Motherhood is a life changing experience: you develop immense patience, empathy and time management skills, your priorities shift completely, and you are always on a self-learning mode. Workingwomen, after embarking on this beautiful journey, tend to seek such a change in their career path that allows them to devote more time to their new-born. Thus, maternity leave period becomes a special and important milestone in their life as it not only gives them the time to bond with their new-born but also a reason to give chance to new possibilities and opportunities. The changed circumstances often compel them to consider alternate job profile, such that it enables them to maintain an equilibrium between their personal and professional responsibilities.
If you are planning to quit your existing job post your maternity break, you must evaluate the alternate/prospective career opportunity on factors like flexibility, earning potential and education required and then make your final decision. Keeping these parameters in mind, we have listed alternate career profiles with their basic education requirements that can be considered by new mothers.
Alternate Career Options
1. Human Resource Specialist
Advantage with this role is, it is work-from-home and has set hours and the profile requires you to have a balance between empathy & efficiency, skills that come natural to a mother, making it a perfect family-friendly career for you.
Your main responsibilities will comprise of recruiting, interviewing the shortlisted candidates and finally placing the selected candidates with employers. Secondary responsibilities also include employee relationship management, compensation, benefits, and training.
If you are a people’s person and looking for a role which helps you leverage your natural skills, as well as allows you more time to be at home, then this profile is perfect for you.
Education required: Bachelor’s degree in Human Resource/ Business/ Communication and Online MBA in HR
2. Nutritionist
Mothers have an instinct to provide nutrition! Therefore, a mother who is fascinated by food and enjoys helping others, this is an excellent career choice. After taking the necessary basic course and specialised training you will be ready to start your journey as a nutrition specialist.
As a nutrition specialist your career choices are wide, you can choose from a wide range of audiences as children, adults, or a specific diet form, or a speciality diet type i.e., keto, as your specification. Your main work would be educating and consulting your audience about healthy food choices as per their health and fitness goals. This type of work profile could be easily handled from the comfort of your homes. With necessary advancement of technology, this makes an exciting career, as by leveraging social media platforms you can slowly grow your personal brand as a nutritionist.
Education required: Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Food & Nutrition
Market Research Analyst: If you are a new mom with keen observation and analytical skills this could be an exciting career choice for you. This role currently is in great demand and holds a great future for a flourishing career. Also, one prominent benefit is the flexibility to choose your schedule.
Education required: Bachelor’s degree in marketing, market research, statistics, and computer science and Online MBA in Marketing
Graphic Designer: If you are proficient with technology and have a flair for creativity, then this profession is perfect for a stay-at-home-mother like you, as it has a flexible schedule, and holds diverse opportunities in various fields. In this role you would be visualising communication ideas that further help marketers communicate to their target consumers. Success will depend on your time-management skills, ability to understand complex briefs and produce quality creative work.
Education required: Bachelor’s degree/Diploma in Graphic Design and Portfolio of work
Realty Consultant:
Earlier, this profile was primarily male dominated, but with the recent change in scenarios, real estate is seeing plenty of female led roles. This profile will demand you to venture out-of-home to assist clients in buying, selling, and renting properties, but you will have the flexibility to choose how you work, you can either work full-time with a realty company or be a consultant and work part-time.
This job is a right fit for you if you have excellent sales skills and in general enjoy meeting new people.
Education required: Bachelor’s degree and Online MBA in HR/ Finance/ Marketing
We are hoping the above-mentioned job profiles will help you choose an alternate career option, so that you could prioritise your responsibilities towards your new-born and simultaneously continue to be a working mother.
To that effect, we urge you to consider using your maternity break to gain relevant skills and knowledge to increase your opportunities. One such splendid learning opportunity is available through Graphic Era University Online, they provide 100% Online education, available in multiple choice of degree courses, which allows you to stay-at-home and attend live & recorded lectures and give proctored exams from the comfort of your home. So, while you take care of your baby you can keep learning during your maternity break.