Blog Posts by Back on the Career Track

by Guest Blogger Jan Devereux

I never imagined I would fall in love with a TV series about a high school football team in Texas. Each winter when college bowl season rolls around, my family and friends know to expect another of my rants about how semi-professional sports have no place in our educational system. (A reprise follows during March Madness.) I resisted watching Friday Night Lights until last summer, when a friend persuaded me to give it a chance. My husband and I watched the pilot episode on Netflix and promptly went on an FNL bender, running though the first four seasons in just a few weeks. Last Christmas I gave him a "Riggins 33" jersey as a joking reference to our mutual crush on FNL heartthrob Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch). When the fifth and final season ended, we both went into a Friday night funk.

FNL co-stars Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton are again up for Emmy awards in their roles as Coach Eric Taylor and his wife Tami. The series ended on a high note

Guest Blog by Whitney Johnson

Whitney Johnson dared to dream when she began her Wall Street career as a secretary. With courage and persistence, by her forties she had risen to become an Institutional Investor-ranked sell-side analyst. Whitney is the president and co-founder of the investment firm Rose Park Advisors, a regular contributor for the Harvard Business Review blogs, and the author of Dare to Dream. Having invested in her own dreams, Whitney is passionate about encouraging others to take stock in theirs.

You know her.

You may even be her.

She has several young children in tow. She's actively involved in the school, church and community. Without this go-to woman, this linchpin, many of our communities would come undone.

Ironic then, that as her children begin to grow up, few want to hire her.

Which is why I immediately became enthralled by the work of Carol Fishman Cohen (with whom I serendipitously connected via social media) and Vivian Steir Rabin,

Guest Blog by Kristin Maschka

Kristin Maschka is the past president and national spokesperson for Mothers & More. She has her own management consulting practice and is the author of THIS IS NOT HOW I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE: Remodeling Motherhood to Get the Lives We Want Today. You can read more of Kristin's articles on her blog.

I noticed that a number of people find my blog because they are searching for information on dealing with a gap in their resume due to time out of the workforce to care for family. They land on this post, How to Explain Gap in Resume: Caring for Family or…Coma?, which tells the story of one mother who was advised that she'd be better off telling a prospective employer that she'd been "in a coma" than saying she'd been caring for family and "doing nothing."

I knew THAT wasn't good advice. While I give some tips in my original post, I decided it was time to go to the experts for more advice for my readers. So I reached out to my friend Carol Fishman Cohen at iRelaunch. iRelaunch offers a range of resources and services for women re-entering the workforce. All of which are informed by Carol and her co-founder Vivian's constant interaction with employers and recruiters, plus their own experience as hiring managers and recruiters.

Carol packed our conversation with advice worth its weight in gold, for mothers and for anyone with a gap in their resume.

Kristin: Carol, multiple studies show that mothers in particular face automatic bias that has a direct impact on pay and promotions. Being a woman and having a gap in your resume often triggers that bias. So what's the most important resume advice for someone who has a gap in her resume?

By guest blogger Ken Mattsson

Ken Mattsson attended our recent Boston iRelaunch Return to Work Conference at Bentley University. Ken is a Career & Professional Development Consultant with Resonare Consulting and has over 20 years experience working with individuals and groups on their professional development needs. This guest blog is reposted from Ken's blog The Spirit Work Connection.

Last Thursday, I participated in the iRelaunch Conference at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts. The focus of this day was on people who have had a noticeable gap in their employment history and are now trying to "relaunch" into the workforce. The large majority of the participants seemed to be professional women who had taken time to raise their children, but there were others who had family and personal medical issues, as well as other issues. From the initial introduction, I learned that the largest constituency in the room was lawyers but there were professionals of all

By Guest Blogger LeeAnn Dance of Back in Force

Leslie Simpson missed working. The Massachusetts mother of two boys had quit her job at a small design firm after her first was born and had been home for two years when she first felt the yearning. By year four, the yearning had morphed.

"I was becoming really anxious and really depressed," Simpson says. "I loved being a mother, but it was that isolation."

Her tipping point was an afternoon husband-griping session with a group of fellow stay-at-home moms.

"I felt like I was in a chicken coop," the 49-year-old Simpson recalls. "I said something about when I go back to work, and one of the women looked at me and said, 'Go back to work? Well then, why did you have children?'"

Simpson felt more isolated than ever. And she developed a habit.

"I would sit in the parking lot and read Working Mother," Simpson says. "It became my dirty little magazine."

The primary motivator for returning to work, according to a 2005 study

Andrea Coutu came to our attention when we were researching best practices on setting consulting fees. Her advice and products featured on her website Consultant Journal are excellent. We got in touch with her and she agreed to write a guest blog with more thoughts on the topic. Thank you Andrea!

This is a guest blog by Andréa Coutu on her website Consultant Journal.

Money - it can pose a huge roadblock as you relaunch your career. If you're new to freelancing and consulting, you may feel like coming up with a fee is, well, a bit daunting. Mix in a change in careers, a career break or gender factors, and it can get more complicated. Fortunately, there are clear models and recommendations that can help you navigate this new path.

Gender affects the mix

A 2006 Harvard Business School study, When Gender Changes the Negotiation, found that women perform on par with men when negotiating salaries in low ambiguity industries. Low ambiguity industries are those where salary

This is a guest blog, originally posted by Miriam Salpeter on her website Keppie Careers.

Last week, I was a guest at an iRelaunch Return-to-Work Conference in Atlanta. It is always a pleasure to have a chance to hear from recruiters, and, in this case, also from a number of women who returned to work after taking some time off. Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir Rabin, the co-founders of iRelaunch and authors of Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work, put together several terrific panels and seminars for those attending.

The employer panel included:

Elizabeth Russel, Director of Change Leadership - Emerson Human Capital

Kathy Davis, Recruiting Manager - Accenture

Michelle Wilkinson, Leadership Recruiting Manager - Wellpoint Inc.

The panelist share a number of good tips for job seekers…

Ms. Russel commented on how important it is to demonstrate your ability to manage projects, an across-the-board skill to demonstrate

Susan Kim, Co-founder and Creative Director of Mojo40, guests blogs in a repost from her site, "Mojo 40", a blog that tells its audience how to get their career mojo back after 40. We think this is one of the best explanations of how to set up on Linked In.

You must be sick of people telling you that you've got to get a LinkedIn profile. Especially when you have clearly explained to them that you are busy, busy, BUSY. You'll get to it when you have time. Sheesh. But we both know the real reason you haven't set it up yet: You're afraid you're not going to know how. Afraid something might go wrong. Afraid you'll look like an idiot.

So what? Everyone thinks those exact thoughts about everything they do every single day. So put aside your fears and let's get started.

How to set up a LinkedIn account with no stress or calls to your tech friends

1. Decide what email address you are going to use. Nothing cutesy, nothing that sounds like it's a family address, not a crazy