15 New Skills You Can Add to Your Resume
after Becoming a Mom

By Alice Berg

Once you have figured out life after having a baby, you may want to return to work. However, finding a new job, with an employment gap from maternity leave, means that you have to polish up your resume. However, many women will probably add the skills they gained in their previous job. Few mothers recognize how valuable soft qualities acquired by becoming a mom are on their CV. Statistics show that 67% of hiring managers would employ job candidates with strong soft abilities even if their hard skills are weak.

While giving birth may significantly set you back career-wise, the experience also helps you acquire mom skills that you can add to the skills section of your resume.

In this article, you will see some of the mother skills you can leverage to make yourself more attractive to employers.

Effective Communication Skills

As a parent, you will have all manner of conversations with your children’s teachers, friends, other kid’s parents. Added to the thousands of conversations you will have with your children; you will learn to communicate positively, sympathetically and effectively. Demonstrating excellent communication ability is good for a stay at home mom resume.

Time Management Skills and Ability to Meet Deadlines

The first thing you will probably learn from motherhood is how to manage your time efficiently. As soon as your baby is born, there will be numerous tasks to do from feeding, clothing, bathing and changing their diaper. You soon get the hang of it and do take care of all these tasks like a pro. Time management is listed among the five most sought-after transferable skills by companies in 2019.

Decision Making and Problem Solving Skills

Raising children comes with several struggles. From potty training and fixing broken toys to mediating disagreements with their friends, there is always a problem that requires you to solve. Dealing with these challenges will mold you into a good decision-maker and problem solver and thus improve your career prospects.

Events Management Skills

As a parent, you are the planner and executor of your children’s birthday and other parties. You will learn how to budget, look for a venue, compile and manage the guest lists, and sort out food and drinks. Added to the preparation, you will also need to manage and supervise the event through to the end. Event planning and management are skills that many employers are looking for in job candidates.

Organization and Planning Skills

If there is one thing that nearly every mother learns in the first few weeks of having a child, it is to be a good planner. A typical day in the life of a mother involves an endless list of tasks to do. Every minute counts and so, you must have a plan for every day or week. For example, you must know what the family will eat when doing your weekly grocery shopping. Good organization skills are also great for any business, and more 39% of recruiters agree that it is a desirable quality in job candidates.

Prioritization Skills to List on Resume

While planning which tasks to do the next day, you will often need to decide which ones must be done on that day and which ones can wait a little longer. Prioritizing is especially essential where time is not enough to do everything. For example, cooking food during meal times and having clean clothes is a must. Chores such as dusting the house, however, can wait till the day after. Add these skills to your resume too.

Resilience and Negotiation Skills

Good negotiation tactics are one of those abilities you develop when raising a stubborn toddler. Being a parent, you have the overall authority to make decisions for the kids. However, some situations, like going to be, call for negotiation. If you have dealt with a toddler, you will have no trouble convincing unreasonable individuals too.

Crisis Management Skills

All mothers must be able to deal with unprecedented challenges. You must cope with things like your kid accidentally breaking their leg or letting the dog stray to your neighbor’s garden and ruining it. In these situations, you must stay calm and come up with solutions quickly. These skills are valuable to businesses as they also face impromptu problems.

Project Management Skills

Parenting also helps you harness great project management abilities that could come in handy in your career too. From managing the everyday needs of your child to making preparations for family outings and vacations, the skills you gain from becoming a mother are transferable to the CV too.

Mentoring and Nurturing Soft Skills

Motherhood makes most people become positive role models for their kids. It becomes your job as a mum to guide your child to be the best version of themselves. By tutoring and encouraging them, you help them grow into confident adults while you gain valuable mentoring experience.

Creative and Innovation Skills for Resume

There are lots of things you will do as a mum that you never thought you would do. For example, you will have to come up with creative ways to get your children to sleep. Like coming up with your own versions of bedtime stories. Creativity is something you can add to your CV to make yourself competitive. According to a PWC survey, about 77% of CEOs have a hard time finding innovation and creative skills they require in employees.

Persuasive Skills for Resume

As a parent, and more precisely, a mother, you will need to be persuasive to get your children to listen to you and do what you want them to do. This ability to influence can help you enforce things life bedtime hours, meal times, and teaching a toddler to things for themselves. Persuasion is among the most in-demand qualities by most employers today.

Ability to Learn and Adapt as Additional Skills on Resume

No one ever knows what to expect by having a child, but somehow everyone figures it out as soon as they give birth. You muddle your way, soon learn and adjust to the new life changes. You can add these abilities to your resume to convince the hiring manager that you can quickly adapt to a new working environment if hired.

Financial Literacy

Unlike pre-having children where you could spend all the money you earned however you wished, being a mum teaches you to be financially responsible. Now, you learn how to manage your spending and negotiate purchases to get the best value. Any manager would be glad to hire a person who shows good financial management abilities.

Counselling, Responsibility and Other Relevant Skills

There are so many other skills you can add to your resume to as a mum including counseling, delegation, people management, and responsibility. Stay at home mom skills for resume can also help you explain a gap in your career and show that you are still relevant in the job market. So, don’t leave out these valuable stay at home mom transferable skills when updating your resume to get back in the job market.

In addition, WikiJob recently published an in-depth article that deeply analyzes the core value of Soft Skills, why those skills are important for your career, and the 10 most important soft skills you need to have.