maternity leave on the CV

[nonanny]

Hi

Am wondering if anyone has any tips re. how to present maternity leave on a CV/application? I have had 3 leaves in last 7 years and before that a period of sick leave for miscarriage. I'm at work now but my career has been interrupted by the leaves. Should I set them out in a separate section near the end, or put 'career break' for when there are gaps in my employment history. All my leaves were when I was with the same employer. I don't have a problem putting them down but want to highlight them positively.However I also don;t want to go down the road of 'pretending' that mat leave is a time for doing anything work-related/reflecting as I ahev been so busy with my family in those periods they have been genuine breaks from work.

Any ideas?

I don't think that you would need to put maternity leave on a cv, unless you actually left the company. You are still considered to be employed while on maternity leave. Similarly with sick leave, you were still employed.

If you think that the sick leave might come up when they chase up references you could address it at that stage. If it was more than 7 years ago though I doubt anyone will be that bothered about it.

If they are all with the same employer why do you need to put them down? I'm not suggesting they are anything you should hide, but if you had continuous employment with the same company there is no career break.

I would expect to see something if you'd left a job following maternity leave and spent 2 years being a SAHM, for example, but I wouldn't expect to see maternity leaves listed at all tbh, just details of your employment with this company, dates, jobs, responsibilities etc.

In my situation, 2 mat leaves, both in same job (one which I've done since 1997) - I wouldn't think to detail them in a CV when looking for another job in the future. It is continuous employment over that time. I suppose it depends how much you would need to detail achievements during that period eg profits etc. I work in a Uni doing admin stuff so it wouldn't really apply.
Just realised that is probably really unhelpful? All depends on the type of job you currently do and would be applying for, I guess?

Really helpful, thanks. As its a job where research activity will be being looked at in the past as a marker for the future there might need to be some explanation. When I was entered in the last universities RAE they were asked to put down circumstances affecting the number of publications achieved so I went in there with 2 instead of 4 publications but 3 mat leaves. Thats why I'm thinking of some kind of statement, but I agree its irrelevant, and I can simply put down what the balance of duties were in certain roles. Its useful to be reminded that I was still employed, since on my last mat leave when I went for an internal vacancy my boss said "I suppose you are technically still employed with us" which really wound me up (he had someone else in mind for that vacancy). And on my last mat leave they took away a senior responsibility and I never got it back...had to fight for another one and there was a gap before I got it.

Oo the good old RAE, my favourite I'm only involved in the student numbers for this, but getting our departmental figures to reconcile with University ones is a barrel of laughs I can tell ya! I can see why you might want to mention that you were deliberately not research active for particular periods rather than it look like you just didnt' get published!