Latest / The Comeback Career Podcast with Fexingo: Returning After a Gap, Stay-at-Home Re-Entry / How a Career Gap Can Build Transferable Skills for Any Job
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to start with something I heard from a listener last week. She said she'd been out of the paid workforce for six years raising two kids, and she felt like she had 'nothing to put on a resume.' Luna: I hear that all the time. It's heartbreaking because it's just not true, but she probably believed it. Lucas: Right. And the thing is, hiring managers actually agree—at least according to a 2025 study from the Society for Human Resource Management. They surveyed over 2,000 hiring managers, and 82 percent said they value transferable skills more than specific job titles. Luna: Eighty-two percent. That's huge. So the listener's problem isn't that she lacks skills—it's that she hasn't learned how to translate them. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what we're going to do today. We're going to pick a very concrete example and walk through the translation process step by step. Luna: Let's do it. What's the example? Lucas: Let's say a stay-at-home parent coordinated their child's school's annual fundraiser. Sounds simple, right? But unpack what that actually involves. Luna: Okay, I'm listening. Name one thing. Lucas: Project management. She had a deadline—the event date. She had a budget—maybe fifteen thousand dollars. She had a team of volunteer leads. She had to manage timelines, communications, and a post-event wrap-up. That's textbook project management. Luna: And it's not just 'planned a party.' That's a four-month initiative with multiple stakeholders. If she had done that at a company, she'd call herself a project coordinator. Lucas: Exactly. Then there's budget oversight. Fifteen thousand dollars—she had to track income from sponsorships and ticket sales, manage expenses for the venue, food, and supplies, and report back to the PTA board. That's a financial accountability role. Luna: And vendor negotiation. She probably talked to caterers, printers for flyers, maybe a bounce-house rental company. All of that is vendor management. Lucas: Right. And communication. She wrote emails to parents, created sign-up sheets, maybe a newsletter. That's stakeholder communication and basic marketing. Luna: So when she says 'I just planned a bake sale,' she's underselling herself by a mile. Lucas: A mile. So here's the framework I want to offer. It's three steps. Step one: list every activity you did during your gap—big or small. Step two: for each activity, ask 'What workplace competency does this map to?' Step three: rewrite it in professional language. Luna: Can we do that live? Take one activity from that fundraiser and rewrite it? Lucas: Sure. Take the budget piece. Instead of 'I managed the PTA budget,' you could write: 'Managed a $15,000 budget for a community event, tracking revenue and expenses, and reporting variances to a board of directors.' Luna: That sounds like a finance role. And it's completely true. Lucas: Completely true. And that's the key. You're not inventing anything—you're just describing it in the language hiring managers use. Luna: You know, I had a friend who did exactly this. She was a stay-at-home mom for eight years, and during that time she wrote the weekly PTA newsletter. She redesigned it, grew the readership, and even started a small sponsorship program to cover printing costs. Lucas: That's a content strategy portfolio. Did she use it? Luna: She did. She wanted a marketing coordinator role. We reframed the newsletter as a digital publication with a distribution list of 400 subscribers, a 40 percent open rate, and ad revenue of a hundred dollars a month. She got the job. Lucas: Because she stopped saying 'I did the PTA newsletter' and started saying 'I managed a content marketing program.' Both are true. One just opens doors. Luna: And that's the mindset shift. You're not lying. You're translating. Lucas: And honestly, if today's insight was worth a coffee to you, you can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That link helps us keep the podcast ad-free and focused on practical help like this. Luna: Yeah, listener support makes a real difference. We appreciate every single one. Lucas: So back to the framework. Step two is the hardest because it requires you to think like a hiring manager. Let's practice with a few more gap activities. Luna: What about someone who volunteered at a food bank? That could be logistics, inventory management, or even team leadership. Lucas: Absolutely. A food bank volunteer who organizes the weekly distribution is basically running a supply chain. They're managing inventory, coordinating pickups, and ensuring quality control. That's operations. Luna: Or someone who coached a youth soccer team. That's team management, conflict resolution, and scheduling. Lucas: Right. And don't forget the parent who managed their household's renovation. That's vendor management, budget tracking, timeline management, and quality assurance. It's a construction project manager role. Luna: I think the biggest barrier is confidence. People don't believe their unpaid work counts. Lucas: And that's partly because the language we use for unpaid work is so domestic. 'I drove the kids to practice' becomes 'managed a complex transportation schedule for multiple individuals with competing priorities.' Luna: It sounds silly when you say it that way, but it's accurate. And it shows you can handle logistics. Lucas: Exactly. So the next time you're updating your resume, don't leave a blank space for those years. Fill it with a 'Professional Development and Community Leadership' section. Luna: And list three to five bullet points that map to the job you want. Not everything you did—just the relevant ones. Lucas: One more thing. The SHRM study also found that 76 percent of hiring managers said they would be more likely to interview a candidate who clearly demonstrated transferable skills from non-traditional experience. Luna: So the data backs it up. You're not just hoping it works—you're using a proven strategy. Lucas: Right. And if you're still unsure, find someone in your target industry and ask them to look at your translated resume. A fresh pair of eyes can catch opportunities you missed. Luna: I'd add one thing: practice telling your story out loud. It's one thing to write it, another to say 'I managed a $15,000 budget' in an interview without flinching. Lucas: Great point. So to wrap it up: your gap is not a void. It's a laboratory where you built real, transferable skills. You just need to translate them. Luna: And once you do, that 82 percent of hiring managers are ready to listen. Lucas: Next week, we're going to talk about how to find those hiring managers in the first place—specifically, how to use LinkedIn to connect with people who have hired returners before. See you then.