What Hiring Managers Ought to Know About Mother’s Day

Don’t buy me flowers for Mother’s Day. They die. Don’t buy me chocolate either because it makes me fat. Mimosas won’t work because I’m nursing twins and sleeping is a pipe dream for 2014. So when I was asked what I wanted for Mother’s Day, I decided to think about it as a profession-oriented career coach who has built her practice encouraging mothers to reevaluate their contributions at home in preparation for their reentry into the workforce.

What does this career-focused mom want for Mother’s Day from her men (I have three boys, one toddler and baby twins)? My request is forward-looking. Boys, when you grow up to become men in positions of power, I want you to champion prospective hires who are mothers and made the risky decision to leave the workforce, whether for one year or 10 years.

Instead of seeing their “mom” time as an employment gap, count that time as their focusing on mitigating costs. Evaluate her accomplishments on the same playing field as that of executives, consider her childrearing years as career-building rather than career-destroying, and pay for the new skill sets that she acquired as a people leader of her household. Here’s why, and later, I’ll explain how.

Few women reenter the workforce full time. About 43% of professional women leave their jobs after having children. Out of that number, 74% of those females will rejoin the workforce in any capacity, and about 40% return full time, all according to a recent study from the Center for Work-Life Policy. Some moms don’t want to return. Others are given poor job offers that penalize them for their decision. My focus is on preventing the latter under your watch. Now, I anticipate that for the next eighteen years on every Mother’s Day, you will say how much you appreciate my sacrifices and contributions to shaping the men you are. So take a leap. Give the same dignity to mothers like myself in a professional setting. Just like we moms don’t leave our wallet-sized pictures of you at home when we go to the office, we also don’t leave at home our ability to drive change in individuals as well as organizations.