6 Ways to Prevent Panic Despite Looming Layoffs
Have you noticed a sudden prevalence of Parenthood being listed as a job title in your contacts’ LinkedIn profiles?
Over the past week, there’s been a major push to support – and encourage – the inclusion of parenting as an actual job on the resume.
Likely due to the 2 million+ women who have stepped out of the workforce during COVID, media outlets like NBC are helping to popularize the concept of adding parenting to the resume.
Full disclaimer – I’ve been an advocate of this strategy for almost 15 years. But bear in mind: There’s a right way – and a wrong way – to incorporate a caregiving role into the resume.
Here’s what not to do:
Instead of adding a parenting role as a placeholder in the resume, make great use of the real estate by bringing out the most transferable and professional elements of the work.
When adding a parenting role into the resume, try to frame the experience as professionally as possible. Here are three tips:
1 – Include a job title. I like Chief Home Officer, Homeschool Instructor, Private Caregiver, and Academic Tutor.
2 – Build out action-driven result bullets that showcase what was accomplished. Don’t just list the tasks that were performed, but talk about the outcomes that were achieved as a result.
3 – Tie the content back to the actual field whenever possible. For instance, if the target role for the resume is a science-related job, emphasize any projects or activities related to science classes.
And lastly, I only include parenting on the resume when there’s an employment gap to account for.
Andrea Gerson, MSW, CPRW, is the founder of Resume Scripter and RS Works, an AI-powered career development platform that has helped more than 50,000 jobseekers communicate their professional value. She has trained over 3,500 career coaches through U.S. Department of Labor partnerships and spent eight consecutive years as the #1 resume writer in NYC on Yelp.
