Latest / The Comeback Career Podcast with Fexingo: Returning After a Gap, Stay-at-Home Re-Entry / How Returnees Rebuild Professional Identity
Transcript
- Lucas: The hardest part about returning to the workforce after a significant gap isn't usually the technical skills you forgot, or even the salary negotiation. It's the sudden, jarring collision between who you were and who you are now being asked to be. I've been talking to a few listeners who describe this as a kind of professional vertigo. Luna: Yeah, exactly. You spent three years being the decision-maker, maybe running a team, and then you walk back in and you're assigned to update a spreadsheet in Excel. That status drop is brutal. Lucas: It is. And most advice columns tell you to 'lean in' or 'show your passion,' which sounds great until you realize you have to prove you can handle the mundane details again without feeling insulted. Let's look at Sarah, a listener who wrote in last week. She was a senior marketing director before taking five years off for family care. When she returned, she landed a role as a senior individual contributor. Her first month was a disaster of her own making, not because she lacked talent, but because she couldn't adjust her behavior. Luna: Oh no. What did she do wrong? Lucas: She kept operating at the strategic level when her new manager needed tactical execution. In meetings, she would jump ahead to the quarterly roadmap while the team was still trying to fix a bug in the current launch. She wasn't being difficult on purpose; she was just stuck in her old mode. She thought her experience gave her the right to skip steps. Instead, it made her look out of touch. Luna: That makes total sense. If you've been away, you might assume the basics are rusty, so you overcompensate by going straight to high-level strategy to show you're still sharp. But that actually signals you don't respect the current workflow. Lucas: Exactly. Sarah realized she had to consciously downshift. She started asking her manager for very specific, small deliverables to prove she could handle the ground game. It felt like humiliation at first, like she was proving she was dumb. But within six weeks, her team started trusting her again because they saw she was willing to do the dirty work. Luna: So it's less about what you know and more about demonstrating you're willing to play by the current rules, even if they feel beneath you. Lucas: Right. And this brings us to the core issue: rebuilding professional identity. When you come back, you aren't just bringing your skills; you're bringing a ghost of your former self. People expect you to act like the Director you used to be, but you need to act like the Contributor you are now. Bridging that gap requires a lot of internal work. Luna: I love that framing. It's not a skill problem, it's an identity recalibration. How do you actually do that without losing your sense of self-worth? Lucas: You have to separate your value from your title. Sarah had to learn that her worth wasn't tied to having direct reports anymore. She found that by focusing on mentorship rather than management, she could keep using her experience without triggering that 'over-qualified' friction. She started coaching junior analysts informally, which gave her the leadership satisfaction she missed, but without the authority struggles. Luna: That's a smart pivot. Informal mentorship lets you exercise judgment without demanding compliance. It's a low-risk way to reintegrate. Lucas: It is. And it helps the team too, because they get free expertise. But here's the tricky part: Sarah also had to deal with the 'reference gap.' When she interviewed, she didn't have recent managers to vouch for her current work ethic. So she had to rely on peer references from people outside her immediate chain of command, which some hiring managers distrusted. Luna: That's a huge barrier. Hiring managers want that vertical validation. If you don't have a recent boss saying you showed up on time and met deadlines, they assume you won't. Lucas: Right. So Sarah had to get creative. She volunteered for a pro-bono project with a nonprofit during her job search, which gave her a recent, verifiable reference from a board member. It wasn't corporate, but it proved she could deliver under pressure. It was a bridge reference. Luna: A bridge reference. I like that term. It shows initiative and keeps your skills fresh while solving the credibility problem. Lucas: Precisely. Now, let's pause for a moment. If today was actually useful to you, the way these stay ad-free is listener support — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's F. E. X. I. N. G. O. Luna: Thanks for keeping the content free and focused. It really helps us dig into these nuanced topics without the noise. Lucas: Back to Sarah. Once she got the job, the real test was the first ninety days. Most returnees think they need to hit the ground running with big ideas. But Sarah learned that her first goal should be listening tours. She set up one-on-ones with everyone on her team and asked one simple question: 'What is the one thing that frustrates you most about our current process?' Luna: That's brilliant. It shifts the dynamic from 'I'm the expert coming in to fix things' to 'I'm here to understand your pain points.' It builds immediate rapport. Lucas: It does. And it gives her data. She found that her team was bogged down by unnecessary approval layers. She didn't try to remove them all immediately—that would have looked like she was undermining her boss. Instead, she documented the bottlenecks and presented a solution in her thirty-day review. By then, she had built enough trust that her manager listened. Luna: So patience is key. You earn the right to change the system by first showing you understand why it exists. Lucas: Exactly. And this ties back to identity. She stopped seeing herself as a 'former director' and started seeing herself as a 'problem solver.' That mental shift allowed her to accept feedback without taking it personally. When her manager corrected her formatting on a report, she didn't think, 'He doesn't respect my seniority.' She thought, 'Okay, I need to align with their standards.' Luna: That emotional regulation is so critical. Returning workers often carry a chip on their shoulder about being underestimated. Dropping that chip is hard but necessary. Lucas: It is. And another thing Sarah did was she stopped hiding the gap. Early on, she tried to minimize it in conversations, saying 'I was just busy with family stuff.' But that created distance. Later, she owned it casually. 'I took five years off for caregiving, and now I'm eager to get back to deep work.' That honesty disarmed people. They respected her clarity. Luna: Owning the narrative removes the stigma. It turns the gap from a red flag into a life choice that demonstrates resilience and responsibility. Lucas: Right. And it filters out toxic employers quickly. If someone judges you harshly for that, you don't want to work there anyway. Sarah found that companies that valued diversity of experience responded much better to her openness. Luna: So authenticity acts as a screening tool. It’s efficient. Lucas: It is. Now, let's talk about the physical environment. Sarah mentioned that working remotely made the re-entry harder because she missed the informal cues. In an office, you pick up on tone, body language, and unwritten rules just by osmosis. At home, everything feels transactional. Luna: Yes. I remember when I came back from leave, Zoom calls felt sterile. I missed the water cooler chats where real information flows. How did she fix that? Lucas: She scheduled virtual coffees. Not for work, just to catch up. She reached out to former colleagues and said, 'I'd love to hear how you're doing, no agenda.' These conversations kept her network warm and gave her insights into industry shifts that weren't in the news. It also reminded her that she belonged in the ecosystem. Luna: That's such a simple but powerful tactic. Reconnecting human to human, not task to task. It rebuilds the social fabric. Lucas: Absolutely. And it combats the isolation that many returnees feel. You start to believe you're behind everyone else, but those calls show you that everyone is figuring it out as they go. The world hasn't moved on without you; it's just waiting for you to plug back in. Luna: That reassurance is huge. Imposter syndrome thrives in isolation. Connection starves it. Lucas: Spot on. So, to wrap this up, the lesson for returnees isn't just to update your LinkedIn or take a course. It's to actively manage your identity transition. Downshift your expectations, seek bridge references, listen more than you speak, own your story, and rebuild your network through genuine connection. Luna: And remember, the goal isn't to get back to where you were. It's to build something new, with the wisdom of your time away. Lucas: Exactly. Your gap years make you different, not deficient. The question is whether you can frame that difference as an asset rather than a liability. Luna: If you can do that, you'll find that the workplace needs your perspective more than ever. Lucas: We'll see how Sarah's story unfolds in next week's episode, where we tackle the long-term retention challenges for returnees. Until then, keep listening and keep connecting.