I just read Penelope Trunk’s Quit work for a while to have kids. Your career will be just fine.
I hope it’s true. I don’t understand how it can be true for highly technical people. I hope I’m wrong.
I took off 3 months when each of my children was born. I didn’t want more time off–I wanted to go back to work. (Have you ever tried to attend to your biological needs when you have a colic-y baby? Impossible. Work was so much easier.)
But I’ve certainly worked with (mostly) women who felt trapped. If they took time off, they felt as if they could not re-enter the workforce.
I’ve been talking to some women who took 20 years off. They haven’t kept up with the field. They are not employable as developers today. They certainly could be if they can learn a modern computer language, and learn how to write requirements without shall statements, and how to work in a collaborative team, and how to continuously integrate their code, and more things I take for granted these days, but are new ideas to them.
But, these are new ideas to new college grads too (except for the language), and the new grads don’t have the same maturity as a woman in her 40’s or 50’s.
The whole point of feminism was to give everyone a choice (men, too). It’s refreshing to read this, even if I don’t believe it yet 
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January 30th, 2008
I was supposed to be doing an informational interview with an upcoming college grad now. She cancelled because she felt terrible. She said, “I’ve been feeling nauseous all day. I really wanted to talk to you when I’m at my best. Can we reschedule?”
You betcha we can. If I’m going to give my time to someone, I want to know they will use it wisely. I bet you do too.
If you’re a hiring manager and you can’t give the candidate 100% of you, postpone the phone screen or pull yourself out of the in-person interview loop.
If you’re a candidate and you’ve got a bad head cold, please reschedule. If you can’t get the nausea under control, please reschedule. If you have pneumonia, please, please, please reschedule. I don’t want to get sick. I will respect you more for explaining you don’t want to infect the rest of us. You need to give 100% of yourself to the interviewing process.
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January 22nd, 2008
I have a new column up at Recruiting Trends. See
Using Writing and Speaking to Recruit Candidates, Part 1. You can’t leave comments there, so please do so here.
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January 21st, 2008
I’ve been talking with a few hiring managers and a few senior candidates. The hiring managers are afraid to look at some senior people because they’re concerned the senior people will want salaries that are higher than the companies want to pay. The senior people are concerned that they can’t get interviews because the hiring managers might not want to pay a higher salary.But people will take jobs for many more reasons than just a salary number. Senior people who have already sent their kids through school may be willing to settle for a reasonable salary and more time off. People always want health care. Some people want to know they have a job, and won’t have to keep looking. (See Penelope Trunk’s take on living with risk at How to deal with getting fired (from Yahoo).Don’t assume you know what the candidate wants or needs. Don’t assume you know what the hiring manager is willing to pay. Remember that everything is negotiable. (See Negotiating for Salary.
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January 3rd, 2008