By Sue Shellenbarger
The Wall Street Journal
March 2007

 When Elizabeth Montanez decided to return to work after 12 years at home with her four children, she faced a problem: Her résumé ended at 1994.

Although the Fairfield, Conn., mother had been busy chairing committees and fund-raisers, she left those years blank, fearing hiring managers would laugh or dismiss it as “fluff,” she says. To her surprise, a staffing firm advised her to fill the gap with those activities, and she soon got a job. At-home skills, she says, are “crossing the line from the private to the public world.”

For decades, gap moms — women returning to work after a break for child-rearing — have tried to hide the holes on their résumés or worse, apologized for them. Now, the tide is turning. Led by such women as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who have openly advocated the career strengths of gap moms, mothers now are speaking up about their work in the home and community.

Unless you’re Speaker of the House, though, touting motherhood as a career asset takes some finesse. Here are the new rules of the game:

Don’t leave white space on your résumé, advises Anne Erni, chief diversity officer for Lehman Brothers, New York, which is actively recruiting gap moms. It only raises questions, forcing managers to make a call to make sure you weren’t doing prison time or vegetating after a nasty firing.

When Van Johnson, a vice president in Irving, Texas, for a mortgage unit of First Horizon National, received a woman’s résumé with a four-year hole, he had to ask the recruiter to find out what she’d been doing. After learning she’d been home with children, a factor he regards as “basically neutral,” Johnson says, he hired her as an accountant from among 50 applicants.

Don’t spend time justifying the résumé gap. Saying, “I made the decision to stay at home because I wanted to be a good mother” may be seen as an insult by a working mother sitting across from you, who may have made different choices but probably still thinks she’s a good mother. Instead, says Carol Fishman Cohen, co-author of a book, “Back on the Career Track,” forthcoming in June, “be matter-of-fact,” saying, “I made the decision to stay at home, and now I can’t wait to get back.”

As tempting as it may be to talk about hard-won nurturing skills, most managers probably aren’t ready for that. A mother might want to say, “Balancing the conflicting needs of a toddler and a teenager shows she’s a good time manager,” says Catherine Carbone Rogers, Des Moines, Wash., former president of Mothers & More, an advocacy group, and a former gap mom who has returned to work. “That may be true, but it’s not going to carry a great deal of credibility with an employer.”

Instead, promote skills relevant to the workplace, using concrete terms and quantifying results, says Nadine Mockler, a principal in Flexible Resources, a Stamford, Conn., consulting and staffing firm. For example: “Headed $10,000 fund-raising drive for school development fund.”

Relate home skills to those used at work. Erni offers this example: “As a bond salesperson, I dealt with high net-worth people every day and can connect with their families and their values. When I was at home, I increased my school’s fund-raising capacity by three times because I was able to reach out to high net-worth people.”

A mom who hasn’t done volunteer work might attend a professional conference or two before starting a job search, or volunteer in a networking group, then add that information to a cover letter, Cohen suggests. That “shows interest in learning the cutting-edge information.”

Gloria Lyon, who returned to work last year as a global strategic supply manager for Dow Chemical, Midland, Mich., after eight years away, described medical research she did on behalf of her son, who had three open-heart surgeries. This showed she’d been “staying fresh” with a focus on technology, she says.