People returning to work after a career break: I call them relaunchers. These are people who have taken career breaks for elder care, for childcare reasons, pursuing a personal interest or a personal health issue. Closely related are career transitioners of all kinds: veterans, military spouses, retirees coming out of retirement or repatriating expats. Returning to work after a career break is hard because of a disconnect between the employers and the relaunchers. Employers can view hiring people with a gap on their resume as a high-risk proposition, and individuals on career break can have doubts about their abilities to relaunch their careers, especially if they've been out for a long time. This disconnect is a problem that I'm trying to help solve.
Ljudi koji se vraćaju na posao nakon prekida karijere: Ja ih nazivam ponovnim početnicima. To su ljudi koji su si uzeli prekid u karijeri zbog brige za starije, zbog brige za djecu, sljede osobni interest ili osobni zdravstveni problem. Poput njih su svi koji mijenjaju svoju karijeru: branitelji, vojni supružnici, umirovljenici koji se povlače iz mirovine ili iseljenici koji se vraćaju. Povratak na posao nakon pauze u karijeri je težak zbog nepovezanosti između poslodavaca i ponovnih početnika. Poslodavci mogu vidjeti kada zapošljavaju ljude, da rupa na njihovom životopisu predstavlja visoki rizik, i pojedinci s pauzom u karijeri mogu imati sumnju u svoje sposobnosti za pokretanje karijere iznova, pogotovo ako su izbijali dugo vremena. Ta nepovezanost je problem koju ja pokušavam riješiti.
Now, successful relaunchers are everywhere and in every field. This is Sami Kafala. He's a nuclear physicist in the UK who took a five-year career break to be home with his five children. The Singapore press recently wrote about nurses returning to work after long career breaks. And speaking of long career breaks, this is Mimi Kahn. She's a social worker in Orange County, California, who returned to work in a social services organization after a 25-year career break. That's the longest career break that I'm aware of. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor took a five-year career break early in her career.
Sada, uspješni ponovni početnici su posvuda, u svakom polju. Ovo je Sami Kafala. On je nuklearni fizičar u Velikoj Britaniji koji je uzeo pet godina stanke u karijeri da bi bio kod kuće sa svoje petero djece. Singapore press je nedavno pisao o medicinskim sestrama koje se vraćaju na posao nakon duge pauze u karijeri. I govoreći o dugim pauzama u karijeri, ovo je Mimi Kahn. Ona je socijalna radnica u Orange County, Kaliforniji, koja se vratila na posao u organizaciji socijalnih usluga nakon 25-godišnje pauze u karijeri. To je najduža pauza u karijeri koje sam svjesna. Vrhovna sutkinja Sandra Day O'Connor uzela je petogodišnju pauzu rano u svojoj karijeri.
And this is Tracy Shapiro, who took a 13-year career break. Tracy answered a call for essays by the Today Show from people who were trying to return to work but having a difficult time of it. Tracy wrote in that she was a mom of five who loved her time at home, but she had gone through a divorce and needed to return to work, plus she really wanted to bring work back into her life because she loved working. Tracy was doing what so many of us do when we feel like we've put in a good day in the job search. She was looking for a finance or accounting role, and she had just spent the last nine months very diligently researching companies online and applying for jobs with no results.
I ovo je Tracy Shapiro, koja je uzela 13-godišnju pauzu u karijeri. Tracy je odgovorila na poziv za eseje od strane Today Show-a od ljudi koji su pokušavali da se vrate na posao koji imaju poteškoće s time. Tracy je napisala da je ona mama petero djece koja vole njezino vrijeme kod kuće, ali ona je prošla kroz razvod i potrebno je bilo da se vrati na posao. Također, ona je stvarno htjela donijeti posao natrag u život jer je voljela raditi. Tracy je radila ono što mnogi od nas rade kad osjećamo da smo sproveli dobar dio dana u traženju posla. Ona je tražila ulogu u financijama ili računovodstvu, i upravo provela posljednjih devet mjeseci vrlo marljivo istraživajući tvrtke putem interneta i aplicirajući za posao ali bez rezultata.
I met Tracy in June of 2011, when the Today Show asked me if I could work with her to see if I could help her turn things around. The first thing I told Tracy was she had to get out of the house. I told her she had to go public with her job search and tell everyone she knew about her interest in returning to work. I also told her, "You are going to have a lot of conversations that don't go anywhere. Expect that, and don't be discouraged by it. There will be a handful that ultimately lead to a job opportunity."
Upoznala sam Tracy u lipnju 2011. godine, kad me Today Show zamolio da radim s njom da vidim bih joj mogla pomoći okrenuti stvari. Prvo što sam rekla Tracy je da mora izaći iz kuće. Rekla sam joj da mora izaći u javnost sa traženjem posla i reći svima koje zna o njenom interesu za povratak na posao. Također sam joj rekla: "Imat ćeš puno razgovora koji ne idu nigdje. Očekuj to, i ne moj da te obeshrabre. Bit će ih nekoliko koji će u konačnici dovesti do prilike za posao."
I'll tell you what happened with Tracy in a little bit, but I want to share with you a discovery that I made when I was returning to work after my own career break of 11 years out of the full-time workforce. And that is, that people's view of you is frozen in time. What I mean by this is, when you start to get in touch with people and you get back in touch with those people from the past, the people with whom you worked or went to school, they are going to remember you as you were before your career break. And that's even if your sense of self has diminished over time, as happens with so many of us the farther removed we are from our professional identities. So for example, you might think of yourself as someone who looks like this. This is me, crazy after a day of driving around in my minivan. Or here I am in the kitchen. But those people from the past, they don't know about any of this. They only remember you as you were, and it's a great confidence boost to be back in touch with these people and hear their enthusiasm about your interest in returning to work.
Reći ću vam što se dogodilo s Tracy za koji trenutak, ali želim podijeliti s vama moje vlastito otkriće kada sam se vraćala na posao nakon pauze u karijeri od 11 godina bez punog radnog vremena. A to je, da je ljudski pogled na nas zamrznut u vremenu. Što želim reći je, da kad započnemo imati kontakt s ljudima i mi se vratimo u kontakt s tim ljudima iz prošlosti, ljudi s kojima ste radili ili išli u školu, oni će vas pamtiti kakvi ste bili prije prekida vaše karijere. I to je više izraženo ako je osjećaj sebe samog umanjen tijekom vremena, kao što se događa u većini slučajeva što smo dalje uklonjeni od naših profesionalnih identiteta. Tako na primjer, vi možete misliti o sebi kao netko tko izgleda ovako. Ovo sam ja, luda nakon dana vožnje u mom kombiju. Ili ovdje sam u kuhinji. Ali ti ljudi iz prošlosti, oni ne znaju ništa o tome. Oni se samo sjećaju kakvi ste bili, i to je veliki poticaj samopouzdanju da se vratitmo kontaktu s tim ljudima i čuti njihov entuzijazam o našem interesu za povratak na posao.
There's one more thing I remember vividly from my own career break. And that was that I hardly kept up with the business news. My background is in finance, and I hardly kept up with any news when I was home caring for my four young children. So I was afraid I'd go into an interview and start talking about a company that didn't exist anymore. So I had to resubscribe to the Wall Street Journal and read it for a good six months cover to cover before I felt like I had a handle on what was going on in the business world again.
Postoji još jedna stvar koje se slikovito sjećam sa moje pauze u karijeri. A to je da sam se rijetko bila u doticaju sa poslovnim vijestima. Moja pozadina je u financijama, i rijetko sam držala korak s bilo kakvim vijestima kada sam se brinula kod kuće za svoje četvero male djece. Tako sam se bojala da ću otići na intervju i početi govoriti o tvrtki koja više ne postoji. Zato sam se morala ponovno pretplatiti na Wall Street Journal i čitati ga 6 mjeseci od korica do korica prije nego što sam osjetila da se mogu nositi sa onim što se događa u poslovnom svijetu ponovno.
I believe relaunchers are a gem of the workforce, and here's why. Think about our life stage: for those of us who took career breaks for childcare reasons, we have fewer or no maternity leaves. We did that already. We have fewer spousal or partner job relocations. We're in a more settled time of life. We have great work experience. We have a more mature perspective. We're not trying to find ourselves at an employer's expense. Plus we have an energy, an enthusiasm about returning to work precisely because we've been away from it for a while.
Vjerujem da su ponovni početnici dragulji radne snage, a evo i zašto. Razmislite o našoj životnoj fazi: za one od nas koji su uzeli pauzu u karijeri zbog brige o djeci, imamo manje ili nimalo porodiljnih. To smo već učinili. Imamo manje bračnih ili partnerskih preseljenja radi posla. Mi smo više u nastanjenom trenutku života. Imamo veliko radno iskustvo. Imamo zreliju perspektivu. Mi ne pokušavamo pronaći sebe na trošak poslodavca. Osim toga imamo energiju, i entuzijazam u svezi povratka na posao upravo zato što smo bili daleko od toga neko vrijeme.
On the flip side, I speak with employers, and here are two concerns that employers have about hiring relaunchers.
S druge strane, razgovaram s poslodavcima, i ovo su dva problema s kojima se poslodavci suočavaju o zapošljavanju ponovnih početnika.
The first one is, employers are worried that relaunchers are technologically obsolete. Now, I can tell you, having been technologically obsolete myself at one point, that it's a temporary condition. I had done my financial analysis so long ago that I used Lotus 1-2-3. I don't know if anyone can even remember back that far, but I had to relearn it on Excel. It actually wasn't that hard. A lot of the commands are the same. I found PowerPoint much more challenging, but now I use PowerPoint all the time. I tell relaunchers that employers expect them to come to the table with a working knowledge of basic office management software. And if they're not up to speed, then it's their responsibility to get there. And they do.
Prvi je, poslodavci su zabrinuti da su ponovni početnici tehnološki zastarijeli. Sada, mogu vam reći, nakon što sam bila tehnološki zastarijela u jednom trenutku, da je to privremeno stanje. Ja sam činila moje financijske analize tako davno da sam koristila Lotus 1-2-3. Ne znam da li se itko može sjetiti tako daleko unatrag, ali sam morala ponovo učiti na Excelu. To zapravo nije bilo tako teško. Puno naredbi je isto. Otkrila sam da je PowerPoint puno izazovniji, ali sada koristim PowerPoint cijelo vrijeme. Kažem ponovnim početnicima da poslodavci očekuju od njih da dođu do stola s praktičnim znanjem osnovnog softvera za upravljanje u uredu. I ako nisu u potpunosti informirani, onda je njihova odgovornost da budu. I oni to naprave.
The second area of concern that employers have about relaunchers is they're worried that relaunchers don't know what they want to do. I tell relaunchers that they need to do the hard work to figure out whether their interests and skills have changed or have not changed while they have been on career break. That's not the employer's job. It's the relauncher's responsibility to demonstrate to the employer where they can add the most value.
Drugo područje zabrinutosti poslodavca kod ponovnih početnika jest da ne znaju što ponovni početnici žele raditi. Kažem ponovnim početnicima da moraju marljivo raditi kako bi spoznali jesu li se njihovi interesi i vještine promijenili ili se nisu promijenili kada su bili na karijernoj pauzi. To nije posao poslodavca. Ponovni početnici imaju odgovornost dokazati poslodavcu gdje mogu najviše doprinijeti.
Back in 2010 I started noticing something. I had been tracking return to work programs since 2008, and in 2010, I started noticing the use of a short-term paid work opportunity, whether it was called an internship or not, but an internship-like experience, as a way for professionals to return to work. I saw Goldman Sachs and Sara Lee start corporate reentry internship programs. I saw a returning engineer, a nontraditional reentry candidate, apply for an entry-level internship program in the military, and then get a permanent job afterward. I saw two universities integrate internships into mid-career executive education programs.
2010. sam počela primjećivati nešto. Pratila sam programe povratka na posao od 2008. godine, i 2010. sam počela primjećivati pojavljivanje prilika za kratkoročan plaćeni posao, koji se ili nazivao praksa ili ne, ali iskustvo poput prakse, kao način za profesionalce da se vrate na posao. Vidjela sam kako su Goldman Sachs i Sara Lee počeli sa programima prakse za ponovni ulazak u korporacije. Vidjela sam inženjera povratnika, kandidata za ponovni ulazak. koji se prijavio na početnički program prakse u vojsci, i onda je dobio posao za stalno nakon toga. Vidjela sam kako dva sveučilišta integriraju prakse u programe obrazovanja za menadžere u sredini svoje karijere.
So I wrote a report about what I was seeing, and it became this article for Harvard Business Review called "The 40-Year-Old Intern." I have to thank the editors there for that title, and also for this artwork where you can see the 40-year-old intern in the midst of all the college interns. And then, courtesy of Fox Business News, they called the concept "The 50-Year-Old Intern."
Stoga sam napisala izvještaj o onome što sam vidjela, i postao je ovaj članak za Harvard Business Review nazvan, "40-godišnji pripravnik." Moram se zahvaliti urednicima na tom naslovu, i na ilustraciji u kojoj možete vidjeti 40-godišnjeg pripravnika usred studenata pripravnika. A onda, zahvaljujući Fox Business News, oni nazivaju koncept "50-godišnji pripravnik."
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
So five of the biggest financial services companies have reentry internship programs for returning finance professionals. And at this point, hundreds of people have participated. These internships are paid, and the people who move on to permanent roles are commanding competitive salaries. And now, seven of the biggest engineering companies are piloting reentry internship programs for returning engineers as part of an initiative with the Society of Women Engineers. Now, why are companies embracing the reentry internship? Because the internship allows the employer to base their hiring decision on an actual work sample instead of a series of interviews, and the employer does not have to make that permanent hiring decision until the internship period is over. This testing out period removes the perceived risk that some managers attach to hiring relaunchers, and they are attracting excellent candidates who are turning into great hires.
Dakle, pet najvećih tvrtki za financijske usluge imaju programe prakse ponovnog ulaska za financijske stručnjake. I do sada, stotine ljudi je sudjelovalo. Te prakse su plaćene, a ljudi koji nastave sa stalnim zaposlenjem, dobivaju vrlo kompetitivne plaće. A sada, sedam najvećih inženjerskih tvrtki provode pilot programe prakse za ponovni ulazak za inženjere povratnike u sklopu inicijative sa Društvom žena inženjera. Sad, zašto tvrtke prihvaćaju prakse za ponovni ulazak? Jer praksa dozvoljava poslodavcu da temelji svoju odluku zapošljavanja na stvarnom radnom uzorku umjesto na nizu intervjua, i poslodavac ne mora donijeti odluku o trajnom zapošljavanju sve dok praksa ne završi. Taj period testiranja uklanja prividni rizik koji neki menadžeri pridaju zapošljavanju ponovnih početnika, i privlače odlične kandidate koji se preobražavaju u odlične zaposlenike.
Think about how far we have come. Before this, most employers were not interested in engaging with relaunchers at all. But now, not only are programs being developed specifically with relaunchers in mind, but you can't even apply for these programs unless you have a gap on your résumé.
Razmislite koliko smo daleko dogurali. Prije toga, većina poslodavaca nije bila zainteresirana imati veze sa ponovnim početnicima. Ali sada, ne samo da se programi razvijaju sa ponovnim početnicima u fokusu, već se ne možete prijaviti za te programe ako nemate rupu u životopisu.
This is the mark of real change, of true institutional shift, because if we can solve this problem for relaunchers, we can solve it for other career transitioners too. In fact, an employer just told me that their veterans return to work program is based on their reentry internship program. And there's no reason why there can't be a retiree internship program. Different pool, same concept.
To je znak prave promjene, pravog institucionalnog pomaka, jer ako možemo riješiti ovaj problem za ponovne početnike, možemo to riješiti i za druge koji imaju tranziciju u karijeri. Naime, poslodavac mi je upravo rekao kako je povratak njihovih veterana u radni odnos baziran na programu prakse za ponovni ulazak u radnu snagu. I nema razloga zašto ne možemo imati program prakse za umirovljenike. Različite grupa, isti koncept.
So let me tell you what happened with Tracy Shapiro. Remember that she had to tell everyone she knew about her interest in returning to work. Well, one critical conversation with another parent in her community led to a job offer for Tracy, and it was an accounting job in a finance department. But it was a temp job. The company told her there was a possibility it could turn into something more, but no guarantees. This was in the fall of 2011. Tracy loved this company, and she loved the people and the office was less than 10 minutes from her house. So even though she had a second job offer at another company for a permanent full-time role, she decided to take her chances with this internship and hope for the best. Well, she ended up blowing away all of their expectations, and the company not only made her a permanent offer at the beginning of 2012, but they made it even more interesting and challenging, because they knew what Tracy could handle.
Dakle, dopustite mi da vam kažem što se dogodilo s Tracy Shapiro. Imajte na umu da je morala reći svima koje je znala o njezinom interesu za povratak na posao. Pa, jedan važan razgovor s drugim roditeljem u svojoj zajednici je doveo Tracy do ponude za posao, i to je posao računovođe u odjelu za financije. Ali bio je to privremeni posao. Tvrtka joj je rekla kako postoji mogućnost da se to pretvoriti u nešto više, ali bez ikakvog jamstva. To je bilo u jesen 2011. godine. Tracy je voljela tu tvrtku, i voljela je ljude a ured je bio manje od 10 minuta od kuće. Dakle, iako je imala ponudu za drugi posao u drugoj tvrtki za posao na puno radno vrijeme, odlučila je riskirati sa tom praksom i nadati se najboljemu. Pa, ona je prevršila sva svoja očekivanja, i tvrtka ne samo da joj je ponudila posao za stalno, početkom 2012. godine, već su ga oni učinili još zanimljivijim i izazovnijim, jer su znali što Tracy može savladati.
Fast forward to 2015, Tracy's been promoted. They've paid for her to get her MBA at night. She's even hired another relauncher to work for her. Tracy's temp job was a tryout, just like an internship, and it ended up being a win for both Tracy and her employer.
Premotajmo brzo unaprijed, u 2015., Tracy je promaknuta. Platili su joj da pohađa MBA noću. Ona je čak zaposlila još jednog ponovnog početnika da radi za nju. Tracy-n privremeni posao je bio proba, poput prakse, i završila je slavodobitno i za Tracy a i za njenog poslodavca.
Now, my goal is to bring the reentry internship concept to more and more employers. But in the meantime, if you are returning to work after a career break, don't hesitate to suggest an internship or an internship-like arrangement to an employer that does not have a formal reentry internship program. Be their first success story, and you can be the example for more relaunchers to come.
Sada, moj cilj je dovesti koncept prakse za ponovni ulazak sve većem broju poslodavaca. No, u međuvremenu, ako se vraćate na posao nakon prekida karijere, ne ustručavajte se predložiti praksu ili aranžman sličan praksi, poslodavcu koji nema formalni program prakse za ponovni ulazak. Budite njihova prva priča o uspjehu, i možete biti primjer za više ponovnih početnika koji će doći.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)