New York Lawyer
August 13, 2002

Q:
How do I explain taking a year off to take care of a sick relative when I re-enter the job market? I was a second year associate from a Top-20 law school.

And another reader asks:

After my fourth year as a tax associate, I took five years off as we started a family. How do "mommy-trackers" re-enter the working world?

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A:

As I have noted numerous times in this column, one's attractiveness to a potential employer is predicated on two distinctly different elements: 1) the value (amount and type) you can add; and 2) having appropriate reasons for wanting this particular type of work at this particular time. The first element we call competency, strengths or marketable skills. The second we call motivation, fire-in-the-belly, temperamental fit, or commitment. In the eyes of the employer, ample and credible information about each of these elements is essential to your employability.

Accordingly, when someone seeks to re-enter the job market, he or she has to be ready with convincing explanations both of why they exited the job market and of whether their skills are current and "level-appropriate" to their career stage (i.e., a 45-year-old person with the skills of a 25 year-old faces marketability issues).

It generally is not as hard to explain why you took a hiatus from full-time employment as it is to convince employers that you are now strongly "career-oriented" and ready to place highest priority on job performance and career development. Of course, you have to be careful not to suggest that your exit was simply because you got bored, stressed-out, burned out or bummed out. The employer's fear, naturally, is if these motivation-related issues cropped up once, they might hit you again. So, explain your time away as a decision to do something, rather than as an escape from or avoidance of something (like, say, responsibility, challenge or hard work). Never say you "took time off;" that sounds like you were resting when other people were working. Even a sabbatical should be explicable in terms of a proactive goal: researching medieval law, providing human services to underserved populations, writing new rules of engagement for UN peace-keeping forces worldwide, discharging appropriate responsibilities and obligations to family.

The sick-relative hiatus simply needs explanation that there were no options; you were absolutely required to put your career on hold in the face of a medical emergency that could not be otherwise addressed. The "I'm starting a family" rationale represents not an emergency, but a statement of priorities. It is, fortunately, one to which most employers have to at least pay lip service, Mom and apple pie being what they are in this country.

In each case, your most important task is to prepare a cogent explanation for: 1) why you are re-entering the job market; 2) why you are re-entering it now; 3) what you now want to do with your career path henceforth; and 4) what skills and immediate value you can add. If you were a subject-matter expert in some area, say environmental regulation, have you kept your skills up to date -- or will you require a new learning curve to ramp up to speed? It stands to reason that the longer you were "away," the more your skills have eroded or you have failed to keep pace with new developments in your discipline.

Similarly, mommy-trackers who took on a serious of contract engagements while tending the family often face a little skepticism when they say they want to resume full-time work: Is this because you really want to -- or because you have to for financial or other reasons that compel you to abandon your children? Employers are unlikely to invest a lot of time re-credentialing a re-entering lawyer unless they're sure that investment will pay off quickly and handsomely. If you now are thinking of shifting legal disciplines or settings, what evidence can you present that this decision is fully-considered, that you're not just a ping-pong ball ricocheting around the profession?

Be prepared to explain the current status of the event or priority that removed you from full-time employment. Has the relative fully recovered? Is your clinical depression unlikely to recur? Is your book on the Law of Charlemagne complete and at the publisher? Have you completed your LLM? Is your family ready for you to resume full-time work outside the home?

Employers realize they must make investments in people. With lawyers they often front a lot of money, paying them more than they're worth for awhile, trusting that the investment will ripen and pay off over time. As a person who has left practice for awhile, you represent a greater risk than someone who chugged along in a nice, linear career path. You have the burden of persuasion of showing that you represent a strong, highly and appropriately motivated investment. Fortunately for you, a lot of people who left full-time employment and subsequently re-entered have proved strong, solid, productive producers over the long haul. If you can present evidence of a solid ability to get back up to speed, of strong intellectual capability, of a powerful general work ethic and a desire to now place primary priority on your career, you should make out well. Re-entering candidates face a tougher challenge than those who didn't leave, but it is by no means insuperable.

Sincerely,
Douglas B. Richardson
President, The Richardson Group