Enlisting the help of recruiters to re-join professions after career breaks

We’ve looked at recruitment agencies specialising in library and professional work. (See the guest interview with Simon Burton, Director, CB Resourcing.) Now we have an opportunity to speak with someone who understands the benefit of using recruitment agencies for return to work or returner candidates. Simon Gregory, one of the founders and managing partners of GPS Return and Returners’ Tribe, has agreed to be interviewed about the recruitment business and share this wisdom with library returner readers.

Simon, tell us about your recruitment company GPS Return and why you decided to start it.

Yes, well, thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to talk to you. So, GPS Return was launched in 2016 after my wife’s experiences of trying to return to work after a four-year break. So my background is recruitment. I fell face first into recruitment back in 2000. In 2005, we moved to Asia, supposedly for a one-year contract, but we ended up staying out there 10 years. Both the kids were born in in Malaysia and then we moved back in 2015 to bring the kids closer to the grandparents. And so Miranda had four years of being a full-time parent after developing and building a successful talent acquisition and HR career in Asia. But just hit roadblock after roadblock after roadblock here in the UK and then it all culminated with a recruiter saying to her, ‘I’m sorry we can’t help you. You’ve just been a mum for four years.’ So that was the spark that lit GPS Return.

In 2015, upon returning to the UK, I had launched my own business, GPS, and that business was growing and then we started to look at how do we support returners and predominantly parent returners but also people returning after caring for loved ones, illness or injury, and then towards the end of 2017, we put the original GPS business to bed and focused entirely on the returner market and since then really it grew from strength to strength up until COVID came along and ripped out the heart of the business. But a big drum that we were beating up was flexible working and of course COVID has encouraged a lot of businesses that were initially reluctant to look at flexibility to consider flexibility.

But during the lockdowns we developed the Returners Tribe, which is an online coaching platform to support people returning to work. If you like, GPS Return is all about giving people a fish. But the Returners’ Tribe is all about teaching them how to fish and giving them the confidence to do it themselves.

Do you think that barriers remain to easily returning to work after having a break – for example, for parents who return to work after having time out caring for children?

I think there are barriers on both sides, if I’m honest. There’s the obvious barriers from the employers where, you know, employment is a risk and that is true whether you’re recruiting somebody who’s currently working or somebody who’s returning to work from a career break. And the general consensus is that if you’re hiring somebody who is returning to work after career break, then that’s increasing your risk and the longer the career break, the larger amount of risk. And then obviously the longer the career break, there’s obviously this belief as well that it will take that person longer to get up to speed and start.

So for employers, the general feeling is that people are more comfortable hiring people that are currently working, and so there’s no ramp up speed or ramp up time, there’s reduced risk.

I think there’s an element of truth to that, but I don’t think there’s risks anywhere near as great as a lot of employers believe. And time after time where we’ve have placed people into roles who’ve had career breaks ranging from three years up to 10 years and they’ve been able to add value quickly to those organisations have been able to get to speed relatively quickly and companies have actually had such a positive experience with that, that actually they come back and say, right, we need another returner. And so, once you kind of get past and demonstrate that those perceptions are exaggerated and suddenly they become a lot more open to it.

But there’s another barrier as well, which is the returner. We often see that returners are putting those barriers in place themselves. They’re creating this idea that companies won’t want me or I’m not going to be good at my job anymore or it’s going to be really hard for me to return to work and can create this sort of really horrible landscape for themselves in which they feel like they now have to try and get across because of this general perception that hiring returners is not a good idea. So, our job is to try and work with the employer and reduce those exaggerated perceptions but also work with the returners themselves to try and remove the barriers that these people have put in place for themselves.

And is that with work, with the returners themselves to remove barriers, what you do with your sister company, Returners’ Tribe?

Yes. Yes, we do. Well, we do it on both sides, The Returners’ Tribe and GPS Return. With GPS Return, we work with people through the recruitment process and introduce them to companies and send them for interviews, and we do a lot of work with helping them prepare for those interviews, but it tends to be specific to that company or for that opportunity.

With the Returners’ Tribe, [its] a lot more general in terms of right, how do you and why that’s likely and how you’re thinking about which jobs you’re applying for and you might think about career change. You think about going back at the level you got before. Different people have different priorities. And so, you know, some people want to go back and get their career moving. Again, it’s money, career, money, career. There’re other people that think actually I’m quite happy taking a few steps back just so I can do a job that I know that I can do really well, but at home time I can close the laptop and focus 100% on the family and not have to worry about what else is going on. So, it does depend on those individuals, but the Returners’ Tribe is all about helping people work them out for themselves, work out what path they want to walk and then giving them the confidence to be able to do that on their own. Whereas with GPS Return we do a lot more handholding.

Is there any advice you would give to returners about how to fill out standard application forms if they have non-standard experience, for example, perhaps they’ve volunteered recently rather than been in paid work?

The companies are generally looking for impact. So they want to know if you’re applying for this job, if we hire you in this job, have you had any relevant recent experience in which we can say, yes, we can see that you’ve done that job before, you’ve made an impact on the organisation, whether that was voluntary or employed work. And so, there’s evidence that you can have impact with those in the future. Whether it’s writing out a general application form or writing out CV, they make it (impact). This is what I’ve done. So in a sense of a librarian, you know, I’ve been very basic with my knowledge of what a librarian really does! But in the sense that a librarian CV might read, I organised books, I help deal with queries. I do this, I do that well. That’s what I expect the librarian to do. What I want to know is actually the impact that you’ve had. So how big were the libraries that you were working on? How many customers are you working with on a daily basis? How complex are those queries that you’re working with? Have you brought in new ways of working which actually have improved the library experience for the people that use that library? Have you been involved in project management? The change management of these sorts of things.

And before your readers start to get a bit worried about saying, well, maybe I haven’t done any of those, it’s thinking about what the job really needs. So, what is the job asking for? So, if the job is asking for, you know, an element of customer service and dealing with those queries. That’s the opportunity to say I’ve done that, and here’s the evidence I’ve done it really well. And just making sure that it’s not just. Yeah, I’ve done it tick the box, but I’ve done it and I’m really good at it. And here’s the evidence. And so, the more that they can do that the more they can evidence the fact that they’ve done those aspects, whether it’s a voluntary role or a paid role or something else completely different. And then, you know, companies are going to buy into that and be interested about that.

Some returners take lower paid / entry level work as their way back into employment. How do you view this if their eventual aim is flexible professional work.

I have two views on this. One is I get very frustrated and wound up by people feeling the need to take significant pay cuts or take a step back to get flexibility. If that’s driven by, you know, I guess that the people who do that, who take entry level work or take significant pay cuts to return to work or either driven by two different motivators and one is I need flexibility to be both the parent and the professional. I want to be, for example, or I need flexibility because some don’t have cancer anymore. It still takes, you know, takes a few years to recover from the treatment of cancer. And so they don’t have the energy levels. So it becomes about sustainable work. So they, you know, they want flexibility for that regard. And if you, your priority is money and career, but actually flexibility is #1 and you’ve been convinced by a recruiter or by not really talking to an expert like GPS Return. And you’ve convinced yourself that that’s what you need to do. Then I get very frustrated by that because essentially, in my opinion, that is employers taking advantage of people who are a little bit vulnerable who are not quite sure what it is, how to go about finding a job that is actually going to pay them what they’re worth, what their experience and skills and knowledge is worth, and companies to recognise. And actually, we can get somebody here who’s way overqualified for the job, but we’re going to pay them 20% less. Because we can get. So that really winds me up.

The other side of that coin is people who are going, say, maybe you’re doing a career change or actually, as I mentioned before, people who say they don’t want the high stress opportunity, they want a job, they can just know that they can do and then walk away from and be 100% present at home. And there’s a lot of value to that. If people are making that career change or and have different priorities, and they’ve made that conscious choice to say this is what I’m going to do. So that’s quite a brave decision to make and it’s easy to pigeonhole people into ‘or you’ve done an entry level role you know, what have you done wrong kind of thing’, when in reality it’s actually, ‘this is a conscious choice. It’s what’s right for me and what’s right for my family or what’s right for my situation.’ And that makes sense. So, depending on the circumstances or either kind of, I’m ready to punch my way through walls to change it, or I’m putting people on the back and going you know, well done for making the choice to try for you.

Sometimes you can be asked (expected) to do entry work. To update your experience. It’s not at returner (professional) level so it can backfire too, I think.

Yes, … we worked with a returner. She wanted to do a change of career. She’d worked in event management for a while before going into wanting to make that change into HR. And so, she took quite a big step back in terms of role, scope and salary. But was confident in her own ability to be able to climb that ladder pretty quickly, and we placed her. Almost four years ago. Actually, four years next month. So we placed her into that role and she’s been promoted three times in four years. That was one success story. Or somebody sort of being able to write. ‘ I’m confident I can do this. I just need to learn the skills. And then the job.’ But likewise, we’ve had scenarios where people have been told a good story of, you know, our starting entry level, climb, climb, climb and then they’ve been constantly pushed down. And again, companies taking advantage of the fact that these are individuals who they know they get a lot more from, you know, to put it very bluntly, they’re getting £40,000 a year’s worth of work from somebody. They’re paying twenty, £25,000, and they’re not willing to change that.

 If someone approaches you for general advice on how to restart their career, what do you say?

My first question is, do you understand your priorities? Have you thoughts about what’s the most important to you? Is it money? Is it location? Is it flexibility? And if so, what kind of flexibility is it career? Is it a career change? You know have you put that much thought into it? And most people, when they think about returning, the first thing they do is they start writing a CV. What they’ve done there is gone from step zero to Step 4 because they haven’t thought about their priorities. They haven’t thought about kind of business, they haven’t even put a bit time and effort into going do I want to go back and do the same job as before or do I want a complete career change or do I just want to change direction slightly? It’s taking those steps.

So, if somebody came to us and said I want to return, my first question is, have you thought about the priorities, your values, the business organisations out there, the kind of job that you want? And then start thinking about your CV. Because when you’re writing a CV, when you’re not sure what you want to do, your CV reflects that. It comes across as a bit confused and unimpressive, but as you’ve taken that time to figure out what it is you want to do, and you write a CV for the job that you want, referencing everything that job is looking for and talking about how good you are at those elements, and suddenly you’ve got an impressive CV that’s actually going to get you through the door and get you interviews. So that would be and that is 99% of the time, the first question I’m asking, have you thought about actually what it is that you really want to do?

Knocks to confidence and feeling like a failure can often be part of the returners emotional journey. How do GPS Return or The Returners’ Tribe manage a returner’s emotions?

Everybody’s different. Everybody has their own little cocktail of emotions and so we are very careful to make sure that and who we’re talking to and what we’re talking about is specific to them and their needs. So, there’s no generic blanket this is going to work. There are tools that we recommend that people do use to help with their self-confidence and you know, my personal favourite is what we call the Confidence Journal and that is simply taking a fresh notebook or notes and you found something, somewhere where you can refer back to on a regular basis and start writing down all your achievements, personal and professional, everything that you’ve done, that you’re proud of, whether it is swimming 25 metres when you’re eight years old, getting your DofE Gold award, climbing Kilimanjaro, being promoted, achieving that project, making that target, whatever it might be, you write it down.

And it takes a few days because you keep sort of referring back to any, oh, yeah, I did that too. And you, you write something else, but then you get to that point where you feel like you’ve written everything that you’re proud of to date.

So you read it on a regular basis and remind yourself how good you are at what you do, whether it is personal or professional … you’re excited when people pat you on the back and say well done, that was amazing. And then when new things happen that you’re proud of, they go in the Confidence Journal as well and you just build up this list.

And it’s such an important thing to remind people because that’s essentially what people have forgotten when they’re taking a career break. They’ve been so focused on a family or dealing with illness or caring for others or whatever it might be that they’re taking a career break for that they’ve forgotten everything that they’re good at. And so reminding themselves about what they’re good at, reminding themselves about the impact they had reminding themselves about the fact that people really valued them and the work that they did is a really good boost to that self-confidence levels and it’s also really helpful from a perspective of writing your CV and going into interviews. And when people are asking for examples, and you’ve already reminded yourself of those examples. And so that’s one of the steps that we tend to recommend, and to most people.

Finally, do you think employers are aware of the value of returners and what benefits they can bring to a workplace? 

No. Employees generally are not, and we spend a lot of time trying to educate. I tend to turn around to employers, I present a lot to rooms of employers, and I turn around, and say what if I can provide you a team of people who are more productive, more profitable, will save your business money, more committed to your business, will take fewer absence days and that will help your business grow and succeed. You know, and of course they all put their hands up. Yeah, we want that right.

Here is a profile of a returner who’s been out of work for three years, who’s still interested, and 75% of them will immediately put their hand down because they can’t believe that actually someone who has been demonstrated in countless studies from organisations like Women Returners and things like this, but also Deloitte and Ernst and Young KPMG have done studies as well, showing how much more productive and profitable and how much more money is saved when you bring in returners and the general sort of culture of an  office has improved.

And on top of that, if you’re offering the flexibility that these people are looking for that benefits everybody. You’re able then to demonstrate through these studies that have been carried out by some very reputable organisations and as to the value that returners can bring to an organisation and suddenly you start to see the opinion of the room change. So, as I say, most organisations don’t have that idea. They’re going back to these false and exaggerated perceptions of how much more difficult it would be, or how much of a risk it would be to bring in a returner compared to actually what all these studies have demonstrated. So, it’s an ongoing battle that we’re facing on a daily basis, working with companies who have these perceptions and trying to convince them actually it’s not just us. We’re not just saying it’s not just our made-up marketing material that’s trying to convince you. It’s all this science behind this, which is demonstrated that the people we’re representing are going to add value to your business and help your business succeed.

Thank you, Simon, for spending time with us at libraryreturners.com, for participating in this interview, for answering the questions fully and with such patience. (NB: Simon has expressed that he is happy to be contacted if you have any further questions. You can contact direct using enquiry@gpsreturn.co.uk or the contact form on the GPS Return website.)

I’m sure blog regulars will have much to consider. If you would like to leave a comment about this interview, please do so. Perhaps these takeaways will encourage you!

Takeaway #1: As returners, do you recognise any of these behaviours? Are you putting barriers in place preventing you from moving forward in your job search?

Takeaway #2: I found the advice about what you should include in application forms and CVs very effective. Have you considered your impact on your past present and future workplaces? Anyone becoming professionally registered or revalidated by CILIP would already be a good position to collect and demonstrate this evidence!

Takeaway #3: A key question raised by Simon – have you thought about actually what it is that you really want to do?