Work Ideas For Stay At Home Moms

Work Ideas For Stay At Home Moms – Staying at home can present unique challenges when you’re ready to return to the workforce. Employers will notice a gap in your resume and your skill set or certifications may be out of date.

Fortunately, it’s entirely possible to craft a resume that will best position yourself for advancement, especially if you’ve taken some time to build on your current skills. Read on to find out what to include and what to leave out—and some helpful tips to keep in mind as you prepare to find a new position. Additionally, we’ve also included a free resume template in Word or Google Docs format that you can use as a starting point.

Work Ideas For Stay At Home Moms

Before we dive into our employer perspectives, here’s a sample resume for a stay-at-home mom or parent. Feel free to use it as inspiration when writing your own resume (download links below).

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A free stay-at-home mom template for parents returning to the workforce in Google Docs, Word, or PDF format

Do Resume Gaps Matter? Of course – to some extent. Employers want to know what’s going on with the employment gap, but that won’t be a ban on its own. The key is explaining it, which is easy to do when you’re a stay-at-home mom (keep scrolling for detailed tips on how to do this).

Aside from the gap in your performance with the employer, the most important thing to show the hiring manager is that your skills are relevant. If you have done recent volunteer work, you should definitely include it. Freelance work related to the position you are aiming for is also great.

If your skills are not relevant, read on to find out how to develop your skills and fill out your resume appropriately.

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If you want to include your work as a stay-at-home mom in your work experience, you should consider doing so in a format similar to this example:

Instead of “Growthsi” and the title below, you can include “Stay at Home Parent” (as in the following example), stay-at-home dates, and accomplishments with the bullet points “Keep a parenting advice blog featuring 50+ articles with an average of X pageviews” or “Create 100 + Facebook group supporting stay-at-home parents” or how to set up and run an Etsy shop. Everything you include should be relevant to the job or position you want to apply for (with similar skills included).

Avoid including stay-at-home mom experience as “work experience” or “professional experience” — instead, use the “Other Experience” section heading as above.

Just because you haven’t been with an employer for a long time, you can still hone your skills, take courses, and potentially work on freelance projects while you’re job hunting. Each approach helps raise your competency level in the eyes of hiring managers by demonstrating that you are in touch with your skills.

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One way to consider is to look for volunteer opportunities around your community. Non-profit organizations and parent/child focused groups are always looking for help with outreach, fundraising and events. If you’re interested in marketing, for example, helping to promote a parent teacher organization’s upcoming dance by creating and distributing flyers is definitely something you can include on your resume.

Depending on the field you are interested in, it may help you find relevant courses (either online or at nearby colleges). Some community colleges offer adult education courses to learn basic computer applications such as Microsoft Word, which can help you with all kinds of office work. If you’re more advanced, you can search for courses in a variety of fields, from computer programming to graphic arts. If you have more time to invest, consider enrolling in a two-year degree if your area of ​​interest would benefit from it.

Finally, taking on relevant freelance projects (such as writing copy for online companies, performing lawn or landscaping services, or programming simple applications) will give you experience and accomplishments that highlight how you’ve kept your skills current.

To make formatting your resume simple and time-saving, you can start with the template above or browse our ATS-ready resume templates. Choose one that applies to your background and the position you’re applying for, and fill in the details as you go.

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Your resume subject line should include your full name, phone number, email address, location (state and country, not street address) and potentially your LinkedIn profile. An example is given below:

Having a resume at the top of your resume is a great way to introduce yourself as someone who “worked in [X field] for [x] years before taking four years off to raise two children.” Your resume can also include any recent activities or projects you’ve started, such as:

All your work experience should follow the same style of format. Regardless of when you last worked, you’ll want to list your previous employers in reverse chronological order (with the most recent employers on top).

Each employer you list should have a bulleted list of accomplishments. Start paragraphs with strong action verbs related to the skills you’ll use in the position you’re going for, ideally. Whenever possible, include a numerical value (such as “improved sales by 10 percent over X years”) to help employers understand exactly how much of a difference you’ve made.

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For each of your work experiences, list the company or organization, your job title, and the dates you worked there. Usually this involves listing the month and year, but sometimes you can leave out the month and just show the year – what’s more important is that you’re consistent with the formatting of your dates in your resume.

If you graduated some time ago (8+ years ago): Your education section should be short and under your work experience. In this case, simply indicate the name of your degree and the name of your school. You can leave out your graduation year to avoid any unwarranted age discrimination — which unfortunately happens in today’s hiring landscape.

If you’ve gone back to school or recently graduated: You should list your education at the top of your resume if you recently completed a degree (while you were a stay-at-home mom). Include the name of the school, the degree you graduated from, and the program you completed. Depending on the degree you earned and the position you’re applying for, you may also want to add the most relevant courses you’ve taken (such as “data analysis” or “software engineering”) if they contain keywords. which applies to the job you are applying for.

If you have enough technical skills, you should include a skills section in your resume. This can be placed on the right side of the page or at the bottom. The skills you list must be relevant to the position you are applying for. For example, if you’re applying to be an office manager, you might list “QuickBooks,” “Microsoft Office,” or “Google Calendar” as your skills. If you’re going into graphic design, list the programs you’ve worked with before.

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For all your skills (on your resume, in your resume body, and in your skills bank), you should try to include ones that are relevant to your experience and the job you’re applying for. Check out this list of resume skills and keywords to get an idea of ​​what hiring managers and automated screeners are looking for.

Chances are, being a stay-at-home mom taught you many transferable skills (such as time management, communication skills, and follow-up). You should definitely include them in your resume if possible, but remember not to list them directly in your resume – e.g. Don’t mention “time management” skills, but show how you completed a project that required strong time management.

Although it can be tempting, especially if you run a complicated household or are overwhelmed by your day-to-day responsibilities, refrain from listing “head of household” or “household CEO” on your resume. No matter how sophisticated your work in this role is, claiming it as work experience means you risk signaling to the hiring manager that you consider your family to be equivalent in terms of duties and accountability to a business.

In general, business CEOs have greater responsibility (from a business perspective) than heads of households and significantly more financial risk is involved.

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However, if you’ve created a spreadsheet to manage your family’s finances, you can certainly include Microsoft Excel in your tech skills. You can also include it in your cover letter to show your commitment to the organization.

Once you’ve finished building the bones of your resume, you can use several different tools to optimize it and make adjustments that will allow it to pass automated screenings.

As a stay-at-home mom, you can write an effective resume highlighting any volunteering, online courses, or freelance work you’ve done while staying at home.