Shivani Agarwal, Business Analyst, M&G (5-year break)
Prior to my career break I spent much of my career working in Insurance for Prudential. I was fortunate to do a lot of different roles within the business taking secondments and moving around teams. My career break came unexpectedly after 13 years because my business area became outsourced. It created an opportunity for me to step back, I wasn’t looking for the break, but it happened. And it seemed like the right time and the right place in my life to be doing that, so I took it.
My career break was for 5 years, longer than I anticipated, but I was mostly concentrating on home life with the children and helping them to transition from primary to secondary school. We were looking for a house to buy, I travelled a lot, and I tried a few business ideas, but then quickly realised that I’m more attuned to working in structured environments which is one of the reasons I decided to come back.
I also started to feel a gap as the children became more settled in their secondary schools. I used to be quite busy but now something was missing. I wasn’t utilising certain parts of my brain and there was a craving to talk to adults more! I had a few close friends in a similar position trying to get back to work, so we would talk a lot and I would encourage them not to have self-doubts. But I had those self-doubts myself and the added complexity for me was to not go back to the same industry and same kind of role. I wanted to try something new.
A friend mentioned there was lots of support available for returners and that the UK Government provides retraining programmes, so I signed up for a certification with Microsoft. I did not have an extensive network that I could reach out to, so it gave me a huge confidence boost when I learned that returners are actively being sought out through returner programmes. That helped me push back some of the self-doubt and after some time I applied for the M&G role which had a lot of synergies with my experience so seemed like a good fit.
M&G treated me like the experienced professional I am and I’m so grateful for that. There was no hesitation around throwing me in the thick of things and my line manager has been brilliant. He’s been very good at giving feedback, noticing what I’m doing well, like a well worded email, or good thinking on a problem or task.
I think the other part which a lot of people worry about is working with younger people or being quite senior in age and not matching the career progression of their colleagues. What I’ve found is that the environment is quite mixed, and I didn’t feel like I was like a dinosaur coming back! I just feel like I’m here to learn and gain experience and I think there are a lot of lot of things that enable that culturally here at M&G.
The peer support from the programme has been really helpful because we’ve had a similar experience and that just reinforces that I made the right decision coming back to work. Other helpful support has been from colleagues who have been good at identifying where my expertise lies and pointing me in the right direction to learn from experts around the business.
Overall, I’m excited to be back at work, I look forward to coming into the office. I feel well supported and it’s great to be leading on projects now and respected and supported through the business and my colleagues. I think that has been an amazing testament to my increasing confidence, and their confidence in me. I’m really glad to be back and taking the reins back at work.
My main piece of advice for other returners is don’t label yourself based on what you did before. Initially with M&G I did think I know nothing about that industry, why would they take me? But I changed my focus. If I had labelled myself as I am, what I’ve already done, then I wouldn’t have tried for this opportunity and ultimately been successful!
On the Microsoft course I met many women in similar situations with long career breaks and there was a lot of self-doubt… why would anybody hire me? My advice is that you absolutely don’t need to think about that because you would probably give 200% to whatever job you pick up! And there’s such renewed excitement and vigour and we are raring to go as returners which is another thing that makes us amazing candidates.
Think from a position of strength, you’re coming back with not just your work experience, but life experience and anyone would be lucky to have you!
