Have you noticed a sudden prevalence of Parenthood being listed as a job title in your contacts’ LinkedIn profiles?
Over the past week, there’s been a major push to support, and encourage, the inclusion of parenting as an actual job on the resume.
Likely due to the 2 million+ women who have stepped out of the workforce during COVID, media outlets like NBC are helping to popularize the concept of adding parenting to the resume.
There is a right way, and a wrong way, to incorporate a caregiving role into the resume. This approach has been useful for nearly 15 years.
Here’s what not to do:
Instead of adding a parenting role as a placeholder in the resume, make great use of the real estate by bringing out the most transferable and professional elements of the work.
When adding a parenting role into the resume, try to frame the experience as professionally as possible. Here are three tips:
1 – Include a job title. Titles that work: Chief Home Officer, Homeschool Instructor, Private Caregiver, and Academic Tutor.
2. Write action-driven result bullets that showcase what was accomplished. Don’t just list the tasks that were performed, but talk about the outcomes that were achieved as a result.
3 – Tie the content back to the actual field whenever possible. For instance, if the target role for the resume is a science-related job, emphasize any projects or activities related to science classes.
And lastly, only include parenting on the resume when there is an employment gap to account for.