Help for a career relaunch

Patricia Kitchen | Change@work

1:03 PM EST, January 11, 2008

With growing numbers of parents opting to step out of the for-pay work world to stay home with their children, there's also growing interest in just how they'll pick up their careers once the time is right.

That's just what the new "Opting Back In" three-day program at Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business in Manhattan is designed to address. Geared to women, but certainly welcoming men, the program joins a growing but small number of others around the country -- including those at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, the Harvard Business School and the Wharton School of Business -- to help proven professionals who've stepped out for three years or more to determine their next steps, get up to speed with new developments in the business world and review such areas as resume writing, networking and negotiating skills.

"We were given insightful information on how to use our past successes in preparation for our re-entry into the workforce," said Robert Wu, the only man in a group of 18, after the first daylong session Wednesday.

Wu, along with his wife, Luisa, a former kindergarten teacher, has stayed home the past three years with their three young children. A Jackson Heights native, he had been regional operations manager for Starbucks in Asia, where he spent 75 percent of his time traveling, opening stores in China and Southeast Asia. The family lived in Hong Kong, and Wu says he had an "epiphany" after returning home from one 10-day trip to find that his then-6-month-old daughter didn't recognize him -- and even cried when he held her.

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Within a year, he had cashed out his company stock options and moved to Ronkonkoma to become a full-time dad. But now, with the pressing need to save for his children's college educations, he's been considering his professional options: perhaps another corporate job, minus the heavy travel schedule, or maybe an entrepreneurial venture.

At the Wednesday session, he says, he learned the current term for professionals looking to return to work: "relaunchers." Besides reviewing their past accomplishments, members of the group got one-on-one coaching to help determine what's next and heard from a panel of recruiters who have hired relaunchers. Coming up in the next two weeks: one-on-one help with resume writing and personal pitches, advice from those who have successfully relaunched their careers, discussions of new technologies, business start-ups, setting up a support system and dealing with barriers, such as those mornings when your child begs you not to leave for work.

While the Baruch program anticipates many participants will be parents looking to return to the workforce, it also is open to professionals who have been away for other reasons, such as caring for relatives. (Learn more at zicklin.baruch.cuny.edu/optingback in.)

Cynthia Thompson, Baruch professor of management and one of the Opting Back In program designers, says there is increasing need for such support, especially as younger generations express more willingness to put families on a level equal to, if not higher than, their careers. Those in Generations X and Y see this not so much as "stepping out of their careers," she says, as "just taking a little break. It's different framing."

Still, men face special issues, she says, as opting out has been "less accepted" for them -- making them "more suspect" in the eyes of some prospective employers. Indeed, Wu, who has been on a few interviews in recent months, says one of his key interests is learning how to explain the gap on his resume when interviewers express disbelief.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just more than 5 percent of dads with kids younger than 18 stay home as their wives go out to work -- that's about 1.4 million men. And according to research from CareerBuilder, 37 percent of 1,521 dads surveyed last year said they would like to do what Wu has done -- if they could afford it.

Wu, an engineer by training who went on to get his MBA in marketing, took a career break years ago to travel the world and start a tour guide company. He says his own father, who like his mother came to this country from China, worked three jobs to support the family, allowing him little time to spend at home with them.

Now, at 53, Wu says he always looked forward to having a large family and has relished his years at home as a full-time dad.