Bringing Women on a Career Break to the Table with Industry Mentors

On a rainy Saturday in Mumbai, women on a career-break (including one whose break hadn’t yet started – 8 months pregnant!) gathered in the in Bandra-Kurla Complex to meet leaders of industry who had come together to MentorForHer spearheaded by connecting portal for women on a career break - JobsForHer. The idea? Get the women on a break to recognize the possibilities of coming back to work.

The women who attended had taken breaks for a variety of reasons and a range of years and months. But they shared one common, unpleasant, and debilitating phenomenon – diminished self-confidence.

Also Read: Work From Home Possibilities For Women

What was missing? Not the talent for sure. They didn’t think they still had it, and they didn’t think that the workforce needed them back in their career-saddles. Because, until this meet-up they’d only been hearing the voices inside their heads telling them that they should restart, but no voices from the other side – the companies – telling them the same. And so, they believed they were redundant and replaceable.

But they aren’t. And companies aren’t saying it enough.

Dimple Pawar, on a break for 10 years said, “Things that we know but we’ve pushed to the back of our mind because we haven’t prioritized them, or looked at situations from a different angle. It all really helped me and I’m going to work on myself and see how quickly I can now get back to work, again!”

SheThePeople.TV is a proud partner to this effort by Jobs For Her

Sonali Sinha, Founder & CEO – Soaring Eagles, said, “It’s amazing to see the kind of talent that’s out there in these women who’ve left the workforce. All they need is a little bit of guidance and confidence to restart.”

These women come with qualifications, experience, and no-notice period – everything that companies need to take their business, their turnover and their bottom-line to the heights that they envision, but can’t reach yet. And hand in hand with JobsForHer were SheThePeople.TV, KLAY, Women’s Web, World of Mums that this is a movement that needs to gain momentum, right now.

The biggest motivation for them was that they weren’t alone. There were so many other women in the same boat as them, facing the same internal and external struggles, with the same dare to dream attitude.

Bringing them back to work: Highlights from Mumbai leg of MentorForHer

Anju Kishore, Director of HR at Teach For India said, “It’s one of its kind in India right now, and very necessary. It is so overwhelming to meet SO MANY women who want to get back to work. It gives us a platform, one-to-one, to 1) share our story as an individual, and 2) to present ourselves as an employer. An absolute win-win opportunity for anyone who wants to recruit very, very skilled and very, very passionate women back into the workforce.”