to wonder why it's so bad to be a working mother? (recruitment thread)

[wheresthepopcorn]

Ok, just wanted to put this out there. Does anyone else feel the pressure to hide the fact that you are a mum or newly married during the recruitment process? I have found that out of a big number of recruitment agents I worked for on a regular basis, only 1 would work for me once I had had my baby. (my clients were happy so this was not based on bad work feedback) Anyone have similar experiences with difficulty about being a new mum and looking for a job? Anyone wanting to get back into the workplace but struggling?

It would depend how old the poster is. It's fairly recently that maternity leave has been included as an employment benefit. I work with people who are 10 years older than me and they HAD to resign when they were pregnant (children are all mid 30's now), so yes, some women, still in the work place will have career gaps. Especially those in their early 50's onwards.

I have sympathy with the OP. I was once asked, aged 26, at an interview (2 men interviewing) if I intended to marry and have children. My answer was "would you ask a male applicant this questions?" They went a little bit "ooh" but actually admitted they wouldn´t. I got that job.
When I did eventually marry (over a decade later) I was working freelance and found that the moment I removed anything like marital status, the interest in my CV increased.
If I have any gaps to fill, that are more than one or two months, I just say I was undertaking a number of smaller contracts.
Now I am getting "too" old, so I just omit my date of birth.
It´s not right, though.

For the record, marital status and parenthood are entirely irellevant and should never be put on a job application, nor asked about during an application process. Never, ever, ever.

At the end of my degree (engineering) we had careers advice. I was told not to admit to having children or worse being a single mum because no engineering firm would want to know.

How do you explain a 9 month gap though? It reads as though I was unemployable during that time, which isn't great either.

If you are employed by the same employer when you return to work, why would you need to explain gaps as you are still employed by that firm even when on maternity leave. Or have I misunderstood this.

I think I am far too naive in certain areas of life. My friend who I work with got engaged at Christmas but wouldn't tell anyone as there was a restructure on the horizon and she was worried that she wouldn't get the job she wanted and would in effect be demoted.

She assumed (rightly or wrongly) that directors would assume she would be going off on mat leave in the next 2yrs.

Anyway she got the new post and now is getting v strange looks when she announced to those not in the know that she is getting married in 6 weeks. I was really taken aback that people still think like that. I work in the public sector where you would think it was a bit more right on.

There again the fault could lay with my friend and she was just being totally paranoid.

What do SAHMs do about career gaps when they go back to work? I left my job almost a year ago to stay home with the kids, but want to get back into work once Smallest is in school. By then I will have a 4 year gap on my CV - how should I explain that? I'm fretting now after reading this thread :(

It's not a problem if you're a permanent employee of a company.

It is a problem if you're self employed/ contractor/ freelancer/ agency staff.

drcoconut I am an engineer as well, I was never formally advised but I have always kept my mouth shut re children. In job interviews never alluded to being a mother, and kept schtum about it once in the job. Usually there 3-6 months before I said I was a mother.

I no longer work in engineering - so not so cloak and dagger any more.

I don't think I have every been discriminated against because I am of childbearing age, though, I have got most jobs I have applied for.

Loads of recruitment consultants are complete morons though - if you get a good one (and there some fabulous professionals out there) keep their contact details. I have used the same recruiter for nearly 8 years (4 jobs).

Christ I have never thought that about people getting married in relation to it affecting their promotion prospects.

Kenleeee- try "project manager for a small family run business."

I have been with the same agency for years - to be fair they are not recoiling in horror at my maternity leaves - I'm just worried that whoever they send my CV to will be discriminatory :(

I have kept my maiden name for work for exactly that reason Getorf.

Blimey.

When I got engaged a few years back I never told anyone anyway.

Never got married and am unlikely to now, so will not be an issue thankfully.

I feel incredibly naive for not having thought of that. It's like 1950.

I did at my last job thought where I went on a manager's training course to deal with HR issues and recruitment - the accounts director (female) said that when she interviewed women for roles she always asked what childcare arrangments they had in place, how robust they were, what the fallback arrangement was etc. Never asked the men. We were all a bit taken aback by her stupidity.

There's surely no need to mention that you're 'newly married' in the recruitment process - how would that even come up in conversation anyway ?

Being a parent only needs to be mentioned if it's relevant, i.e. if you're asking for hours to fit around childcare committments.

Are you sure you're being treated differently simply because you're a mother? Has anything else changed - i.e. you've had a career break so less recent experience? You've changed the hours or the amount of work you're prepared to commit to?

I'm not sure why a very small company would keep on someone who announced they were pregnant the day they started in the knowledge that would cause a potential disaster event for their business. You don't have employment rights for the first year (2?) and you're in probation anyway. It would be ridiculous to risk your business going under for someone else

Serenity, pregnancy is exempt from the 2-year qualifying period. It doesn't matter if a new employee has been employed for one day, one week, one year - if an employer dismisses her because of her pregnancy, the dismissal is automatically unfair.

GetOrf - that's dreadful - did she assume that the man would never have to take a day off if the childcare arrangements fell through?

She never actually thought it through, I don't think. She was a bit thick - there were about 12 of us talking about crucial interview questions and she said that about making sure childcare was robust. She looked smugly round us all as she assumed that this was a wonderfully shrewd question to ask , worryingly hald the people round the table agreed with her, and the rest of us just gaped. Someone asked if she asked the men the same question and she said no as 'I don't know any man who arranges childcare'.

This was a senior manager in 2011 in a large blue chip multinational american owned company.

Clearly you wouldn't tell the person they were being let go for being pregnant! Paying the months notice period or even potential litigation may well still be cheaper than the maternity.

Serenity, I think being sued for sex discrimination would cost you a lot more than covering ante-natal appointments would!

It's 18 months since I ended my second maternity leave, so I do wonder what I should be putting on my CV so they don't think that I am just unemployed at home twiddling my thumbs- what is worse, being perceived as a benefits scrounge" or a SAHM?!

I have applied for jobs while pregnant; I was only just pregnant and had no guarantee the pregnancy would continue.

It would never occur to me that the fact I am not married would make potential employers smile upon me

More fool the small businesses who are restricting their employment pool by not employing women of child-bearing age. If your business is so precarious financially that you can't handle someone going for occasional ante-natal appointments or plan for their maternity leave then you are going to be totally screwed when someone has some other kind of accident or illness, or quits unexpectedly!

I've been a recruiter, and I wouldn't dream of asking these questions - in fact when recruiting for positions that require relocation it's actually been tricky figuring out what someone would want to know about the location because I don't want to ask and give the potential employee the impression that it matters.

When applying for jobs it wouldn't occur to me to tell them what my current impregnation status, or future plans are (although one employer knew, and didn't care) - and any company that did want to know (with the exception of knowing for relocation/package purposes) I know that I wouldn't want to work for.

Being sued for sex discrimination wouldn't cost that much- it's not an unusual occuranance and IMO IF someone were to sue you (which is not a given) they would get less than their replacements wages. You weigh up the risks and make a decision, you don't have to be so terrified of being sued you risk your business going bust.

Obviously some people are so valuable it's worth waiting for then to return anyway- and I agree that companies who can't afford that sort of cost probably aren't very financially viable, but was referring to the 1 day example above.