Latest / The Comeback Career Podcast with Fexingo: Returning After a Gap, Stay-at-Home Re-Entry / How a Career Gap Helped One Parent Land a Hybrid Role in Nonprofit Operations
Transcript
- Lucas: Priya Mehta spent seven years out of the paid workforce. Not traveling. Not freelancing. She was a full-time caregiver for her aging parents, first for her mother after a stroke, then for her father after a dementia diagnosis. Luna: That's a long stretch. I imagine she worried about how to frame that on a resume. Lucas: She did. And she told me that when she started looking for work in early 2025, every job posting asked for two to three years of recent, continuous experience. She didn't have that. Lucas: But she did have something else: in those seven years, she'd managed medications, coordinated home health aides, negotiated with insurance companies, and kept a household running on a tight budget. Those are real skills. Luna: Right, but employers don't always see it that way. Did she have to find a specific kind of employer who was open to that? Lucas: Exactly. She targeted nonprofit organizations, specifically community health centers. Her reasoning was that those organizations understand caregiving intrinsically. They see the value of someone who can manage complexity under stress. Lucas: She applied for a part-time administrative assistant contract at a community health center in Portland, Oregon. The role paid $22 an hour. It was only twenty hours a week, but it was hybrid — two days in the office, three days remote. Luna: A contract role, part-time, after a seven-year gap. That's a big step down from her previous role as a marketing coordinator. But it got her foot in the door. Lucas: It did. And she was strategic about how she presented herself. On her resume, she didn't just write 'caregiver.' She wrote 'Family Care Coordinator: managed patient care plans, coordinated with five specialist providers, reconciled monthly medical billing.' Luna: That reframing is everything. She translated her unpaid labor into the language of the job description. Lucas: Exactly. And in the interview, she talked about how she'd learned to prioritize tasks under pressure, how she'd built systems to manage medication schedules and appointments. The hiring manager told her later that her ability to describe those systems was what set her apart. Lucas: She started the contract in March 2025. Within three months, the organization had a shortage in their operations team. Priya volunteered to take on extra projects — updating the staff handbook, streamlining the intake process for new patients. Luna: So she used the contract as a proving ground. And it worked. Lucas: In June 2025, the operations manager role opened up. She applied internally. The CEO told her that her initiative on those projects made her the obvious choice. She got the job at fifty-five thousand a year, full time, hybrid schedule. Luna: That's a great outcome. But I wonder — how typical is that path? Not everyone has a community health center nearby, or the ability to take a part-time contract. Lucas: Fair point. But there's a broader trend here. More nonprofits are creating what are essentially 'returnships' — structured reentry programs for parents and caregivers. The National Council of Nonprofits reports that about 15 percent of mid-sized nonprofits now offer some form of reentry pathway. Lucas: And many of them specifically design these roles to be hybrid or remote, which matters for parents who still have caregiving responsibilities. Luna: Priya's story also shows the importance of picking an industry where your gap experience is actually an asset. Caregiving is a liability on Wall Street, but it's a credential at a community health center. Lucas: That's the key insight. She didn't try to hide the gap. She built a narrative around it. She said in the interview, 'I spent seven years learning how to manage complex, high-stakes situations with limited resources. That's what I'll bring to your operations team.' Luna: I think a lot of listeners who are in a similar position struggle with the confidence to say that. They feel like the gap erased their professional identity. Lucas: Priya admitted that too. She said the first time she wrote 'family care coordinator' on her resume, it felt like a lie. But it wasn't. It was just a more honest description of what she'd actually been doing. Luna: And now she's in a permanent role with a hybrid schedule, earning a solid salary, and she's back in the workforce with a new career trajectory. Lucas: We talk a lot on this show about strategies for reentry. And I think one of the reasons we keep coming back to stories like Priya's is that they remind us that a gap doesn't have to be a dead end. It can be a pivot point. Lucas: Before we wrap up, I want to mention something. This show exists because listeners support it. We deliberately don't run ads — no sponsors, no midroll interruptions. And that choice is only possible because of people who visit buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: If you've gotten something useful out of an episode like this one, that link is a simple way to keep the show independent and ad-free. No pressure, just a heads-up. Lucas: Alright. Back to Priya. One thing she told me that stuck with me: after she got the operations manager role, she looked back at her seven years away and realized she'd actually been building a resume in project management and crisis management the whole time. She just didn't know it. Luna: That's a powerful reframe. And it's a good reminder that the skills we build outside of formal employment are still real skills. Lucas: For anyone listening who's in the middle of a gap right now, Priya's advice was: start documenting what you do. Keep a weekly log of tasks, decisions, and problems you solved. When you're ready to return, you'll have a portfolio of proof, not just a story. Luna: And target organizations that understand your context. Nonprofits, healthcare, education — places where caregiving is seen as relevant experience. Lucas: Priya's next goal is to eventually become a director of operations at a larger health center. And I think she'll get there. Because she's already proven she can turn a seven-year gap into a career launchpad.