We all know that being a mom isn’t an easy job. It’s 24 hours, 365 days a year, and there are no vacation days. And oh, yeah. You never (ever) get promoted. That’s why full-time working mom Sydney Williams thought it was time to apply the many (many) things she’s learned while raising her 2-year-old and 6-month-old sons and put it on her resume — and is sharing the lessons she's learned from doing so.
Williams, global director of brand marketing for General Electric, created her “Mom Resume” as an experiment.
As she explained in a post on LinkedIn two weeks ago, she was “curious” about what a resume would look like with “ONLY the skills I’ve learned as a new mother.”
“Here's what I wrote,” she added.
First things first: “I do everything you do, but I do it with one hand.”
Meaning, she has one hand free and her baby in the other.
“I hold onto what’s important (hint: my baby) with all the strength I have in one hand, while juggling the 1 million daily tasks of life in the other.
“I ruthlessly prioritize, “ she added. “I grow stronger and more efficient as a result.”
Every day she must think “ten steps ahead.”
“Each day is a 50+ piece Jenga puzzle that I manage with skill, strategy, and luck,” she explained.
And she does it all with a positive attitude, no matter how much her “team” has meltdowns or loses their cool.
“I lead with compassion, listen to debate, and encourage resolution through compromise,” she shared.
She’s adaptable.
Like many parents, Williams has worn many hats — "teacher, chef, nurse, barber, garbage woman, builder, driver, hostage negotiator, seamstress, engineer, translator, swim instructor, therapist, stylist.”
“My team comes first and foremost,” she added. “I work for them.”
And she does it all with very little thanks.
She’s happy to “wake up each morning to do it again because of my capacity to find the joy and love in my work.”
That is something all parents can relate to.
Williams said she penned her Mom Resume because of the pandemic.
A recent press release from the National Women's Law Center stated the real numbers of how many women left the workforce as a result of the current global health crises.
“In January, 275,000 women left the labor force, meaning they are no longer working or looking for work,” it read. “The total number of women who have left the labor force since the start of the pandemic reached over 2.3 million last month, leaving women’s labor force participation rate – the percent of adult women who are either working or looking for work – at 57.0%.”
“My Mom Resume isn’t unique,” Williams wrote on LinkedIn. “I have no doubt that the Moms within the 156,000 women who left the workforce in December hold many, many more of the evasive skills we look for in our teams, colleagues, and leaders.”
Now these women are pulling double duty as both caretakers and seeking employment (or trying to do their job) while home 24/7.
"I don't think there's been enough value placed on the many, many hats that we wear," Williams told Good Morning America.
"It was something I'd been thinking about a lot and when I sat down to write it, it just sort of poured out. The fact that it was there and looks almost exactly like my professional resume was an emotional moment," she added.
Williams never posted anything to LinkedIn before.
She never imagined that her post would go viral. She told Good Morning America that the response from other women has been touching:
"The majority of responses have been from women who have said, 'I've chosen to take time off. I'm nervous to get back into the workforce and this has given me a new perspective and different way to think about the skills I have and how to present them. There have also been a lot of men who have reached out and said, 'I have a newfound respect and appreciation for my wife and my daughter.'"
In the end, Williams was speaking up for moms everywhere.
“It's a different take on what it means to be a mom, a different way to reimagine the skill sets that we have as mothers and hopefully inspire confidence," she explained of her post.
She felt lucky to have other working mothers to reach out to when things got tough.
"I feel very lucky that I work with other mothers who we can be honest with each other about how we're feeling and our experiences," she continued. "I have a great network of other mothers from all walks of life and that to me has been the biggest takeaway of the pandemic, of just how important those relationships are."
