Re-Entering the Workforce: You Are More Qualified Than You Think You Are

I spend a lot of time in conversations with women who are considering going back to work having taken some time out to have children and stay home.  I have hired many and consider these women and their varied, non-traditional career trajectories to be a tremendous and often overlooked asset in finance.  But in a way that’s my job as a finance professional who’s spent a lifetime on a trading floor, to seek out and invest in the undervalued credit, the one the market has mispriced.  Buy low, sell high.

What is surprising to me is how these women consistently discount themselves and their abilities.  They rarely consider the skill set they have honed raising children as applicable to the business world when in fact it is essential to success.

In today’s overscheduled, hyper-competitive landscape of child rearing, managing a home and its inhabitants requires a masterclass in executive functioning.  Mothers routinely manage competing constituencies who need their limited time and resources and assess on the fly how to maximize both.  They work long hours and routinely subjugate their own needs for the good of the organization.  And they do all of this in an incredibly high-stakes environment.  Ability to handle pressure?  Check. 

When I consider the skills and experience I rely on most as CEO of my firm, I think of those qualities that are harder to describe and wouldn’t fit neatly on a resume:  empathy, consensus building, remembering details, connecting dots, juggling many different demands at once. A company is, in many ways, like a living thing that needs daily care.  As a leader, I am constantly anticipating opportunities and potential problems, assessing the health and wellness of my workforce, staying abreast of what my peers are doing, and innovating so we can continue to grow.  These are almost interchangeable with my responsibilities at home as mother to my two young boys. 

Understanding Your Super Powers

For women looking to get back into the workforce they must understand their superpowers and lean into them. In her book, “When Women Lead” (2022), journalist and CNBC Media and Tech Correspondent Julia Boorstin writes eloquently about the market discount on qualities that aren’t traditionally associated with success but are in fact incredibly valuable. 

“Women tend to have an attention to context and an instinct to search for structural solutions rather than quicker but more temporary fixes.  They are more likely to seek out diverse perspectives and incorporate them into their decision making, and they tend to pursue purpose-driven companies and show vulnerability.” (pg. 359)

I fear many women, already intimidated by the return to work, are further discouraged when they don’t see in themselves the traditionally valued traits in business.

Avoiding the Pitfalls

I have seen so many return-to-work successes but where I have seen it fail, I can attribute it to two avoidable pitfalls. The first is in a sentence I have heard many times, “I just want to get back into it. I’ll do anything.”  This one phrase encapsulates the presupposition that going back to work is synonymous with starting over.  Whether a woman wants to reenter the industry she left or pivot to something new, she is not starting from scratch and her experience at home with her children is relevant.  It is essential that women who begin this journey do so with the understanding that they must reenter the workforce in a role that will utilize the depth and breadth of their talent and be an intellectual challenge. Long -term success will be highly correlated to how good one feels about what they are doing professionally and their desire to commit to the new trade off at home, though I recognize this is not always possible when the decision to return to work is driven out of economic necessity.

The second pitfall is a derivative of the first and has come top of mind to me lately as I also find myself often in discussions about the elusive work-life balance.  I recently listened to a podcast featuring Harvard Business School Professor Arthur C. Brooks who co-authored a book on the science of getting happier.  He spoke about how important the role of other people in our lives and experiences is to our happiness.  I believe professional happiness and satisfaction are due largely to the people we surround ourselves with at work, our work community.

Returning to work can be incredibly scary and overwhelming, and without an emotionally supportive community around you it is bound to fail.  Are they people you feel comfortable being honest with?  Do they know how you feel? Are they navigating similar challenges?  And beyond that, are they fun?  A big piece of my work life balance equation is how much I enjoy my work friends and look forward to spending time with them, and I believe the success of many working mom led start-ups is due in part to the prevalence of these enterprises being created within their community where their clients or coworkers are also their friends.

Of course there are many wild cards in this journey, and no accounting for the unknown.  It is not inconceivable to make the choice to go back to work only to find it has put too much stress on the home front or is simply not the right fit or time for the family.  Raising children is fluid and I have found there are times when they need me around more or less and I must reassess.  There is no shame in the false start and much like in business we learn a lot from these moments.

Smoothing the Onramp

For myself and my firm I will continue to seek out and hire women returning to the workforce and I will make accommodations where I can smooth the onramp, perhaps make it a little less steep.  I will encourage women who have taken time out to understand and market that time for what it truly is and what it has given them.  I can assure you the working mothers are the doers in any organization.  They simply don’t have time or bandwidth to not get on with it.

About R. Seelaus & Co., Inc. was founded in 1984 by Richard Seelaus, originally as a municipal bond broker-dealer. The firm has since become a certified women's business enterprise ("WBE") and has grown into a full-service financial firm that is mission driven in its commitment to creating more opportunities for women in the financial services. R. Seelaus & Co., Inc. and its subsidiaries offer investment advisory, asset management, capital markets, brokerage, fixed income and equity trading, institutional sales, leveraged finance and insurance services. The R. Seelaus & Co., LLC subsidiary is a broker dealer registered with the SEC and member of FINRA, and the subsidiary Seelaus Asset Management, LLC, is an SEC Registered Investment Advisor ("RIA"). With various fixed income trading desks and more than seventy professionals, both entities serve individuals, families, public and private companies, non-profit organizations, and institutional investors. The firm has offices in New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, and Massachusetts. For more information about R. Seelaus & Co., and its subsidiaries visit www.rseelaus.com

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