Moms For Hire

8 Steps to Kickstart Your Next Career

Deborah Jelin Newmyer

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781510705708
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Women in Business
• Index: Business

Moms For Hire is a stylish, eight-step guidebook for moms who want to re-enter the workforce and amp up their professional mojo.Whether you downsized your bustling career to raise your children, or you chose the full-time job of being a stay-at-home mom, you now feel ready to get back in the work game, but re-entry can be intimidating. Using creative exercises, advice, and anecdotes from well-known working moms, this book will become a guide to creating your own successful re-entry strategy.From simply giving voice to your desire to work, to learning how to negotiate the best deal once you land the dream job, Moms For Hire guides you through each step of the process in a way that keeps you motivated and inspired.The simple promise is this: if you commit one hour a day to this book, you can find rewarding work. The search for fulfilling employment requires plenty of will, stamina, and support; let Moms For Hire be your devoted partner as you step into this new, life-changing adventure.

PART I

BECOME AN ATTRACTIVE JOB CANDIDATE

Step One

ACTIVATE YOUR MOM FOR HIRE SWITCH

“You can, you should, and, if you are brave enough to start, you will.”

—Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Congratulations! You’re about to begin the bold journey of finding rewarding work. For any number of reasons, you stepped outside the working gates and are now ready to reenter. Let’s start TODAY.

All transformational triumphs––losing weight, finding a mate, learning a language, becoming sober, buying a home, bringing home a child––are achieved in incremental, daily steps. Moms for Hire has divided the steps of ramping back into the workforce into hour-long segments so you can make real change and actualize your goals without having to put your life on hold. For some, these segments might take less than sixty minutes. Great! Others might really get into the exercise and keep at it for longer. Also great! As with any task, your focus and motivation can vary. Just stick with it and keep at the process of getting hired. Dig in, stay honest, and follow the course.

All of us think about how our lives might have taken other paths and that’s okay to speak those secrets, and maybe even necessary. Within these pages, I encourage you to express your job fantasies and job regrets. These exercises will help you use both to find your own true calling.

For me, a single mother of four essentially thriving kids, my little secret is: Sure, I absolutely love being a mother. I am grateful. And I feel that motherhood is an amazing accomplishment. Still, for me, being a mom isn’t enough, and I want more!

There is always a road not yet taken. Today’s the day to explore inward and bravely fantasize about what a “win” might look like.

Your desire to reboot a work plan may start with an ache for a professional compliment, or a dream of a shingle with your name on it. Maybe you keep catching yourself staring with envy at another mom’s Prada work shoes, or you have an absolute conviction that your investment ideas are better than your husband’s. It could be an empty moment on a Tuesday morning after drop-off when you realize all you have to do until pick-up is make the beds and fight the crab grass, or that liberating realization that your teenager doesn’t need you anymore to drive him to the mall or check his homework. Or all of it. You are ready.

Maybe you know that your household would be better off with a second paycheck, or one is sorely needed. Perhaps you remember that you once had a professional life and know you have more to contribute outside of what you do for your family. Certainly, the scenic route has given you some gratifying perks and probably your off-ramped time was family-necessary, but you may be feeling that parenting is not the only thing you want or need to do. In any event, it’s time to plan for a career reentry when your kids are launched, or even long before then.

Pick a Single Hour Every Day: the job of finding a job

Consider today to be the first day of a new job––the job of finding a job. Commit to one hour per day, five days a week, of inviting these exercises into your life. Commit to yourself as you would commit to a boss. Commit to yourself as you would expect an employee to commit to you, if you were the boss. The trick is to commit. Turn off your phone. Don’t you dare fold another laundered t-shirt. Ban social texting and emailing. Shut out your busy world and distractions, and focus on your transformation.

It’s only an hour a day, but for those who have been away from the punch-clock and a boss, scheduling this single hour daily can be challenging. Set your alarm clock for one hour earlier, switch from homemade marinara sauce to Prego, or give away a few carpool runs. Find and protect that single hour in every workday and commit to changing your life. Consistency is key to forming any new habit; protect your sacred Mom for Hire hour as you launch into the eight steps of this book. Once you have strictly calendared your daily hour, grab a pen, write the date at the top of the page, and you’re off !

This step will help suss out how you spend your day when the kids are in school. You’ll take a look at your fears and see that they may not be so bad after all. Determine where your strengths lie and declare your Next Chapter status to family and friends.

Hour Goals

Hour One:	Claim your daily hour and log your time.
Hour Two:	Reveal your fears.
Hour Three:	Evaluate your “launch-ability.”
Hour Four:	Visualize your ideal job.
Hour Five:	Reveal your transferrable skills and announce your job hunt.

“Think Outside the Mom.”

—Jamie Cole

Keep a Quick Time Log: every day for five days

When you are not punching an office time clock, your unmonitored hours can somehow float away. Let’s calculate how you spend your day, hour by hour. It’s important to track what you do every hour so you can see if time is working for you. Scheduling and budgeting your time is a much harder task when you’re not expected to be at an office for a consistent and particular time.

On the following page, you’ll find a handy Log Sheet that breaks the week into days and hours. Starting today and every day this week, pay attention to how your hours elapse. If you’ve ever joined Weight Watchers, you know they suggest accounting for every calorie so you can gauge what and when you ate. If you are (or were) a lawyer or accountant, you logged your billable hours in 15-minute increments. So pay attention to your time for this first week, preferably as the day progresses, but at least before you go to bed. It will prove immensely valuable, and it only takes a total of five minutes. Soon, this log will become an essential tool as you scan through your calendar for empty or extra workable hours that you could use toward your next chapter.

Hour Log, week of: ____________

Extra Hour Log pages available for download on DeborahJelinNewmyer.com. Follow the MomForHire link to Bonus Take Aways/Worksheets.

Hour One

Time, Time, Time.

“Where did my day go?” Let’s measure the baseline of your most ordinary Mom Day. When you are the sergeant for other people’s busy schedules, there may be no such thing as a regular day. Yet, if you want to swing back into the working world, you have to uncover and compensate for your own time, too. Let’s start with a look at your day-in-the-life with this first Reach-In exercise.

It’s time to get granular about time. Have a look at your weekday schedule in terms of buckets: morning hours, school hours, afterschool hours, and evenings. It’s time to figure out what you are really doing with your time, so complete the exercise on the next page to get an idea of what your buckets of daily time look like.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• The Intro
• Part I: Become an Attractive Job Candidate
• Part II: You are Ready: Now Go Out and Win That Job
• Conclusion: Nice Work . . . the World Needs You!
• Web and App Assists
• Acknowledgments