Having the ability to be a stay at home mom is an opportunity many women don’t want to miss. However, when they choose to return to work, some worry that their time away from the workforce could hurt their chances of landing the job they want.
The obstacle many women face when writing a resume as a stay at home mom is how to account for their time away from the workforce. Being a homemaker is being recognized more and more as work that requires myriad skills. Your first task is to learn to articulate these skills and experience on your resume.
It isn’t hard to craft a stay at home mom job description that will show employers the skills and abilities you’ll bring to your next role. Here we will teach you how and show you:
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How to write a stay at home mom resume
As a stay-at-home mom, putting together a resume when you are ready to go back to work doesn’t have to be a frustrating experience. It’s just a matter of looking through a different lens.
If you want to return to work, deciding whether to include being a stay-at-home mom on your resume is one of the most challenging choices. If you have been out of the workforce for a long time, gaps in employment can be tricky if not handled correctly. Read on to learn how to fill out your resume in a way that won’t make your time at home a red flag for employers.
Write a compelling professional summary or resume objective
Your professional summary or resume objective is your sales pitch to employers. A well-written summary or objective tells hiring managers what you’ll bring to the table if hired. However, stay at home moms might worry about how to sell themselves if they have been out of the game for a while.
Choose a professional summary if you have relevant experience in the role you seek. Consider your summary as a billboard advertising your greatest accomplishments, most relevant skills, and an accolade or award, if possible. Here is an example:
“Experienced fundraiser with strong organizational, communication, and leadership skills. Ten years of experience volunteering on school boards and with the Girl Scouts. Highly skilled in multitasking and problem-solving, with a track record of successfully managing household operations. Passionate about giving back to the community and skilled in event planning.”
Choose a resume objective if you are applying to a job for which you have no relevant experience or if you are new to the workforce. A resume objective should list your transferable skills and can include a brief explanation of your professional goals. Here is an example:
“Stay-at-home mom eager to bring my unique skill set to the workforce. Seeking a role in which my strong organizational, communication, and leadership skills can be utilized. With a proven track record of successfully managing a household, I want to apply my skills to a customer service role.”
Skills to consider for your stay at home mom resume
For functional and combination resume formats, especially, skills are the heart of your resume.
The skills you add to your resume should be targeted to the specific job you are applying for. Study the job ad to determine which skills are most important to the employer, and add those to your resume.
Even if you have little to no work experience, your stay at home mom resume should focus on transferable skills. These are skills you have mastered but may not have obtained in the workplace. For example, being a stay at home mom means managing children and a household. This would include communication, problem-solving, scheduling and organizational skills. These can all be added to your resume for a stay at home mom.
Writing a strong work experience section for a stay at home mom resume + examples
As a woman looking to reenter the workforce after being a stay-at-home mom, you have a wealth of skills and experiences to offer a future employer. These valuable skills, such as time management, multitasking, problem-solving, communication and leadership, are valuable to employers, even if you didn’t develop them in an office.
When crafting your work experience section, it’s important to highlight these transferable skills and provide examples of how you used them. Also, include any volunteer work, community service or coaching you’ve done. These activities, too, help comprise a valuable skill set.
Choose the right format for your stay at home mom resume
If you’ve decided to include stay-at-home mom on your resume, the next order of business is to determine how to lay out your resume. For this, there are three main resume formats: chronological, functional and hybrid.
- Chronological: These resumes put your work history front and center, usually in reverse-chronological order, with the most recent experience at the top.
- Functional: A functional resume focuses on your skills and achievements and can be an excellent way to deemphasize a lack of work experience. This format can also help you highlight the transferable skills you’ve used over your months or years as a stay-at-home mom.
- Combination: As the name suggests, a hybrid resume combines elements of the above formats by featuring work history like a chronological resume and highlighting skills like a functional resume.
3 stay at home mom resume examples and templates
Content isn’t the only thing to consider when writing a resume as a stay-at-home mom. The resume template you choose is also a consideration. Choose a template that is appropriate for the industry in which you are applying.
Select a simple template for roles in conservative fields, like accounting or law, or a creative template for roles in advertising or marketing. For a better sense of which professional resume template might be right for you, peruse our library of resume examples.
3 tips for writing your stay at home mom resume
While many tips about how to write a resume are the same regardless of your experience level or job title, there are some tips that can help stay at home moms write a terrific resume.
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Have a professional email address.
If you have been out of the workforce for a while, you may have an email address that isn’t appropriate to use in a job search. For example, you won’t want to use anything cutesy, or that uses an outdated email server, like AOL or Hotmail.
If that is the case, create a new Gmail address. Ideally, it should feature your first and last name (firstname.lastname@gmail.com) or, if your name is common, a simple variation of the two (lastname.firstname2023@gmail.com.)
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Don’t explain your circumstances on your resume.
Your resume is for showing employers what you’ll bring to the table if you are hired. It isn’t the right place for you to explain gaps in your resume or the life circumstances that took you out of the workforce. Use your cover letter to offer a simple explanation, such as “After six years as a stay at home mom, I am now looking to return to the workforce.”
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Using the term stay at home mom is fine to use as a job title, per LinkedIn.
As you write your resume, remember that adding your time as a stay at home mom is perfectly fine. LinkedIn has added stay at home mom as a job title on its site. Add your time as a homemaker just as you would a job outside the home, listing the skills and experience you gathered underneath your job title.
Get noticed with a stay at home mom cover letter
A cover letter is critical when applying for work, especially if you’ve been out of the workforce for a while. A stay at home mom cover letter can help you explain what you’ve been up to since you last worked and provides an opportunity for you to offer examples of how your skills and experience would benefit an employer. For inspiration, look at our selection of cover letter examples and check out our selection of professional cover letter templates.
Key takeaways
By now, you should have a good sense of what goes into a stay at home mom resume. We’ve covered:
How to write a stay at home mom resume.
Skills to consider for your stay at home mom resume.
How to incorporate your time as a stay at home mom into your resume.
Choosing the right resume format for your document.
How to select the right template for your document.
Heather is the Content Strategy Manager for Resume Now and a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) with more than ten years of experience writing about job search and career topics. She is based in San Francisco.
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