| | |  | Home Business Books | Home » » Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work | | | | | | | Description: | | 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. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Carol Fishman Cohen | | Hardcover:
| 320 pages | | Publisher:
| Business Plus | | Publication Date:
| June 15, 2007 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0446578207 | | Product Length:
| 6.25 inches | | Product Width:
| 1.25 inches | | Product Height:
| 9.25 inches | | Product Weight:
| 1.19 pounds | | Package Length:
| 9.0 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.1 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.4 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.15 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 19 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 19 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 found the following review helpful:
 Helps with the thinking AND feeling side of going back to workJun 27, 2007
By Daphne de Marneffe
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 found the following review helpful:
Back on the Career TrackAug 17, 2008
By Nicole, Mom of 1 and 1 on the way
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 found the following review helpful:
I found this book extremely helpful and practicalJun 17, 2007
By Cathy A, Cramer
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!
9 of 9 found the following review helpful:
Worth every pennyJun 24, 2007
By Tried and True
I've been thinking about going back to work, and I thought this book masterfully covered the pros and cons as well as laid out a clear 7-step process I could follow if I decide to move forward. I found the authors' ideas about assessing career options, in particular, to be very helpful and innovative. The book was comprehensive in that it looked at all sorts of work arrangements, including conventional fulltime jobs, part-time positions, job shares, consulting and entrepreneurship. The women's stories cited were engaging and varied. I also really liked the second half of the book in which the authors look at the whole issue of women returning to work from the employers' perspective. In short, I highly recommend this book to any women thinking about going back or even thinking about leaving in the first place.
39 of 49 found the following review helpful:
 this book won't help me relaunchJun 16, 2007
By booklover
I was so excited to check this book out of the library because I'm in the process of reentering the work force after 7 years as a stay-at-home mom. Unfortunately this book does not apply to me because I don't have a PhD, MBA, medical degree, engineering degree or law degree. This book is clearly written for the woman who has left a highly paid/skilled job to be at home for a few years. The book outlines family-friendly jobs in many areas such as accounting, marketing, legal, and medicine. Advice on adding volunteer work to a resume is covered however, my only volunteer work has been providing snacks for VBS. In hindsight I guess I should have done more "strategic" and impressive volunteer work to bolster my resume and I am kicking myself for not using those years at home to learn a foreign language. Inspirational stories are provided but they describe women who were at one time CEO's, doctors, lawyers, PhD holders, and even famous celebrities. They ARE inspirational women but I simply can't relate in terms of reentering the work force. Information is provided for people wanting to return to school- initiatives from Harvard Business School, and fellowships for those women interested in scientific careers are included. I tried to google "reentry scholarships" as talked about in one of the chapters but found nothing in my state unless I already had engineering experience.This book is perfect and nicely done for a certain category of women. Sadly I am not in that category. After reading through this book instead of feeling inspired and gaining valuable information I just feel depressed!
See all 19 customer reviews on Amazon.com
| | |
|
