Returning to work after taking time out — whether for a career break, redundancy, or time spent caring for your family — can feel like a huge step. It’s completely normal to wonder where to even begin.
We spoke with sisters Ciara and Aoife Garvan of WorkJuggle.com in a live video talk on our Instagram account, and they shared some brilliant, practical insights on getting back into the workforce with confidence. If you missed it, here are some of the best tips from the conversation.
WorkJuggle’s mission is to connect highly skilled professionals with family-friendly flexible, contract and remote work, and to help organisations become more inclusive through consulting and training. Ciara Garvan founded WorkJuggle in 2016, after one too many hours stuck in traffic racing home to pick up her kids after work.
Her goal was to put candidates back in the driving seat of their own careers. Every role listed on WorkJuggle has some element of flexibility — whether that’s part-time hours, remote work, contract work, or a mix of all three. The company is strongly focused on keeping working parents in the workforce, which is why it partners with employers who offer genuinely family-friendly roles.
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Returning to Work: Where to Start?
Returning to the workforce after an extended time away can be a daunting prospect. As Ciara and Aoife put it, “you can feel very removed. It sort of feels like everybody’s gotten it all sorted and everybody you’ve ever worked with is now promoted, and you’re the only person who hasn’t a clue what it is you’re doing.”
Rest assured, this is a very common feeling. The good news is there are practical steps you can take to rebuild your confidence and find your footing again. Here are the starting points Aoife and Ciara recommend.
Assess Your Career Values
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When you’re contemplating a move back into the workforce, a great place to start is by stepping back and thinking about what you actually want from a career. As Ciara puts it:
“Really think about what is it you’re trying to do and what is important to you. Remember that these factors change. So what was important to you when you were 18 or 22 and first leaving school or college is generally completely different to what will be important to you now. What’s important to you when you’re older, coming into your 30s, you have children or you have responsibilities — your priorities shift. And that’s normal and okay.”
You can request a career value assessment worksheet from WorkJuggle by contacting them directly here.
Don’t Discount Your Time Out of the Workforce as Wasted
Ciara and Aoife note that in the back-to-work workshops they’ve run, many participants have told them they took far longer away from work than they had originally intended, which often knocked their confidence.
Alongside assessing your future career goals, Ciara and Aoife recommend reflecting on your time away in a positive light:
“Look at that time that you’ve spent away from the workplace, reframe the narrative in your mind of how you spent your time. Consider what you have been doing, what skills you have developed over your time away, and how you can transfer them into a workplace setting. This exercise is very good for building confidence and helping you reframe how you have been spending the time out of the traditional workplace.”
Give Yourself the Time You Need to Job Hunt
It’s easy to forget that job hunting can almost feel like a full-time job in itself. Organisation and consistency are key:
“Where people can fall down is they don’t start with a plan in mind and they’ll just give the search a couple of hours every few weeks. But you really need to try and build a bit of momentum, be checking your career values list often, be tracking your applications and so on. It takes a level of dedication.”
CVs Are Important, But So Is Your LinkedIn Profile
If you’ve been out of work for a few years, you may not realise just how important a well-kept LinkedIn profile is to a professional job search. Aoife and Ciara recommend keeping both your CV and your LinkedIn profile as up to date as possible during — and after — your job search.
If CV or LinkedIn writing isn’t your strong suit (no judgement here!), there are professionals who can help. Self-promotion is genuinely difficult for a lot of people, so if writing about yourself is what’s holding you back, it’s worth seeking that support out.
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More Returning to Work Tips
The tips above are just a snapshot of the guidance Ciara and Aoife shared during their talk. For more in-depth CV writing tips and further advice, you can watch the full conversation via this link.
You can find out more about Ciara, Aoife and WorkJuggle on their website. The company also runs several work training workshops, including a Female Leaders Programme and Re-Entry Workshops for women returning to work.
You may also enjoy: Join Us for Lives with Parent Experts on Instagram
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Frequently Asked Questions
How do I start planning my return to work after time out?
Start by getting clear on your career values — what matters to you now, rather than what mattered earlier in your career. From there, build a simple plan for your job search so you can track applications and keep momentum going, rather than searching in short, scattered bursts.
Will my time away from work count against me?
Not if you reframe it well. Think through the skills you built during your time out — organisation, negotiation, project management, resilience — and practise translating them into workplace language for your CV, LinkedIn profile and interviews.
Do I really need to update my LinkedIn profile if I have a good CV?
Yes. Employers and recruiters increasingly search LinkedIn as well as reviewing CVs, so keeping both current gives you the best chance of being found and considered.
Is it normal to feel anxious about returning to work?
Completely. Feeling removed or out of step after time away is one of the most common experiences people describe when returning to work, and it tends to ease as you rebuild routine and confidence.
Related Articles
- 6 Easy Work-Life Balance Hacks
- Tips from Parents on Tackling the Stress of Working and Parenting
- Join Us for Lives with Parent Experts on Instagram
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