Freelanced For Years And Now You Don't Know What To Do? How Career Coaching Can Help

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A lot of people who lost their jobs during the latest recession and then ran out of unemployment payments before they could find work again ended up turning to freelance work to support their families. It is, and has been, a great option, especially for single parents who needed to be present to care for their children while still supporting them. However, as soon as the children are old enough to leave home, these folks no longer have to freelance or work from home for themselves. They can return to the workforce if they choose. If you are currently one of thousands of previously displaced workers who chose to freelance from home to support your children and now you would like to go back to work outside your home, here is how career coaching can help. 

Taking Your Freelance Skills and Applying Them to Other Jobs

A big part of making this transition back into the workforce and working for others is taking your freelance skills and translating them into job skills employers want. A career coach can look at everything that you were doing as a freelancer and then sum up the skills you were using in professional terminology. Take notes, because the coach will tell you how to best describe these skills in an interview when you get that dreaded question about what you can do and what your strongest skills are. 

Reframing Your "Absence" from the Workforce

You were not really absent from the workforce as other people would like to think or state you were. You were just working in a different capacity then everyone else and probably doing a lot better for it. When potential employers want to know why you have a ten- to fifteen-year gap in work history and no employment references, you have to reframe it in a way that they can understand.

This may be one of the biggest hurdles you will encounter because even though you were working and making good money, employers see it as not working at all because they cannot go back to your "employer" and ask questions. Your career coach can also help you reframe and word this situation such that interviewers will actually be impressed and a lot less concerned about not being able to talk to your non-existent bosses. You were the boss, and now you want to "step down" to do something different. 

Look for a career coaching professional to learn more. 


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