Starting a second career

Over 15 lakh qualified women in India go on a career break each year. Bouncing back to work, however, is not easy, as Sandhya Prasad can tell you. She returned to work after a gap of 10 years this April, joining a company in Bengaluru as a senior content writer.

When the 45-year-old decided to start her second innings, the job market had changed a great deal and the pandemic was raging. Paper resumes were passé; one needed a strong LinkedIn profile to pass the AI technology that HR teams deploy to filter candidates, she learned.

“I had to re-orient myself to new-age expectations. I enrolled in resume-improving workshops. I tried SEO-based resume writing. I took up upskilling courses.”

She floated her resume on every job portal there is and tracked down ex-managers to “give references”.

Applications were rejected due to her age and contractual roles were offered over full-time stints. “Would I be seen as a fresher or an experienced candidate? Would they base my CTC on my last salary? How would I work with people half my age? The fears were very real,” recounts Sandhya.

Gladly, she has resumed her career on the same profile that she quit to raise her children. But she has a message: “Consider career break if absolutely needed; take sabbatical instead.”

Causes for a career break

A 2019 report by Avtar, a talent strategy consulting firm, found that 35% of Indian women quit their careers midway because of maternity, 45% to navigate motherhood challenges, and around 16% to care for the elderly. Most of them feel guilty for putting their careers ahead of the needs of their families.

LinkedIn’s Opportunity Index 2021 report from March 2021 is worrisome: 71% of working women in India said family care comes in their way of career development.

The return is fraught with challenges as 23% of women don’t get family support and 36% suffer from a skill gap, it adds. Almost 69% fear lower salaries on re-entry, the Avtar report adds.

Depression can also put a pause on their ambitions, as it affects women twice more than men. Manveen Kaur from Mumbai knows this too well. The 33-year-old was diagnosed with postpartum depression in February after suffering a miscarriage.

“I would stay in bed for days. I would not brush or take shower. I could do no work. I shut down my startup of five years, which was already hit by the pandemic,” says Kaur. Her startup would organise DIY activities on weekends in Bengaluru and Mumbai.

She is out of therapy and back to work, this time, as an employee of an edutech startup. Her job hunt of two months was less than “fair”.

“I had to make up stories to prove I will be available for work as my male colleagues. ‘I am not into household work. My husband and I are into cats, not human babies. Career break was for no particular reason,’ I told them. I had to lie because, in my past stint, investors would say discriminatory things like we will fund your startup when your kids have grown up and you have time to focus on work,” she recounts.

Market dynamics

Covid has also dented the second careers as many women had to take on additional roles — teaching kids, caregiving for the elders, more household chores.

On the upside, in the period May 2020 to May 2021, more returnees were hired for middle and senior-level jobs than before, up by 25%, the data by JobsForHer, an online platform for women to search for jobs, reskill and network, suggests.

There are a few reasons for the upswing. Shreya Prakash, co-founder of Flexibees, which helps women find part-time and project-based jobs, says the rise of flex-work culture (remote jobs, part-time opportunities, hybrid models, gig work), especially post-pandemic, has made it conducive for women to resume careers.

As per their new study, 56% of the companies surveyed have either already made organisational policy changes to enable flexible working or are considering it.

Plus, the companies globally are in need of good talent that is experienced, driven and can do specific jobs (say, digital marketing in pharma). And many women embody that as “they want to prove themselves,” Shreya explains.

Neha Bagaria, the CEO and founder of JobsForHer, says, “We have seen women with 10+ years of career break getting the same salary as their peers in the workforce would.”

Now families are rallying around the women’s careers, realising it is important for them to be financially independent, and for families to have dual incomes to tide over tough times like the pandemic, she explains.

Likewise, women are determined to put in extra work to return. As per a JobsForHer survey, 60% of women opted to upskill this year against 23% in the last year’s study. LinkedIn findings are similar: 56% of Indian women are looking to learn new hard skills.

Most women are making a career comeback in metropolitan areas — Bengaluru, followed Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai. However, WFH opportunities are opening up in tier-2 cities like Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Lucknow.

Second career opportunities are growing for tech roles but also sales, digital marketing, content (strategist, writer), design (graphic and UI/UX), HR, investment banking, says Shreya.

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