This Mother’s Day, many working moms will celebrate by surreptitiously answering work emails on their phones in between festivities. That’s because for parents who work outside the home, the “split shift” — where part of work takes place at the office, and the rest happens around childcare pickup and drop-off — is a common thing.
If you want to make life easier for the moms at your office, this week’s lead story offers some good insight. You might be surprised at how much invisible work they’re doing. (Unless you’re a working parent, and then you’ll just be happy someone else is pointing out how hard you work.)
Also in our roundup: signs that you’ve accepted the wrong job, and three questions to help you figure out your personal brand.
Jessica Shortall at The Muse: The 6 Things Every Working Mother Wants Her Co-workers to Know
What don’t people know about working parents?
“Take the all-too-common annoyance that working parents ‘get to’ leave work at a reasonable hour, just to pick up their kids from daycare,” Shortall writes. “You might be surprised by how many of those people regularly put in ‘split shifts’–getting up early to get work done in the mornings and getting back online after the little ones are in bed. For example, I know of a working mom who regularly left the office before 5 PM every day. But the invisible truth was that she was up at 4 AM almost every morning, doing conference calls to Asia, and then back at her computer late into the night.”
Find out what else working parents are doing — or remind yourself of how hard you’re working — at this post.
Lisa Rangel at Chameleon Resumes: 3 Signs You Might Be Accepting the Wrong Job
“Almost nothing is worse than accepting a job that you were excited about, only to come to realize months later that you hate it,” Rangel writes. “And to make matters worse, when you really think about it, the reasons why you hate it were right in front of you during the interview process. But you ignored them.”
What kinds of red flags should tip you off? One example: interviewers badmouthing former employees during the interview. Find out what else Rangel says to watch out for, in this post.
Hannah Morgan at Career Sherpa: Define Your Personal Brand With These 3 Questions
“Attracting job opportunities CAN happen, but it requires you have a recognized personal brand. But not just any brand — it has to be a brand that companies need,” writes Morgan. “In the simplest of terms, a brand is a recognized name. In your case, your brand is what people think of when they hear your name.”
To figure out what your personal brand is, Morgan suggests asking, “What problem do you solve?” (As well as these other two questions.)
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