Reviving a Career in Europe After Seven Years of Being a Full-Time Homemaker

A brave, patient heart, a determined, resourceful mind, and a strong-willed, persevering, tenacious spirit help you swim through an ocean of challenges.

Everyone who has been a full-time homemaker knows how we face the endless chores and time we dedicate to have an orderly, clean, harmonious, warm, meaningful, memorable, joyful, and loving home.

Years seemed to drag when our little, growing babies owned our time and life, as our family is our first daily agenda.

Sometimes, we face a salad of strong nostalgia for our old job, missing old, close friends, our native land and food, but with our cheerfulness, we counteract such melancholy by keeping ourselves very busy.

There are times we may feel that our brain has been parked somewhere. That is not good for one’s self-esteem after all the hard work as a student to finish a university degree. Some may feel retrogressed for having their chosen career sleep for a while as we embrace the love, time, and dedication for motherhood.

While we may feel that being a full-time homemaker is like a momentary slumber from the rat race, as a mother, it is our unique privilege to be there in every memorable stage of our growing child and the advantage of taking care well of our entire family.

In these years, we have these unique opportunities:

The liberty to learn and master well the foreign language of our new resident country;
Learn new skills: technology, computer, music, arts, academics or mechanics;
Keep ourselves updated on our chosen career by reading, going to exhibitions or attending online classes;
Re-invent ourselves to new ventures where we can be happy and fulfilled;
Plan what we would like to do once our children are in school.

What I have done before landing a good job:

Often, search for job vacancies from newspaper ads and local unemployment office ads, and check out carefully the company’s specific requirements.
Prepare the Curriculum Vitae well according to the format and style depending on where and with whom I’m applying.
Include foreign language proficiency level, an official transcript of records translated and accredited in the foreign language of my resident country, and job certificates from past employers.
Develop language skills to very good or excellent working professional level of fluency. Employers immediately spot this on how one presents an application letter and a good resume. Target should use the preferred language of the employer in the resume.
Provide documented proof of accreditation of educational attainment and your specialisation, assuring that it adequately reflects your qualifications because any employer can verify this from past employers.
Don’t let job rejections defeat you, but keep trying until you find a respectable job. During interviews, conquer them with confidence and vitality, fluent foreign language skills, and your plans on how you will work to learn and embrace the company’s demands and projects.
During a job interview, they will already detect if you are hard-working, resourceful, flexible, patient, precise, prompt, honest, and respectful, as this will be reflected on the written tests and verbal interview.
Learn how to negotiate with the salary offers without begging too low or asking too high, so be informed of the legal salary scale depending on the position you’re applying for.

After more than twenty job rejections, I found a good-paying job in a private aviation and investment firm, my first job in Switzerland after being a stay-at-home mother for seven years.

My employer’s memorable queries in Italian were: “What can you offer for my company when you’ve been staying home for seven years? What is your cutting edge among the rest of the applicants? You don’t have experience with jets and aviation operations; how would you deal with it?”

I replied fluently in the Italian language: “I’m an AB-Economics graduate, my stay-at-home mother state may sound stagnant, but I didn’t let it cripple me. I have acquired fluently another foreign language and kept myself updated on my computer skills. I have no idea where and how to start with the technicalities and demands of managing, dispatching aircraft, dealing with pilots, refuelling, all that entails ground handling, routing, and updating electronic aviation charts, all of which I am ready and very willing to patiently and perseveringly learn in everyday transactions by enrolling to an online private pilot license and flight dispatch course and with my past banking analytical skills, I can contribute on the financial research for the company’s investments.”

Finding a good job comes with proper preparation, excellent foreign language proficiency, good timing, resourcefulness, confidence, marketing and convincing negotiating skills during job interviews and a little bit of luck.

I wrote this in June 2013, and the article was published in The Filipino Expat Magazine.