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Finding a new job is not easy, and finding one during pregnancy or after giving birth is 10 times more difficult. I returned to work after my first 10-week maternity leave. Although I loved my job and my team, because I was facing so many new challenges in my life at the same time, my previous work style did not suit me – I was ready to take on something new. There were so many moments where I doubted myself, cried after a long day and just didn’t know how long it would take to get there. In the end, I chose a job I’m really passionate about and negotiated my compensation to match the remaining 4 weeks of maternity leave. So far it’s been great here on Pinterest.
Jobs To Do While On Maternity Leave
Then I wondered how others dealt with job hunting during this major life change: I can’t be the only one, right? What circumstances did they face and how did they overcome the challenges? I asked some of my closest moms the following questions and would like to share them here. We hope we can enlighten mothers/mothers-to-be who are hesitant to change careers.
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Lia McLean is a PM ML / Recommendation Systems / Ranking with almost 8 IOEs from several large companies. She joined Twitter about a year ago, where she serves as director of product management, responsible for positioning and personalization strategy across the company. She has a very energetic, intelligent and curious two-year-old boy, who she gave birth to in the first week of isolation at the beginning of the pandemic, and was later diagnosed with autism at the age of 14 months.
Wendy Lynn is a product manager at Pinterest. After returning from parental leave to her previous job, she decided to start a business. He worked at a startup for 6 months before he started looking for a job, looking for a work-life balance. In the midst of her job search, she discovered she was pregnant again; when she got the offers, she was halfway through her pregnancy. She joined Pinterest in early 2022 and is very happy with the decision (although she still wants to read startup news at night…)
Tuganai Borina is currently the manager of the online business where he leads the sales of electronics and accessories for Dell. She gave birth to Maya while attending the full-time MBA program at the McCombs School of Business.
Holly Huo currently works at Google as a BizOps Strategic Program Manager and is Sonja’s mother. It wasn’t until Sonja turned a year old that she started looking for a job change and successfully took advantage of several opportunities and made a career transition a few months ago.
Changing Jobs While On Maternity Leave
Chinmaiee Rathi is a product manager at Meta, where she works on AR products to make video calls more fun and engaging. Prior to Meta, he worked at PayPal and Cisco Building Platform and B2B products. While completing her MBA at Berkeley Haas, she developed an interest in the consumer software space as a way to advance her professional skills, which led her to an opportunity at Metta shortly after giving birth to her child.
Lia: I’m very ambitious, so pursuing new challenges and opportunities is part of who I am (thanks to my ENTJ personality type and Asperger’s brain). Whenever something really interesting comes up that’s part of a company’s critical path, I’m always interested in learning more, regardless of my personal circumstances. In mid-2020, during my maternity leave, Twitter found a very promising position that led me to choose to leave Facebook (my previous employer right before Twitter) after I finished my leave and confirmed that there was nothing more exciting where I was already. Simply put, I constantly assess the situation and regularly make a conscious decision to stay or move on. You may say I’m so weird but I can’t help it 🙂
Holly: I have been working for the same company for 5 years since I graduated in business. However, I took on different roles within the company to learn and be challenged, so changing jobs wasn’t strange to me. When Sonya turned one, I felt that my life was finally no longer in chaotic, fire-fighting mode, so it was possible to jump out of my comfort zone and see what perspectives other companies could offer.
My biggest challenge was time and priorities. Everything seemed important: a new person to care for, tests to be done, recovery from the c-section, finding a job, and supporting my husband as he started his business.
Ramp Up Your Career After Parental Leave
Lia: All I wanted to do was spend time with my kids and sleep, but joining a new company, especially for someone like me who can’t help but work hard, wasn’t an option. In the end, I had to choose my priorities even more difficult than ever, and the things that fell from the top tasks on my list were my health and well-being. I excelled in business, got my PhD in <1 year. I spent a lot of time with my son, paying attention to everything, to the point where I noticed that there were some behavioral abnormalities that led to his super early diagnosis. I also found time for housework, took care of the accommodation of the dog (I have 3 enthusiastic children in addition to one man) and even hosted guests from time to time. What I didn't have time for was sleep, good nutrition, exercise, personal interests and hobbies. This had a huge negative impact on my health and it took me over a year and a half to finally get my priorities back.
Tuganai: My biggest challenge was time and priorities. Everything seemed important: a new person to care for, tests to be done, recovery from the c-section, finding a job, and supporting my husband as he started his business. Not having close family and the Covid vaccine made it even harder for our family of three.
Wendy: There are two big challenges with changing jobs while pregnant: when you tell a company you’re pregnant and when you tell companies you’re pregnant, it adds another step to the process where some offers are eliminated.
As for the first challenge, some people say it in the first interview, and others don’t say it until they accept the offer. I told each of the hiring managers this after I negotiated the offer, but before I accepted it. I highly recommend sharing the news at this point because 1) it gives you a clear vision of how supportive your manager will be, 2) it seems pretty fair to the manager himself, with whom you are building a relationship, 3) it gives you reassurance that there will be no risk to your the ability to take leave if you call and 4) allows you to check what the parental leave policies are.
Help! My Company (and My Role) Went Through A Major Change Or Reorg While I Was Out On Parental Leave
Finally, some general stress reduction tips: In the grand scheme of things, 4-6 months of downtime is a very small amount of time in a company’s timeline, and none of it is significant enough to kill the company if you’re leaving in 4-6 months. On the other hand, it will be very important for you to connect those 4-6 months with your child. Therefore, I would resist the temptation to offer to part with less debt.
Holly: In my case, the biggest challenge was lack of time. Being a working mother takes up a lot of time because I wanted to spend time with my girlfriend while I was overwhelmed with work tasks; job hunting takes a long time (at least for most of us) to prepare; I haven’t slept yet and homework doesn’t come alone. However, we only have 24 hours in a day. Added to this is “mother’s guilt”. I was in a bad state for a long time when I thought that due to lack of time I wanted to be good at everything, but in reality I failed at everything. It tested my prioritization skills.
Chinmaiee: The biggest challenge for me was starting my job search while dealing with the uncertainties and stress of maternity leave. As a first-time mom, it’s hard to anticipate all the challenges you might face, so preparing for an interview or joining a new company can really feel like a bigger hurdle than any other time in your life. Being a new parent is an exciting time, so it’s crucial to give yourself space to feel all your emotions as you find a new balance between work and home life. Talk to other women and men who have made these changes – it’s helpful to hear different perspectives.
Lia: No, just me and mine