#1090 - Putting Mum on Your Resume [R]

Are you wanting to return to work but struggling to know what on Earth to write on your resume after years out of the workforce? Listen in for some ideas that will inspire and encourage mothers to confidently claim the skills, strengths, and unique value you possess and can offer the world! 

(R) This episode originally aired 29/4/24.

In this episode:

• Cost-of-living increase
• Returning to work
• Motherhood
• Being a mum is valid and valuable work, so I put it on my CV - ABC Everyday
• Writing a resume
• Parental responsibilities, skills, unique value
• Stay-at-home-mums (SAHM)
• Kylie's resume – Happy Families

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's the Happy Family's podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
wants answers now, Kylie.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
We keep on seeing it in the news.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Cost of living is biting more and more families finding
themselves in this situation where both parents need to work,
and a lot of mums in particular are kind of saying,
this is getting tricky.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
I don't all I've done for the last little while
has been a mum.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
How do I put mum on my resume and get
taken seriously? Just recently there was an article on the
ABC website where jess On talked about precisely this challenge.
She talked about how even becoming a mum, she wasn't
sure if she wanted to be a mom, wasn't sure
if motherhood was for her, but then once she had

(00:53):
that child, there was nowhere else, nowhere else that she
wanted to be. We've watched that happen with our own daughter.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Having six daughters of my own, I know that feeling
like you think that you're going to be happier outside
of the home, but once you've got children who pull
at your heart strings, all you want to do is
be with them.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah, and of course, how our eldest daughter has made
us grandparents. She's got her baby with her husband, and she.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Thought that she would spend a lot of time outside
of the home being the bread winner while her husband
stayed at home.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
That was their initial plan. Like literally, he was like, yeah,
I'll stay at home, I'll look after the baby. You
get She still would.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
I think he still would, but she know I was
not giving up that.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Role any one, no, no, no, nowhere else that I
wanted to be. Jess Ong said that, and I mean
there's a whole lot of research from the Straining Institute
of Family Studies that points in that direction, especially for
new mums. I love what jess said in her article.
She said, to not have to outsource care is of
course a privilege full of tender moments, but it's also isolating, relentless,

(01:54):
and completely undervalued. And this is what I want to
talk about in today's podcast, because there's more and more
mums are saying, oh gosh, I do need to get
out to work, But what do I put on my regume.
We've been there, We've done something about it. So here's
what Jessong said on an Instagram post, and she wrote
about this In this ABC article, she said, I explained
in my Instagram post that I'd updated my CV and
decided to harness all of my ruminations and include being

(02:17):
a mother, because why not. She says, I haven't disappeared,
but in the eyes of the system and the payroll,
I have yet. Skills and talents that I've cultivated over
the last thirty nine years are put to good use
and challenged every single day.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
But as far as the CV goes, it's almost like
you've stopped learning, you've stopped growing, you've stopped progressing, because
you don't have a piece of paper that suggests that
either you've gone to school and studied and furthered your
education or you've actually worked for high flying business owners.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
So a few years ago, you were having a conversation
with somebody in your favorite retail outlet hashtag not sponsored.
But you love adairs right like anything to do with
home furnishings.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
You know you're a frequence shopper when you're on first
name terms with the boss of the storm.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
And all of the sales assistants as well. So you're
in a dairs, you're having a chat and she says, hey,
we've got a position going you should apply, and you
came home and said, they've offered me a job, but
I have to apply.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
What am I supposed to put on my regume? I
haven't worked for over.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Twenty years, to which I replied, you haven't had paid
work for over twenty years. You've worked your tail off
for the last twenty years. We need to put that
you've been a mum in your resume, which is pretty
much what jess On from the ABC said. I wrote
down that I was a mum, and I put those
skills in and so you and I sat down and
wrote a resume that had all of your mum duties

(03:45):
as a reason why you should get this job in
retail at Adairs, and I thought, in today's conversation, because
so many people are going through it, we should chat
about what you put into that resume so that you
could score the job that you really really wanted to have.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
I love that we were able to have so much
fun with this because at the time I was just
looking at going as if they're going to be interested
in me.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
You've rolled your eyes and you said, no, we can't
say that I'm a mum, and I said.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
No, no, no, no, no, no, you are.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
We're going to detail everything that you do in your
work experience as a mum. So I said, you're a CEO,
you're an operations manager, you're a human resources manager. There's
so much going on, and then we started to list
everything that a CEO would do that you would do.
Have a listen to this list.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Overseeing all managerial aspects of life for six children who
require significant levels of oversight and direction. Let's be honest
with my husband, it's seven people.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
I can't believe that we put that in.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
Planning strategy and policy decisions for the team based on
values and mission, coupled with short and long term goals
via weekly management meetings and quarterly strategy sessions.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
So this is legit. You and I have a weekly
family meeting and we have quarterly strategy sessions as a
couple to make our families on track. So you were saying,
as a CEO, this is what I do. I have
these regular meetings and I oversee all of these aspects.
Carry on, though, because the CEO does more, and you
write down another handful of roles and responsibilities in that CEO.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Outline, delegating and overseeing all staff activities maintaining client and
employee relationships via an extremely complex calendar involving multiple moving parts.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
It's so brilliant.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Building alliances and partnerships with other organizations, in other.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Words, organizing playdates with other families.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Development of a culture that promotes performance, excellence and builds
team morale. Providing conflict resolution strategies wherever there is conflict
between tricky personalities on the team, and providing inspired leadership
for the team.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
So I'm reviewing this with you right now.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
I'm watching it as you read this, and I'm thinking,
we did this without chat GPT like this. This is
a really really creative, really fun resume. That's the CEO role,
but we also included OPS manager and human resources manager.
Why don't you go through the five duties of a

(06:13):
mum being an OPS manager.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Being responsible for intricate logistics operations from five am to
team PM and later for a large team, managing a
complex schedule for eight people, conducting analysis and improvement of
all organizational processes and workflows, working to improve quality, productivity
and efficiency in the team, and occupational health and safety

(06:38):
responsibilities for the entire team.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
I just love that one.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
And the human resources manager we put three things down
for that as.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Well, determining and establishing training procedures for the team, developing
team roles for each new member of the team based
on individual development, training and capability. Love this and capacity
building of team members.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
So I mean, we're having a lo of fun with this.
But as we sat down and worked through this, you
and I essentially said, all of these things that you
do with your kids, you do this with adults in
a team environment. So let's write it down in a nutshell.
Running a large family requires you, as a mum to

(07:19):
learn and master an extensive range of skills that are
really tremendously transferable to the workplace. The maturity and the wisdom,
the experience that you get from being a mum is
so valuable. And that's just a small taste of the
various things that we could write down that represent your capabilities.
So that's part one of what we jotted down, But

(07:39):
then we added some more.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
So over the years, I have done extensive volunteering within
our church organization, and I added to my resume CEO
of a children's organization, president of a women's organization, and
the president of a young women's organization. And within those
I outlined the different areas that I had worked and

(08:03):
trained in to help each of those organizations flourish.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
And the million dollar question, well it wasn't really a
million dollar question, but it was more of like a
twenty four dollars an hour question, did you get the job?

Speaker 2 (08:14):
When I sat down with my boss who wasn't my
boss at the time and we had the interview, she said,
can I just tell you that your resume was the
best resume I have ever read? She said. I sat
down with my partner and we just laughed our heads
as we read everything that you've achieved, and she said,
and the reality is, yes, you have. You are doing

(08:37):
all of those things on a daily basis.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
I want to go back to the statement that jess
On made. She said, being a stay at home mum
is full of wonderful, tender moments, but it's also isolating, relentless,
and completely undervalued.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
But when you look at what that.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
Unpaid work taught you and how you were able to
put that into a resume turn it into something of value,
you got that job because being a mum, being involved,
getting your systems right in the family, it teaches you
so much. And if I recall correctly, you were pretty
highly valued on the team, won't you like the number
one salesperson or something like that.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
I was for a while for a while.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
If nothing else, what it showed my future employer was
that I was able to look outside the box and
really get creative about how I might utilize my talents
and gifts. And I think that was ultimately what got
me the job.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
Yeah, so jess on to wrap things up, she said this.
I returned to part time paid work six months ago,
and since then I've started correcting people when they ask
how work is going, gently interjecting with paid work. You mean,
it's not to make anyone uncomfortable, but I need to
agitate the narrative because until I became a mother, I
never really gave any of this much thought either. I

(09:56):
never thought about the little value society places on the
biggest job of raising its future, about how the label
stay at home mum diminishes and simplifies the hours of
never ending and complex, unpaid work. Now we're going to
share your resume. We'll make a couple of edits and

(10:16):
alterations so that it's not too personal, but we're going
to share your resume at happy families dot com dot
Au and on our social media pages, because I reckon
there's going to be a lot of mums who are
going to look at this and say, hm, I can
take this, I can tweak this, and I can make
myself look like I'm presentable to an employer, because as
much as I want to stay at home, I need
to work at the moment because everything costs so much. Kylie,

(10:38):
I think it's inspiration. I think it's awesome what you did.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
The thing that really stood out to me as I
went through that process was when we started it, I
felt so unsure of myself and I felt like I
didn't have anything to offer. But as we went through
the process of pinpointing all of the various skills that
I had learned and developed over our twenty plus years

(11:03):
of parenting, it gave me the confidence to walk in
there and say I actually have something to offer. It
was powerful. It was really powerful.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Rowland.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
From Bridge Media.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
If you'd like more info to make your family happier,
or to get more information about specifically what we've talked
about today, visit Happyfamilies dot com dot Au or go
to our social media sites at all of the major platforms,