For Women Who Want to Reinvent Themselves

Not every­one is blessed with a tech-savvy father, as I am. In the past half hour he’s talked about his Face­book time­line, shar­ing pho­tos via Drop­box, and using social net­work­ing tech­nolo­gies as a means of help­ing oth­ers. The fact that my dad is over 85 makes his famil­iar­ity with these options even more impres­sive.

But what really struck me is his lov­ing con­cern for my sis­ter and her friends, and how they might go about rein­vent­ing them­selves pro­fes­sion­ally. He is con­cerned not just for my sister’s cir­cle of friends, but because he rec­og­nizes that their chal­lenges are shared by hun­dreds of thou­sands, if not mil­lions, of other Amer­i­can women.

These are women in the prime of their lives: expe­ri­enced, vibrant, ener­getic, full of ideas, with a pas­sion­ate desire to con­tribute to their fam­ily and com­mu­ni­ties — and woe­fully under- or unem­ployed. Where’s the JOBS Act for them?

They exited the work­force in order to spend the past 10 or 15 years rais­ing their fam­i­lies. Nowa­days their kids are increas­ingly inde­pen­dent (except for trans­port and access to cash or credit cards!) This cre­ates the pos­si­bil­ity for these stay-at-home moms to re-enter the work­force, to con­tribute their wis­dom and capa­bil­i­ties in exchange for some form of com­pen­sa­tion.

But there’s a big catch…

These women have time and energy to invest in the next chap­ter of their career, but they fail to con­nect with today’s employ­ers, so they can’t land jobs that stick. Sadly, their tech­ni­cal skills are years out of date… If they’re lucky enough to get a job inter­view, they may find them­selves 10–15 years older than the hir­ing man­agers, who prob­a­bly lack the will­ing­ness or time to invest in retrain­ing Boomer women for today’s require­ments.

Temp­ing is an option, albeit less than ideal, but they’re at a gen­er­a­tional dis­ad­van­tage com­pared to recent col­lege grad­u­ates and the “dig­i­tal natives” who pre­dom­i­nate in many temp agen­cies. They may not under­stand the rules of engage­ment when it comes to temp agen­cies and the con­tracts between agen­cies and their clients.

Seek­ing mean­ing and self-esteem (not to men­tion com­pan­ion­ship, a trim­mer fig­ure, or a daily dose of endor­phins), they flock to yoga, Pilates and Zumba classes…

My sis­ter tells sto­ries of how her friends try to help or advise each other, after class or in cof­fee shops. Dad won­ders if there’s an online com­mu­nity that would enable them to help each other more effec­tively. His take is that there’s lots of talk, but no fol­low-through (for lack of a pro­duc­tive struc­ture to their con­ver­sa­tions?)

When asked, I wasn’t able to name spe­cific online com­mu­ni­ties where women pro­vide con­struc­tive advice and men­tor­ing to those who want to re-enter the work­force after a multi-year absence… I also sus­pect, at least for this gen­er­a­tion of Boomer women, that social bonds and trust are crit­i­cal; few are likely to reach out to strangers for help when it comes to things that touch on self-esteem. For chal­lenges like this their rela­tion­ships would need to have a real-world ground­ing before being extended into a vir­tual com­mu­nity.

Women Helping Women, Like a Book Club

But I did have a prac­ti­cal idea that my sis­ter and her friends could do at very lit­tle cost. They could meet together once or twice a month, like a book club, and com­mit to work together on a jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery with the aid of a book called Busi­ness Model You.

At each meet­ing they would work together or sep­a­rately through a set of career “rein­ven­tion exer­cises,” help­ing each other as sound­ing boards and cheer­lead­ers. Each ses­sion would focus on one aspect of their per­sonal value can­vas, as shown below (thanks to www​.Busi​ness​Mod​e​lYou​.com). Ide­ally, some­one would facil­i­tate each ses­sion.

They could use the rec­om­mended activ­i­ties and check­lists in the best-sell­ing book, Busi­ness Model You, as a per­sonal roadmap.

At the end of the process, they are likely to end up with at least one career con­cepts that they could val­i­date.

Peo­ple who are seri­ous about explor­ing new career vis­tas and are will­ing to be intro­spec­tive should def­i­nitely buy the book.

Ddis­clo­sure: I was a con­tribut­ing co-author, along with hun­dreds of other insight­ful and tal­ented peo­ple around the world.

Do you know any­one who has worked with women in this sit­u­a­tion? I’m not talk­ing about pro­fes­sional life coaches, but women help­ing women to rein­vent them­selves…