Career breaks, COVID, and the female workforce

Carol Fishman Cohen Transcript

Sabrina Merage Naim
From Evoke Media, I'm Sabrina Merage Naim, with me is Kassia Binkowski, and this is Breaking Glass - a series of conversations with women around the world who are shattering glass ceilings and challenging social norms. They are audacious, gutsy, and their stories are echoed across borders and generations in a rallying cry and that is changing the narrative for women everywhere. Carol Fishman Cohen is an expert and helping mid career professionals - the vast majority of whom are women - relaunch their careers after taking career breaks. Carol story in this space starts more than two decades ago when she stepped out of a successful finance career to raise her children. More than 10 years later, she navigated the complex path, rebuilding her career and ultimately pivoted to founding a company specifically focused on helping other individuals do the same.

Kassia Binkowski
Sabrina, while, Carol's expertise relates to a much wider group of individuals who have stepped out of the workforce for any number of reasons, we're of course talking today about women, this decision to take a career break is emotionally fraught for so many of us, whether it's a choice that somebody has the privilege to think critically about, or if it's a decision that's being made for them. Carol has really, really good advice about how to navigate this, how to relieve some of that overwhelm, and her story and expertise are more relevant than ever due to COVID. And the impact that the pandemic is having on the female workforce. Of course, we talked about that too. Take a listen.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Carol, thank you so much for joining us today. We're really excited to have this conversation with you.

Carol Fishman Cohen
Well, hi Sabrina. It's great to be here. And I'm excited to begin.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Today we want to talk about a few areas that are you know your areas of focus, but also kind of personal to you. Your personal journey in relaunching your career after a quite a long career break. And also what you've learned in terms of launching your company iRelaunch helping other people come back into the workplace after career breaks for a number of reasons, and why it's beneficial, not just for these people to be more strategic about it, but also for the companies. And we're gonna also have a pretty specific conversation around COVID and how COVID has been impacting women disproportionately in the workplace. But I want to be clear that we're not just talking about mothers here. Your expertise and path to reentering the workforce relates to any individual on a career break. It could be veterans, it could be elderly care, it could be parenting, it could be for health reasons. But today's focus, of course, is on women. The many reasons why we take career breaks, the ways in which we can relaunch our careers, why relaunchers benefit companies, and the disproportionate impact of COVID on female workers. So I want to start with you and your personal experience. You graduated from Pomona College with a degree in economics, you then went on to get your MBA from Harvard Business School, and then kind of dove in headfirst into a career in finance. And you were I would say elbow deep in that career when you took a step back to raise your four children and you spent 11 years out of the workforce. So take us back to that season of your life when you felt ready to relaunch. What was that decision process like and what were you most intimidated by?

Carol Fishman Cohen
Sure. So I want to give you just a little extra history there. Between college and business school, I worked for an investment firm, then I went to business school, I worked in manufacturing for a brief stint right after, and then I went back into finance, but in corporate finance for an investment bank. And I was there for just about three years when the company I was looking for collapsed when I was on maternity leave with my first child. So I didn't have a company to return to and that essentially began my career break. And it was in 1990. It was a long time ago. And I decided not to go looking for the next big job. And I had three more kids in close succession. And I was home with those kids and I just didn't really think anything of it. At that point. I just gradually went into my at home mom role. And life went on. And it wasn't until I'd say around year nine of when I was on my career break that I started to think that I was getting ready to want to return. This was 1999 so no one was talking about this whole idea of relaunching careers. I didn't know a single other person who had gone back to work. And so it was really new territory. I had no idea how I was going to do it. But I started thinking about it in year nine. And I ultimately returned to work two years later, in 2001, working for an investment firm as a financial analyst, again, in part because there were people there who worked with me at the old job over 11 years before. So I would say, a few things were going into my process, my thought process. You know, my kids were getting older they were in school, I think it was when my youngest was going into kindergarten, that I thought I could actually do something like this. And then every year, I would see all the people who I used to work with at this annual Christmas party that our old boss used to throw. And every year it used to be like, "Yeah, I'm home with the kids. Yeah, I'm home with kids." And then finally, in that, between year nine and 10, so I guess was the year 10 Christmas party, I went in, and I said, "You know, I'm thinking about maybe going back," and the reaction was so confidence boosting to me. People were more confident in myself than me that I was in myself at that time. And they were like, "Really? That's great news. Let's have lunch, let's talk." And so that started making me think about it a little more seriously. And then I also went to my 15 year business school reunion, and I ran into an old classmate of mine who had gone into the executive search business. And I had a very cursory conversation with her. But nine months later, she sent me an email and she said, I came across something that might be a really good match with your skill set.

Kassia Binkowski
What did you do to prepare yourself? I hear you that it was a pleasant surprise that people were eager to have you back, that they remembered you the way you were as if you had never left, that those doors were open and that eagerness existed. But what did you do to get yourself ready? What did you do to feel confident, to kind of build up your knowledge base having been out for 11 years?

Carol Fishman Cohen
Well, I had to do a lot, because I remember I had been out for over 10 years at that point. So I remember going into this whole mode of self, like studying my old business school cases, and studying all the old transactions that I used to work on and really trying to immerse myself again in the world of finance. Now, part of this involves re subscribing to the Wall Street Journal, it sounds very basic, but I had, you know, a lot of transition had happened in the financial services industry in the 1990s. So I really had to sit with the Wall Street Journal for good six months and read it cover to cover before I felt like I knew what was going on in the business world again, because, you know, I thought I'd go into some interview and talk about a company that didn't exist anymore, because it had gone under or merged or changed names. So all of that was taking place as part of my preparation.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I want to double click on this a little bit, because in in 2015, you gave a TED talk and one of the most fascinating insights that we took away from that was you sharing exactly what you're saying right now which is that when navigating your relaunching of your own career, you realize people's view of you was frozen in time, and then you mentioned that applicants have a responsibility to get up to speed on what they've missed, to sort of fulfill that expectation, that memory that people have of us. So how is that an advantage that too many of us overlook? What are people who are trying to relaunch their careers, what are the the big missteps that you often see in terms of their expectations on how that journey is going to go for them?

Carol Fishman Cohen
Right, so the biggest misstep that people make is actually a misstep that I made myself. And that is they don't spend time figuring out what they want to do all over again, and thinking about whether they really should be returning to exactly what they left, or whether it should be a permutation of that or whether they should be relaunching an entirely new direction. And in my mind, I didn't I didn't spend any time on it. I just thought I was a financial analyst. And that's what I do. And I went right back into it. And I later ended up leaving that job, because I had never done that assessment. And I realized that I didn't want to do the spreadsheet analysis piece of the job anymore. I loved meeting with management. I loved the business writing piece writing up the investment. I loved presenting it. And if I had gone through that analysis before I returned to work, then I, you know, here I involved a very progressive employer who is willing to hire me, way back in 2001, when no one was talking about this. And I think I might have made a different decision if I had gone through that process first. So number one is you have to go through thorough career assessment, and figure out exactly where you can add the most value right now. And that - as I did say in the TED talk - that is the responsibility of the relaunch or not the responsibility of the company to figure out where you fit in, in their organization.

Kassia Binkowski
So Carol, when did you decide to pivot? I mean, when did you get that itch, realize that you know, you didn't want to be right back where you were? And and more specifically, when did you decide that you wanted to build a career around relaunching careers? When did that become of interest?

Carol Fishman Cohen
I want to say that it was this long term strategic plan, but it was not. I, I realized toward the end of my first year back at the investment firm, that maybe that was not exactly what I wanted to do anymore. And I was pretty open with the company about it, which I think is something that is a little different about the relauncher. I think, at age 42, when I went back to work, I was very different employee than I might have been when I was, you know, age 29, or in my 20s when I, before I left the workforce. And I was upfront with them, and they were awesome with me. So I, I left on the best of terms. And it was an amazing process, in large part because of the communication. And because of the way they responded to me figuring all of this out. So what happened when I left? Two things happened. One is I started getting involved in some very early conversations that were going on at Harvard Business School, about creating some sort of what we were calling a recertification program at that time or something for alumni or even non-alumni who are going through this process and trying to figure out how do they return to work. So there was there were early conversations going on about that. And then at the same time, I had been interviewed by Vivian Steer Raven, for a book that she was researching about what she called "relaunching" - she coined that term. She interviewed me when I was back at my job. And when I left, I thought, "Gosh, I wonder what happened with that book." So I got back in touch with her and she had an executive search business after taking a career break herself, that was going really well. So she put the book on the back burner, and we got a conversation together, we thought, you know what, let's revive this. And we can be co authors. And we'll write the book together.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I want to take a step back for a minute, just to see the big picture of what you're telling us, which is that after you left you all, you know, took a step back from your career for over a decade and then came back you were kind of dipping your toe in the water to see what the reaction and response would be. And you found overwhelmingly that it was very positive, that it was very supportive, that people were encouraging you. And that built up your self confidence. And then when you kind of were looking to do a book, the response was also overwhelmingly positive, and then you started getting requests, and then you decided you wanted to build a business around it. But I want to acknowledge that for a lot of women, the path back to their careers is maybe not as supported and encouraged as it was for you. In what ways do you see women shortchange themselves? In what ways is our lack of self confidence when reentering the workforce one of the greatest barriers we face?

Carol Fishman Cohen
You know, I'm glad you highlighted that, Sabrina because I don't want to give the wrong impression. This was not an easy pathway in any way. And actually, one of the reasons we wrote back on the career track was to provide the guide that the two of us Vivian and I wish we had had when we were trying to relaunch our careers in 2000 and 2001. And we were really just winging it, you know, we didn't know what was going to work and what didn't work. And the path is not easy. And that's one of the reasons we want to provide relaunchers with a framework and steps that they can take and how to avoid pitfalls, and how to learn from other people's success stories, which often have many peaks and valleys to them.

Kassia Binkowski
So we've spoken a little bit about the assumptions that individuals are making when they're navigating that decision process. What about the assumptions that companies make about mid career professionals with large gaps on their resumes? What are they thinking about these candidates? Are they writing them off? Are they valuing them? What are some of the trends that you're seeing?

Carol Fishman Cohen
So I'd say the answer to that is very different now than it was 20 years ago. And a lot of the evolution about how employers view the relauncher population has occurred, really in just the last five years. So when we're talking to employers, we are talking to them about the attributes of relaunchers being: we have great education, we have great work experience, we're in a stable life stage fewer spousal or partner job relocations at this stage, we have a mature perspective, we have increased energy and enthusiasm about returning to work precisely because we were away for from it for a while. So all of these elements are unique to relaunchers. I remember myself chomping at the bit to get back to work when it was in that those years 9 through 11 of my career break. I had no idea how I was going to do it, but I knew I was really ready. And relaunchers are so excited to be back at work that they inject that feeling into their work teams and and that's a real positive. But you know, the employer issues with relaunchers have to do with worrying about their technological obsolescence and worrying about the ramp up time in terms of how long is it going to take them to be in a productive role again, and also this figuring out exactly what they want to do. But I would say the number one is technological obsolescence. So we've, we've talked to employers about how that's a temporary condition. I talk about that in my TED talk. There's so many options now, many of which are free for people to update themselves. And when we work with companies to create an in house return to work programs in the same way they have their own summer internship programs for undergrads. So these in-house, mid-career returned to work programs are usually competitive now. And so people apply to, to participate in these programs, and the people who have taken the steps to update themselves on their own, and also to demonstrate a fearless attitude about learning what they don't know once they're on the job, are the ones who tend to get hired for these programs. So I think employers are much more interested in this population now than they used to be because they view it as less risky than it was to hire relaunchers than before.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Setting aside diversity for a second, what is the motivation for a company who has a ton of applicants say, of younger, more tech savvy people? What would their motivation be to focus on a population of applicants who have maybe had a career break maybe are a little bit older, maybe don't have that kind of tech savvy? What is their motivation for focusing on that group of people, and then what would they be missing out on when they overlook them?

Carol Fishman Cohen
So these initiatives inside companies often do start as diversity initiatives. But then as they progress, and companies see who's coming in the door and the caliber of the participant, then they start to expand based on their merit. So initially, companies might be skeptical about the population. And they'll start with a small group. And as I said, it might start as a diversity initiative. And then the managers will start to see, wow, these participants are really high caliber. They're very mature. They're loyal to our organization. They have a stability about them. They have some of those soft skills in terms of teamwork, and some level of EQ, and how they are working with different types of personalities. So all of that starts to come into play. And over time, you'll find that managers that might have been initially skeptical will be converted to thinking about, you know what? I want to have one of those relaunchers on my team, too. And the other thing that's happening as these return to work programs are expanding, and we're getting more and more relaunchers inside organizations. So we're getting a critical mass of relaunchers inside organizations, that's also changing the game. Because those relaunchers are hiring other relaunchers and they're all examples of what what success looks like.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So I just want to clarify what you're saying, because I think it's important to highlight, which is that the initial motivation for companies to even have an opportunity for re launchers to enter into the world back into the workforce is more just the diversity quota, right? We need way more women, we need older women that we need to check the boxes. But then once those doors start to open, these people are proving that they have so much more value to bring to the companies that they have qualities that other demographics of the workforce do not have. And then it starts to become more clear why it's important to invest in this demographic of workforce versus overlooking them. And I just think I just think it's interesting that it's not the initial impetus of opening the door is not exactly what you would hope but "Okay, we'll take it." You know, open the door, take a step in and then prove your worth. And that's exactly what you're saying is happening.

Carol Fishman Cohen
Yeah, and, and just an aside to that is, these programs started on Wall Street. And they started because these finance companies, which are very, very old, so have had generation after generation of workers, employees come through, women leaving at every stage, and then having this moment where they feel like, "Wow, this has happened and long enough that we don't have enough women in mid to senior level roles, we have a void there." And so that was how these programs originated, was to reconnect with people at the other end of their career break, who could then just enter at that mid-career level and be poised to move into the senior level role.

Kassia Binkowski
Carol, how much of this this challenge of relaunching your career the challenge of companies building programs to support individuals relaunching their careers? How much of that is a gender issue? Talk to us about men versus women and who's taking more career breaks. What additional barriers do women face because they are women in rebuilding that restarting that re jumping their careers?

Carol Fishman Cohen
So initially, when Vivian and I wrote Back on the Career Track, the subtitle of the book refer to stay at home moms. So initially, we were very focused on that segment of the relauncher population, we thought that segment define the relauncher population. But over time, we've come to view the relaunching population much more broadly. There are men and women who take career breaks, and men and women who take career breaks for reasons that have nothing to do with childcare - eldercare, pursuing a personal interest, expat experiences, retirees, military spouses, a whole range of reasons why career breaks, happen. And we see people who take career breaks for all those reasons reflected in the participant pools of who are in these employer programs. So that being said, the relaunching population is still dominated by women who take career breaks for childcare reasons, and you can actually measure that number. So you can look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics microdata, at the women ages 25 to 54, with children under 18, who have a bachelor's degree or higher. And if you look at that slice of the demographic, you can see that about 22% of them are not in the labor force, that those numbers are pre-COVID by the way, they're they're probably much higher now. And that's about 2.7 million women. And then about 80% of them, according to studies are interested in returning. So you could say at any given time, there's this pool of about 2.2 million educated mothers of prime working age who want to return to work.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So let's shift to talking about COVID impact on women in the workforce. In September alone, the US economy lost nearly 800,000 women, and those numbers are really staggering. More than one in three mothers or one in four women are considering leaving the workforce. What price will the economy pay for losing women in this quantity?

Carol Fishman Cohen
So that statistic that happened in September 2020, where 865,000 women left the workforce got a lot of press. And I actually had some conversations with a couple of economists about what did that mean that they left the workforce? They could have been laid off. They could have left voluntarily. It's a combination of the two but the important piece is that they have decided not to go and look for another job. They are out of the workforce right now. Most of them you can assume it has something to do with managing school-aged children and doing zoom school or you know, whatever is going on on the home front. And COVID has created so much demand and so much publicized demand for how disproportionately this has fallen on women to fulfill all of these roles on at home. So when I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking that first of all career breaks, usually last longer than people assume. So these women who have dropped out of the workforce for COVID-related reasons, are probably thinking, "I'm going to be out for short term." Maybe it's a year or maybe it's two years, that might be the case. And it'll be really interesting to see if we have sort of the special category of people who left for COVID related reasons, who are coming back much more quickly in the short term. But what we've seen over time working with 1000s, of relaunchers is that people think they're only going to be out for a year or two and then the next thing you know, they wake up and 10 years have gone. Or they start with a reason for leaving, like COVID - which is unprecedented - but then other things start happening. One of their kids needs more attention, they have an elder care issue, they're the one who's already home. So that career break just gets prolonged.

Kassia Binkowski
Are you concerned at all that this could threaten the progress that women have made for leadership opportunity for advancement in the workplace in general, you know, how much does the COVID crisis set that back?

Carol Fishman Cohen
The predictions are that a lot of the progress that we've made in the last decade or two is going to be erased by the events that have surrounded COVID and women leaving the workforce or women's careers being stalled in some way. So the studies are showing that women's careers could be impacted significantly. And, you know, my focus is more around and our focus at iRelaunch is more around once you're on that career break what can you be doing to enable a smoother return later on whenever that timing is right for you.

Kassia Binkowski
Well, so that was gonna be my next question. If there's, you know, generally a significant concern that this is going to set us as women back your expertise is in relaunching. So what is your advice? How do we how do we curb that impact? How do we get ahead of it? What is your advice to women who have stepped out either under the assumption that it's for a short term period of time, or those who who may be stepping out more indefinitely? What can we be doing proactively in this period?

Carol Fishman Cohen
Today's employees who are leaving due to COVID are tomorrow's relaunchers. And this is tricky. And it always is because we say when people go on career break, they are not going on career breaks. So they can spend time figuring out, you know, what they need to do to make sure their return is smooth. They're going on career break for eldercare, child care or whatever that reason is. So I want to be realistic here. And there are some things that that people need to do immediately that will help them later and some things that they can do a little later. So I'll just give you two things to do right now, if you're someone who's listening who's just taking a career break. Number one is to document. Your job is fresh in your mind right now, you've just left it. Spend some time and document meaningful moments, milestones, anytime you learned something, as something where you felt really good about an accomplishment, maybe something that you didn't feel so good about, but how you handled it, and what you learned from it. Write all of that down right now. Because a few years from now, when you're in an interview they're going to ask you to give an example of something relevant to whatever the role is that you're applying for. You want to have very specific anecdotes from each of these prior work experiences in your back pocket. So if you write that down now, your post-career-break-self will thank you later. So that's number one. And number two, is to take stock of who are colleagues or people in your network that you want to stay in touch with. And that would not only include, obviously your boss or certain people in management, peers in your organization, but also people who are junior to you. Because while you're on career break and if that career break lasts longer than you anticipate those junior people are going to be moving up and they may be in a position to open the door for you later on.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I want to weave in another conversation that we had recently, which was with environmental conservationist, Dr. Winnie Kiiru in Kenya. She talked about how when she was beginning her career with a young child, she needed to negotiate with those around her to fill the slots of her life - such as parenthood - so that she could pursue her career, when so many other young women with children were falling off. And I think so many women feel the guilt and responsibility to give up on on their dreams in order to be mothers. But Dr. Winnie took the shared responsibility approach and negotiated her way through it. What do you feel women are missing out on when stepping out of the workforce without negotiating with partners, employers for that give and take they need to pursue parenthood alongside their careers in order to then be able to come back confidently?

Carol Fishman Cohen
Well, the first thing that we tell people who are early in their careers who are anticipating a career break is that they should not necessarily think about leaving completely. Or if they leave, they should immediately think about whether they can leave under the conditions of then consulting back to the organization that they are leaving. And we found that that this has been a very successful route for people who want more flexibility and control over their schedule, but want to continue to do the same kind of interesting, challenging work that they were doing before. And it's also in the interest of the company, because you're walking out the door, if you just leave, you're leaving with all of your institutional knowledge and your relationships and everything else. And the company might welcome the idea of, "I don't really I don't want to leave. But I want to change the conditions of my relationship with the company. And I want to move to a consulting relationship and see if we can work something out. So that means I'm not leaving you high and dry. It works for both of us. I love doing the work, I need more control. And can we work something out on a consulting basis?" So I would say, do that as a first step. And don't assume that the answer is no, put it out there. So so that would be one piece I would think about on as far as the conversation with the employer is concerned. Are you also asking me about what conversation is with the non-employer part like on the personal side of your life?

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah. And what was it like for you? How do we as women need to negotiate with those around us to ensure that we're not just completely stepping away, that we are able to kind of move forward in tandem with that shared responsibility and not feel like everything lands on our shoulders?

Carol Fishman Cohen
Okay, this is such a loaded question. And it's so unique to each person's circumstances. So are you a single parent? Or do you have a partner? If you have a partner? What is the status of your partner's employment? And are they in a secure role? Are they feeling insecure in their role? One of the reasons that people are propelled back into the workforce sooner than they might anticipate is because they're going through an economic downturn, their spouse or partner does not feel secure in their role. And they're vowing as a couple, they're never going to be dependent only on one employer, again, that that feels like too precarious of a financial position to be in. So I think these situations are so unique. What is your child's situation? How many kids do you have? Do you have a special needs child? Are you going through infertility issues? Do you have an elder care and child care situation going on? So that is why it is so hard to generalize from a particular person situation, or even a larger number of people's situation, because it's not always exactly applicable to to the individual. So I want to, I want to acknowledge that upfront, but I think within that you have to have conversations with your family both as you're leaving and both as you're going back. And so when people are on career break and they're ready to go back and if they have a spouse or partner and there is usually a discussion going on and it is "What is our life going to look like now with me fitting this job back into our lives together?"

Sabrina Merage Naim
I actually really like that you gave that caveat and that acknowledgement, because I think it's important. I think it's important for the sake of this whole conversation, it is kind of the overarching theme that every single story for every woman or every person going through this is so unique is so specific to them. And to be fair, that even you, Carol, when you took a step back from your career to raise your children, that you were in a position of privilege to be able to do that, because you had a husband who was working, who could provide for the family.

Carol Fishman Cohen
Absolutely.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And not everybody is in that position to be able to do that. And, you know, and I'm sure in your career now with iRelaunch that every time you're speaking to a new relauncher those different components of their individual story make a huge difference in terms of how you help them, the advice you give them, the guidance, and what they can and cannot afford to do, either financially or otherwise.

Carol Fishman Cohen
Absolutely, Sabrina. And I'm so glad that you bring this up, because, you know, some people are going back to work because of death or disability of a spouse or divorce. And they have immediate financial needs. And when we're talking about this process of you have to figure out exactly what you want to do all over again. And you know, it's a time consuming process. So sometimes the advice is, you got to get in there and take some less than perfect job right now to pay the bills. And while you're doing that, you're going to be on your off time going through this whole process to figure out exactly what you want to do all over again. And that next move is going to be more in line with exactly what what you think your true relaunch should be.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Carol you relaunched your career 20 years ago, since then you've pivoted into the space professionally, you've worked with 1000's of individuals who are facing this exact challenge and relaunching mid-career positions. Right now there's more individuals than ever out of the workforce who are going to be doing that search and starting that process, whether in the near future or after a significant break. What do you have to say to them? What do you have to say to the to the listener right now, who's in that period of overwhelm, trying to figure out how they're going to get back into it trying to figure out how they're going to resuscitate their career? What advice do you have for that person?

Carol Fishman Cohen
Use this time to figure out exactly what you want to do all over again. Become a subject matter expert in that area. Reinvigorate your networks and reconnect with people from the past. And be patient.

Sabrina Merage Naim
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