Six years ago I left my decent career in IT to become a SAHM after taking voluntary redundancy from a company that later effectively vanished as I knew it would. Now with most of the children at school and the youngest no longer a baby, I'm thinking about getting back to work after seeing a job locally doing similar work in an area I find really interesting, which would be ideal.
This means dusting off the CV, which appears to have last been updated in 2007 (interestingly in the middle of my last job - I think it was because I was changing departments and they wanted a recent CV)
Two immediate issues spring to mind:
- The obvious DC issue. I have four of them. Childcare won't be an issue as I am so lucky to have breakfast/after school clubs plus nursery can take DC4 full time, plus DH can work from home easily if required. I'm definitely not having any more (DH has the snip plus I'm pushing 40) but how to get that information across, assuming I even got an interview?
I don't want to work for a company that dismisses a mother with a career break out of hand so I'm going to say on my CV "family responsibilities" as the reason for my career break plus the fact I am now in a position to "resume my previous role" and leave it at that. Is this the best thing to do? I'm a bit worried because I have four and they'll probably ask me how many in the interview, and then rule me out because four children means four times the commitment.. it's not like having one or two DC after all.
- This one is a bit more worrying. Looking at my CV, I apparently did lots of stuff that all sound impressive. That's great! Except it was a long time ago, feels like another lifetime ago and happened to somebody else, as in many cases I can't remember a single thing about some of the stuff I have listed. It's actually a huge blank, I had no idea I did half of it. I wasn't lying on that CV as if anything I do the usual imposter syndrome under-selling thing, but how the heck am I going to talk about stuff I don't even remember doing in an interview? I'm a hopeless liar and bullshitter even when I'm confident (which is soooo not right now!) so I'm not even going to be able to try and blag it. What can I do?
Any other advice or resources over returning to work in IT in particular very welcome! Thank you!!