iRelaunch’s #CallOutYourBreak Campaign
Make sure to call out your career break loud and clear when applying to employer career reentry programs!
I'm an employer!
How can I participate so relaunchers know we want to see their career breaks?
Here’s where you can find an easy template to get the word out to relaunchers about how important it is for them to call out their career breaks, and to let them know about your career reentry program at the same time!
Our only requirement to use these templates is that the participating employers run their own in-house career reentry program that has a landing page to link to on the employer's own website and is not subcontracted to a third party.
Download the #CallOutYourBreak Campaign Assets for Employers.
Employers Download
I'm a relauncher!
How can I participate so employer career reentry programs know I’m eligible?
Here’s where you can find a quick guide for relaunchers on how to use this new feature to showcase your eligibility for career reentry programs as well as tips from iRelaunch on what to put in the description of your LinkedIn career break and sample language for participating in the campaign on social media.
Download the #CallOutYourBreak Campaign Guide for Relaunchers.
Relauncher Guide
The importance of calling out the career break is to highlight a relauncher’s eligibility for these programs that are specifically targeted at professionals returning to work after extended leave. Most of them require a minimum of one to two years of career break in order to qualify.
At the same time, we have been training recruiters on the range of ways relaunchers express their career breaks so as not to miss a qualified applicant to their programs.
We are the pioneering organization in the career reentry space. Our mission at iRelaunch since our founding in 2007 is to normalize the career path that includes a career break and reveal this untapped talent pool for what it is: highly educated, uniquely experienced, and extremely motivated.
Our vision is for every employer with an entry level college internship program to be running a midcareer reentry program side by side. Mainstream adoption of employer career reentry programs is a key step in reaching this goal.
The #CallOutYourBreak campaign marks a milestone moment in career reentry programming. There are more new employer career reentry programs than ever before and existing programs are scaling. As the demand for relaunchers increases, it is becoming more important for relaunchers to identify themselves and call out the career breaks that make them eligible for these programs.
Thank you LinkedIn!
LinkedIn: The Ultimate Gift to Relaunchers
We’ve always called LinkedIn a gift to relaunchers because the platform has enabled relaunchers to identify all those long-lost people from the past and given them a low-key way to reconnect.
Now LinkedIn has given employers with career reentry programs and the relaunchers who want to apply for them an even bigger gift.
Milestone Moment!
LinkedIn's New Feature for Career Breaks
LinkedIn's new Career Break feature is the perfect mechanism for employers recruiting for their career reentry programs to emphasize that they require candidates have a career break for eligibility and encourage relaunchers to call out their Career Breaks.
Learn more about LinkedIn’s Career Break feature in this exclusive 3, 2, 1 iRelaunch podcast interview we did with LinkedIn’s Bef Ayenew, Engineering Leader of the LinkedIn profile page and a major force behind the new Career Breaks category.
The big problem that it solves:
Historically one of the big pain points in employer recruiting for their career reentry programs is missing qualified candidates. If relaunchers do not call out their career breaks clearly, recruiters can mistake their volunteer work or other activities for work experience and overlook them, or never find them in the first place. There has never been a standardized way to call out the career break...until now.
Why is LinkedIn's Career Break Feature such a game changer?
Because it will help more relaunchers get hired than ever before!
Employers can use the feature to source for their career reentry programs
- The Career Break category will allow employers to clearly identify eligible applicants and minimize ineligible applicants
- Employers can now do a key word search using “Career Break” and source even more relaunchers directly on LinkedIn.
Relaunchers now have a standardized way to highlight their career breaks
- Together with their paid work experiences, the Career Break category will allow relaunchers to illustrate the full scope of their backgrounds, demonstrating why we call them “gems of the workforce”
- Qualities of relaunchers that make them great employees: they are educated with great work experience, a mature perspective, are grounded and self-aware, in a stable life stage, and possess a keen sense of where they can add value at an employer. They are familiar with work deadlines, working with different personalities, multi-generational work teams, and have an excitement and enthusiasm about being back at work because they have been away from it for so long.
Why it’s such a milestone moment
In March 2021, LinkedIn made the initial announcement about adding stay at home parent leave designations to the prepopulated dropdown menus for profile building. Because of LinkedIn’s role as the arbiter of career path profiling, the standardization of this leave category was a validation of the career break as part of the career path. iRelaunch’s Carol Fishman Cohen wrote about this milestone moment in the HBR article below about the significance of LinkedIn’s March 2021 announcement to the “institutional shift” required to normalize career breaks. Little did we know at the time what LinkedIn had in store for us with the momentous Career Breaks profile category announced March 1, 2022.
Read the HBR article
Calling out the “Career Break”
We have long recommended that when relaunchers are applying for these programs that they actually call out “Career Break” on their resume, and in the description include experiences during the career break relevant to a relauncher’s career goals. Examples are relevant coursework and volunteer work, GitHub portfolios of technical problem solving, even occasional consulting, substitute teaching, or other pursuits during the career break, as most employers consider these experiences within the definition of career break for the purposes of their programs. However there has never been a standardized way to call out the career break until now.
Explore LinkedIn's Career Break Feature
To accelerate and expand the reach of this message, we've launched our #CallOutYourBreak campaign.
The more employers sending this message, the more comfortable relaunchers will be disclosing their career breaks. If this happens at scale, any remaining stigma attached to taking a career break will disappear.
LinkedIn’s own data found that in 2021 the share of US job postings mentioning career breaks was up 63% from 2020, and increased nearly 100% from 2018.
Source: Global LinkedIn Data
As more employer career reentry programs launch, and existing programs expand and run longer, we know the demand for this “hidden talent pool” will continue to increase. This makes the need for relaunchers to identify themselves as having a career break even more acute.
The complete reframing of the career break from a red flag, where a gap on one's resume meant it would be tossed, to now being a requirement in order to apply for career reentry programs, is an important milestone in the institutional shift to normalize career breaks.
So, how do I stay involved?
Details on how to stay involved with in iRelaunch's #CallOutYourBreak Campaign
Don't forget!
Follow Us On Social
Be sure to follow us on social to see this institutional shift take place in real time and to follow along with all the stories of relaunchers calling out their career breaks and of the progressive employers who are encouraging relaunchers to call out their career breaks!
And of course, be sure to use the hashtag #CallOutYourBreak to help us continue the conversation and drive change forward.
Follow iRelaunch on:
LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
And follow CEO and Co-founder Carol Fishman Cohen on LinkedIn!!
Finally, subscribe to iRelaunch's #CallOutYourBreak Newsletter on LinkedIn to see employers championing career breaks and the stories of how relaunchers are calling out their career breaks.