Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work [Hardcover]

Carol Fishman Cohen (Author), Vivian Steir Rabin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2007

If you're a stay-at-home mom considering going back to work, these are some of the questions that have likely come to mind. Returning to the workforce can be a daunting prospect. It requires reigniting old contacts (including those with coworkers once your junior), marketing yourself strategically, and building confidence-whether you've been out of the workforce for two, six, or fifteen years.

Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir Rabin understand, because they've been there. As Harvard MBAs who successfully relaunched their own careers after staying home full-time with their children, they know it can be done-with careful planning, strategizing, and creativity. Now, in BACK ON THE CAREER TRACK, they offer a prescriptive, seven-step program that includes:

· Assessing career options and updating job skills

· Networking and preparing for interviews

· Getting the family on board.

Packed with expert advice from career counselors and recruiters, and insightful stories from others who have been through the process, this book also offers an inside look at what employers and universities are doing to help relaunchers today-including how many businesses are recognizing them as valuable assets.

As frequent speakers to women's groups, professional schools, and corporations, Cohen and Rabin provide a thorough, unique program from two experts on the topic of career reentry. BACK ON THE CAREER TRACK is sure to become the classic guide in the field.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Cohen and Rabin are two Harvard MBAs who stepped away from high-powered jobs to raise their children, then years later attempted to relaunch their careers. Faced with myriad challenges, the authors wondered if other women experienced the same struggles. Their business backgrounds show in the organized approach they take to guiding self-evaluation and assessing marketability. But they provide a more personal perspective through interviews with more than 100 women, from a broad career and economic spectrum, who remember the difficulties of relaunching their careers after hiatuses from 18 months to 20 years. They encountered less-than-supportive partners and children and skeptical prospective bosses, not to mention their own self-doubts. In a separate section, the authors offer accounts of women who succeeded in their relaunches, including former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Cohen and Rabin applaud a relaunch movement they hope will be so widely recognized that women will not be stigmatized for gaps in their résumés. A helpful and inspirational source for women reentering the workforce. Bush, Vanessa
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"A terrific compendium of the issues, trade-offs--and opportunities--that Serious Moms recommitting to Serious Professional life will encounter." --Mary Lindley Burton, president, Burton Strategies, and coauthor of In Transition: From the Harvard Business School Club of New York's Career Management Seminar

"After you have talked your girlfriends to death, bored your husband with all your plans and even, in desperation, consulted your mother-in-law, let Cohen and Rabin show you how it is done. They will help you plan the step-by-step campaign that will get you back into the job market no matter how much time you have taken off." --Lisa Endlich, author of Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success

"Candid, constructive, compelling... The authors provide realistic yet optimistic advice with examples on how to relaunch a career successfully." --W. Stanton Smith, National Director, Next Generation Initiatives/Human Resources, Deloitte & Touche USA LLP

"This guide is a wonderful and practical roadmap to 'on ramping' back into the workforce. If you're thinking about that journey, this book is the way forward!" --Anne Erni, Chief Diversity Officer, Lehman Brothers

"This comprehensive step-by-step guide to workforce reentry should be invaluable to women seeking to relaunch their careers. Real-life examples of success stories combined with a multitude of practical advice make this book a unique resource." --Constance C. Helfat, professor, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College

"Finally! A smart, practical, inspiring guide for moms looking to get back to paid work--without losing their minds." --Leslie Morgan Steiner, editor of Mommy Wars and columnist, www.washingtonpost.com

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Business Plus; 1 edition (June 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446578207
• ISBN-13: 978-0446578202
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.2 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #931,056 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Carol Fishman Cohen is the co-author of career reentry strategy book Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work (see Business Week review below), and the co-founder of iRelaunch (www.iRelaunch.com), a career reentry programming company producing conferences, coaching groups, webinars and more for employers, universities, organizations and individuals.

Carol and her co-author and business partner Vivian Steir Rabin are relaunchers themselves - between them, they have nine kids and they each returned to work after multi-year career breaks before writing Back on the Career Track and starting iRelaunch. Carol returned to an investment firm and Vivian returned to executive search.

Carol and Vivian have presented their return to work strategies to over 8,000 people at more than 125 events since 2006. They are regularly featured in the national press. Carol is the subject of a Harvard Business School case study about returning to work after a career break.

Business Week Editor's Review
For those who have put "former" in front of their once-triumphant titles, there's BACK ON THE CAREER TRACK: A GUIDE FOR STAY-AT-HOME MOMS WHO WANT TO RETURN TO WORK Onetime stop-outs and Harvard MBAs Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir Rabin offer a tasty, anecdote-filled field guide to getting back in. Cohen and Rabin masterfully reveal the ambivalence felt by women who can afford to drop out yet may be conflicted about doing so. The book offers lessons on how to de-stigmatize resume gaps and get spouses and kids to buy in to the idea of a return to work. For those who say you can't go back, this book is the definitive rebuttal.--Michelle Conlin

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Helps with the thinking AND feeling side of going back to work, June 27, 2007

By 

Daphne de Marneffe - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work (Hardcover)

This book has two great strengths. One is that if offers a calm, practical strategy for breaking down and following through on the many tasks involved in going back to work. This is really important and welcome, since in the busy day-to-day of parenting, it is often hard to look at the big picture and think strategically. The second is that it talks about the practical AND emotional hurdles to going back to work, and manages, in an upbeat but balanced way, to talk like a firm but supportive friend about overcoming them. There' s a lot written lately about how mothers are foolish and naive if they don't work for pay, a point of view bound to alienate mothers who aren't currently working. This book, by contrast, is not ideological, but helpful and eminently practical. It's a great resource if you are just starting to think about (and feel your way through) this complex question.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Back on the Career Track, August 17, 2008

By 

Nicole, Mom of 1 and 1 on the way (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work (Paperback)

I can't believe reviewer Martin Nemzo read the same book I did. As reviewer Rachel Towle mentioned, I do not have an advanced degree, yet I found Back on the Career Track to be a realistic, refreshing guide to career reentry. Women who had "relaunched" careers in all sorts of fields and work configurations are profiled and the advice and strategy is accessible and I think equally effective for those of us without graduate degrees. In fact, I think the stories from the authors and their subjects were unusually candid, which made the points the authors were trying to illustrate even more compelling for someone in the position of being at home trying to return to work. Looking at Mr. Nemzo's background, he does not appear to be in this situation which is why he might have missed the major points of the book.

Finally, his comment about the authors backgrounds is clearly inaccurate to the point where I wonder if Mr. Nemzo had some sort of agenda to diss these authors. His comment that one of the authors is noted in the NYTimes for marrying a physician happens to be her wedding announcement from 1988! From their company website (www.iRelaunch.com) and some of my own googling, I found out that Cohen, a mother of four, resumed working after 11 years out of the full time workforce in a full time job for an investment company. She left after a year at which time Harvard Business School wrote a case study about her journey back to work after her time at home. Rabin went into the executive search business after seven years at home with her five kids.

These two authors appear to me to be the only authors of books on career reentry who have actually gone through the entire process of working, taking a career break and then returning to jobs unrelated to writing about or starting a company in the career reentry field. They wrote their book and started their company after they went through the entire return to work process. That's why they understand it so well! They now run a company that creates career reentry programming for people on career break and they have spoken internationally on the topic. Just take a look at their list of speaking engagements to see the wide range of audiences they address. Mr. Nemzo - I think you better do more careful research next time before tossing out the ridiculous references you make in this review. I give Back on the Career Track five stars and highly recommend it for those on career break interested in a strategy to return to work after a hiatus.

Nicole, mom of 1 with one of the way

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I found this book extremely helpful and practical, June 17, 2007

By 

Cathy A, Cramer (New York City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work (Hardcover)

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this particular issue and I found Back on the Career Track to be right on point! It is a very thorough guide that takes you through essential steps in figuring out the next steps of the professional journey that women in mid life face. It contains helpful suggestions on how to jump start the process and lots of examples of women who have made successful transitions. I also liked that it highlighted some structural changes that are happening in the workforce and that it discussed ways to work with younger women to ensure that they have more options than we do. It has helpful reference materials and it takes real life situations and tells how to make them work for us instead of holding us back. I work with many women who are "in this space" and I have recommended it to everyone who is either actively looking for her next project or even women who are at the very beginning of the process. It is a wonderful reference and I highly recommend it!