Episode Summary:

Imagine taking a career break for 11 years and then returning to face an entirely different world of work, technology, and even culture. Carol Fishman Cohen did it, and quickly came to realize that there are many thousands of others – mostly women – who are looking to make the same transition. They had high-powered jobs, and now they want to get back in the game. As it turns out, hundreds of companies are thinking the same thing – how do we tap into this experienced talent pool? And so was born iRelaunch, Carol’s work force re-entry consulting and training business that is normalizing the concept of a “career break” while demonstrating the value that “relaunchers” bring to the table. I think this is more a movement than a company, and Carol Fishman Cohen will tell you why, on this episode of The Sydcast.

Sydney Finkelstein 

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.

Carol Fishman Cohen

Carol Fishman Cohen is the CEO and Co-founder of iRelaunch, a career reentry consulting, training and events company. iRelaunch has worked with over 200 clients on career reentry programs and programming. iRelaunch produces the iRelaunch Return to Work Conferences, and leads a community of nearly 100,000 "relaunchers" looking to return to work after career breaks of one to over 20 years. iRelaunch co-leads the STEM Reentry Task Force with the Society of Women Engineers, the groundbreaking career reentry initiative in its sixth year in which program managers from 34 leading employers to date have joined for top guidance on launching return to work programs at their respective organizations. Corporate giants that have launched return to work programs through this initiative include Johnson & Johnson, Raytheon Technologies, Apple, Merck, Northrop Grumman, P&G, IBM, Ford and Cummins. Cohen's TED talk "How to get back to work after a career break” has over 3.6 million views and has been translated into 30 languages. She is the author of the Harvard Business Review Magazine articles “The 40-Year-Old Intern,” and the recently released “Return-to-Work Programs Come of Age,” writes regularly for HBR Online and has presented on career reentry topics nearly 800 times. Cohen has been featured dozens of times in the major media. Her return to work at Bain Capital after an 11-year career break is the subject of a Harvard Business School case study and iRelaunch is the subject of a Stanford Graduate School of Business case study. Cohen is a graduate of Pomona College and Harvard Business School.

Insights from this Episode

• How Carol came up with the iRelaunch idea?
• How “returnship” programs have evolved over time
• Concerns of employers and managers towards the returnship programs
• The implications for a relauncher
• iRelaunch’s purpose
• What a career break really is
• Why a relauncher is valuable for a company
• The experience of the relaunchers after completing the iRelaunch program
• Advice for people who are looking to take a career break 

Quotes from the Show:

• “Executives tell me or CEO’s tell me how tough it is to find great people. The first thing I ask them is where are you looking? So often they’re looking at the same places”- Sydney Finkelstein [2:18]
• “People take these career breaks [because] of an external factor and not related to their work performance” - Carol Fishman [13:45]
• “[About the relaunchers] They are recruited and hired now, more with the idea that they are gonna come into the teams and get hired after the program ends ” - Carol Fishman [17:57]
• “[About iRelaunch] Our mission since our founding in 2007 has been to normalize the career path that includes a career break” - Carol Fishman [32:05]
• “The career break forces you to step back and reflect on whether you are on the right career path to begin with and where we can have the most value to an organization” - Carol Fishman [40:57]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Carol Fishman Cohen

LinkedIn: Carol Fishman Cohen

Twitter: Carol Fishman Cohen

Instagram: Carol Fishman Cohen 

Book: Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work

HBR article:"Return to Work Programs Come of Age"

HBS case study on return to Bain capital after 11 years: HBS case study

Stanford GSB case study: Stanford GSB case study 

TED x talk: "How to get back to work after a career break"

IRelaunch

Website: https://www.irelaunch.com/

LinkedIn: iRelaunch 

Twitter: iRelaunch

Facebook: iRelaunch 

Instagram: iRelaunch 

Youtube: iRelaunch

Podcast: 3, 2, 1 iRelaunch Podcast

Subscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.

This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.