Career breaks can be tricky to nail. There are two main reasons why professionals take a break in their career. One, a forced job break due to sudden, inevitable situations on the personal front. Two, a planned break either to pursue higher education or parenthood. Whatever the reason, career breaks offer little time for planning the re-entry into professional life. This tends to leave people wanting to come back into corporate life with a sense of low self-esteem and disorientation.
While it is natural to feel overwhelmed by the sea change that has taken place in your industry and in the job market while you were away, you also need to acknowledge that your decision to stay unemployed was legitimate—that your career break was necessary for you to fulfill your personal or familial obligations. It is important that you internalize this truth so that you can sell it with conviction to a prospective employer. After all, opportunities are always about convincing, aren’t they?
(Uma Srinivasan, President, Search & Selection, Randstad India)