Career Break for Women – Boon or Bane?

My Career in Software Testing began in 2002 & it was going along a steady path, when unexpectedly, I encountered an U-Turn in 2007 …Little did I know that this U-turn, would be a major setback for me to get back onto the steady road that I was travelling all along.

I had a take a break owing to some commitments in my personal life. First it was the travel to US for a long term and followed by being blessed with a baby. 2 years passed by. Now I felt it would be the right time to get back to working once again. I started with my job hunt and made sure that no stone was left unturned to search the job. As bad luck would have it, within a month after starting to look out for the job, there was recession which had hit major business areas very badly and IT was one of them. Layoffs started to happen very often in many companies. In this situation, my prospects of getting an interview call became very bleak and as the recession progressed, the thin line of hope that I had too faded away soon.

Still I didn’t quit, and tried calling up many job consultants in the city with the strong hope that they would be of assistance in helping me get a job. One roadblock that I had to face here was that the consultants would always focus on the break that I had, and not on my professional experience and skill set. And without seeking an explanation for the break, they would respond saying – “No one will accept candidates who have a break of more than a year”. I asked them – “For most married women, taking a break becomes inevitable at some point in their life, and they take break for valid reasons, so why take it as a negative thing?” Well, they never accepted it.

A career break is always a flip side to a steady career. Being very much aware of this, I feared its impact on my career growth and most importantly with respect to getting a job again. It’s quite evident that a career break is always viewed as a negative pointer for a professional, but I wonder why it is not given a due consideration, when the reason behind the break is a genuine one. Does this mean that the work life takes priority and precedence over family & personal life? Or is it that it’s blindly believed that a woman can’t perform her best after she returns from her break? Should I call this a stigma in the working world? Whatever it is, it sure did a take a toll on me when I started my job hunt.

I got in touch with few of my friends and ex-colleagues to see if they could be of help. Most of them were of the opinion, that since it was recession time, it would be better that I wait for the market to pick up, after which it was sure that I would get interview calls. Some others felt that my break was the biggest drawback that resulted in my resume not getting shortlisted for the interviews. They even suggested that I need to add in fake experience to cover up that break time.

I am a firm believer that there is no shortcut to success and also believe that anything that is gained by wrong means never last & hence was completely against the idea of faking. I was prepared to wait longer or even settle down for a smaller pay or a smaller company but never wanted to fake. And more so I felt that I had a genuine reason to opt for a career break, so why should I fear to let know the interviewer about the same?

Inspite of all this, the main concern that was worrying me a lot was having a low confidence level due to all this.Though I was constantly reading and updating myself, I still lacked confidence since I was out of real time work. Didn’t really have an idea as to what new technologies were there in the testing field and how the testing field had changed during these years. Since the testing field was growing and progressing rapidly, I knew that there was a different scenario now compared to what it was 3 years back.

I just didn’t want to settle down with mediocrity. I started to think, of ways to make my break period a more productive one in terms of learning more and acquiring new skills in testing. I came across utest and weekendtesting.com. This is was a perfect platform for me to pitch in and learn in my free time. I became an active participant on utest.com and weekendtesting.com. Weekend Testing was awesome because there were testing sessions conducted every weekend and I got to learn, practice and interact with other testers. I learned a lot. I started to gain more and more confidence so much so that, actively participating in these sessions, never made me feel that I was out of real time work. During this time, I got a chance to know  some other eminent testers who were instrumental in my learning and were always there to clarify all my queries. I could always count on them. I also enrolled myself in the testing group of my city and the members of the group too were very helpful. What more can one ask for? I take this opportunity to sincerely thank all my fellow tester friends who helped me gear up.

In the mean time, the market started to gain momentum and slowly I started getting interview calls. Of course, the first question would be “Why a break?” I boldly confronted the reason for my break and much to my surprise, it was accepted and considered.  The best part was that I faced my interviews with a lot of confidence and was able to fare well in them. All this wouldn’t have been possible, had I not taken measures to make productive use of my free time.

Now am happily employed in one of the top IT firms in the city with a good pay scale and designation.

And for all those people who are sailing the same boat as I did once, please remember the following points when you decide to job hunt after your break

         ·            Never lose your confidence.

         ·            Always stay abreast with your field by constantly reading and updating your skills.

         ·            Get in touch with people & friends who are already working and update yourself on the latest happenings in your work field.

         ·            Don’t opt for a shortcut and fall prey to temporary solutions such as faking to land yourself a job. Think of long term and make the right decision to stand by what’s right. It will definitely pay off.

I conclude that the career break had its own pros and cons for me. As the saying goes that there lies an opportunity in every setback, though my break made my comeback to work a little tough, it did provide me an opportunity to learn and seek more. I built a good network of other testers and even to this day we are learning and sharing from one another.

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