writing a cv after having spent 24yrs bringing up children

[zoeburger]

Anyone any tips? I need to find work, am a young 54, decided to be a stay at home mum and bring up my 3 children, but, how do you write a cv when your
last 'paid job' was 25 yrs ago?! Have a degree etc and on plenty of PTA's in
the past and now do voluntary work but how does one string it together to
make a cv or does one just give up?!

If you are within commuting distance of London, an organisation called "Women Like Us" run workshops to enable women to return to work. Good luck!

Volunteer at a charity of some
Kind which can lead to paid work...

don't you dare give up!
google "competency based CVs" or "skills based CVs" they're the same thing.
Suggest headings of:

PROFILE.

KEY COMPETENCIES-with approx three sub headings which outline your key skills sets e.g.
-Customer service
-Administration
-Events organisation
with bullet points underneath each of these giving further info about these skills and the experience you have of them.

CAREER SUMMARY
most recent first include your voluntary work in this part. you can be explicit about positions being voluntary or choose not to. if you call it career summary you are not lying if you are not explicit. if you call it employment history it might
be seen as a bit of a fib.

QUALIFICATIONS AND TRAINING ( you might want to put this section before your career summary but that depends on your quals, your career and what you're going for and what you want to draw attention to or not)

spend some time really thinking about what your key skills set is. what colour is my parachute workbook (quite cheap second hand on line) has a really good activity for this. you basically think about times you have achieved great things in whatever context and dissect it to find out all the skills you were using)

good luck!!

Marking place, and wishing the OP loads of Luck!

I find my self in much the same position, after 14 y both DS are on the bus to secondary and I can contemplate some sort of Job.
With the possibility of not spending most of the wages on before or after school care.

DS???? The DDs wouldn't like being called DSs

I agree with ekidna's suggestion. My mum went back to paid work after a long time as a SAHM. Recruiters advised her to mention her level of competence with commonly used office software like MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint to make it clear that she would slip in easily to an office environment. HTH. Good luck.

The Competencies skills based CV is definitely the way to go. There is nothing wrong with writing organising a household as a skill; You need to list all the things you are good at and you can use your experience as a stay at home mum to illustrate this. Also, employers recognise voluntary roles as work and you can get references form these groups should you need 'employers' references. I had 8 years away from the office but did various voluntary roles in the meantime. I wrote a skills based competancy based on this and got a job within a month. An element of luck was involved but don't underetimate what you have done / learnt over your time as a household manager! I now work in the voluntary sector in paid work.
Volunteering is also a very good way to boost your experience, your CV and your confidence. To find out more in Buckinghamshire please visit www.communityimpactbucks.org.uk/pages/get-involved.html for general volunteering and them move onto the Expert Volunteer page if you would like to offer your business skills.
If you live outside that county visit the Volunteer England website to see what's available near you.