· Stay-at-Home Dad
· Stay-at-Home Parent
· Mom
· Dad
· Caregiver
Future Titles
While parenting titles are the only new ones available now, LinkedIn has plans to add additional titles in the future for more common life events. These will help capture in detail why you opted out of work and include:
· Sabbatical
· Personal Leave
· Hospital Leave
How to Format the Section
Anyone can add these job titles and relevant experience to their LinkedIn profile. To add a new title to yours, open your profile, and under the Experience section, click the plus sign. Then, under Title, add whatever title best reflects your situation.
Once you’ve added the title to your LinkedIn profile, you’ll need to include some experiences and duties, as well as a company name. Brie Reynolds, Career Development Manager and Coach at FlexJobs, offers some of the following tips.
First, she advises that for the company name, instead of putting “self” or “self-employed,” job seekers use “Career Break” or “Planned Career Break” instead. This helps recruiters know that you were pausing your career instead of pursuing freelance work.
Then, add a few skills and accomplishments that tie your stay-at-home accomplishments to paid skills you’d use in the workforce. Here are a few examples:
Caregiver
Career Break, March 2020 – Present
o An intentional pause to focus on full-time caregiving during the global pandemic
o Excited and energized to return to work
o Engaged in professional skill-building to increase knowledge of remote communication and project management programs like Zoom, Google Drive, and Jira
Stay-at-Home Parent
Planned Career Break, August 2014 – Present
o Full-time caregiver and household manager while maintaining connections to the accounting industry
o Proactively pursuing certifications in QuickBooks 2020 and Microsoft Office via remote study
Stay-at-Home Parent and Project Management Volunteer
Professional Active Career Break, January 2007 – Present
o Annually, oversee all aspects of event planning and organizing for major fundraising events, raising up to $30,000 per event.
o Direct long-term project planning, including volunteer recruitment and management of 10-30 volunteers at a time, sales and marketing efforts, vendor relations, and community outreach.
o Use excellent remote communication skills (via phone, email, in-person, etc.) to encourage donations, recruit supporters, manage volunteers, report to school officials, and resolve problems.
Why It Matters
To some, this may seem like semantics. However, there are several reasons why expanding the range of job titles to include stay-at-home parents matters.
1. Normalizes It
There are many reasons for opting out of work and just as many ways to explain the gap in your resume. As an example, though, for parents returning to the workforce, explaining that the gap was due to child-rearing duties has never been simple because of employer bias.
A 2018 study found that employers were more biased against stay-at-home parents than people who were unemployed, even when applicants were out of the workforce for the same amount of time. The study created and sent out fake resumes for male and female “applicants” who were out of work for 18 months but had the same education and experience.
Of the resumes that were sent out, 9.7% of unemployed mothers were invited for an interview, whereas 4.9% of stay-at-home moms were asked for an interview. Fathers didn’t fare much better, with only 8.8% of unemployed dads invited in, versus 5.4% of stay-at-home fathers.
LinkedIn is, of course, the largest professional social networking site in the world. Adding stay-at-home parent and other life events as potential titles helps normalize these career pauses as part of life and not a negative departure from one’s career path.
2. Crooked Lines Count
Not everyone follows a straight career path. Some people job hop for various reasons. Others decide a portfolio career is right for them. And then there are career changers who go from one field to another during their work history.
While it’s not always easy to get employers to understand why your non-linear career path works for you (and them), you can help them understand how the varied skills and experiences you gained on your unique path can transfer into their workplace.
By allowing parents to add “stay-at-home parent” to their work history, they too now have a chance to demonstrate and quantify their transferable skills, which can benefit employers.
For example, during your time at home, you may have volunteered with the school or the parent association, where you likely used your negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Or, maybe you held an officer position like treasurer or president and had to create budgets or balance the books. As an employee, you could use any and all of these skills.
3. The Pandemic
The pandemic’s impact on the world economy is undeniable. So, too, is its impact on working mothers’ employment.
In January 2020, women outnumbered men in the workforce by a slight margin at 50.04%. However, by December 2020, women accounted for 55% of the over 9.8 million lost jobs. Whether voluntarily or not, approximately 10 million U.S. mothers were not working in January 2021, over 1.4 million more than in January 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Furthermore, the Census Bureau also points out that between March and April of 2020, approximately 3.5 million working mothers left the workforce. Overall, 45% of all mothers with school-aged children were not working.
As camps reopen this summer and schools add more in-person learning this fall, many mothers will be able to return to work. And though the pandemic is an extraordinary circumstance, there may still be barriers for this group to reenter the workforce. Adding one of the new LinkedIn title options and describing the transferable skills and experiences you gained during that time shows you were engaged in professional activities and using your relevant skills while you were at home.
New Options and New Opportunities
These new and inclusive job titles are a first step toward changing attitudes about opting out of paid work for personal reasons.
For expert assistance in plotting your return to work, consider meeting with a FlexJobs Career Coach. They’ve got years of experience helping anyone who stayed at home jump back into work. As a FlexJobs member, you get exclusive access to discounted coaching rates. Consider scheduling a personalized career coaching session.
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