jobseeking whilst on maternity leave - what to tell agencies/prospective employers

an9i77

An interesting update. I decided to tell some agencies I was on mat leave, and others that I wasn't to see if it made any difference.

The agencies I told I was on mat leave I have had NO interviews (been put forward for 3 roles)

The agencies I didn't mention mat leave I have THREE interviews (put forward for 4 roles)

could be coincidence - or could be sexual discrimination alive and well in 2014.

I'll let people draw their own conclusions. Needless to say I am pretending my mat leave/children do not exist when speaking to potential recruiters from now on.

throwa

I was in the more or less the same situation. I was on maternity leave and was made redundant when I started to discuss coming back. As this took a while to come through officially, my CV went out stating I was currently employed at OldCompany, as this was factually correct. I didn't mention maternity to the agencies when they wanted to put my CV forward to new companies.

When I went for interview, I was open and honest about the reason for leaving 'redundancy whilst on maternity'. My job is senior and involves a lot of travel / late nights, and whilst not completely politically correct, they tended to ask me questions along the line of 'and will your home life be ok with this job?' to which I could wax lyrical about my (part time self employed) house husband etc, and how amazing he was in supporting us at home. Don't imagine a man would ever be asked that question in interview, but I needed to give the answer they wanted to hear so that they would consider me for a role.

I now have one offer of a job and potentially another one coming through tomorrow.

For what it's worth - don't tell the agencies but obviously be completely honest with the actual companies once you get in front of them. This worked for me at least.

an9i77

Thanks - I'm not going to mention mat leave to the companies either. I will just say that I am at risk of redundancy, which technically is still true as I have been redeployed on a trial basis to a job in another location, but as this is subject to a trial period and the procedure has not concluded (as it was put on hold whilst I was on mat leave) then I am still at risk of redundancy. If it were not for the fact that the job is so far away I'd be tempted to go and do the trial to get the redundancy money!

I know mat leave won't be on my reference and as the job I am leaving has a Head Office in London and I'm job seeking 200 miles away I think the chance of anyone in the new job knowing anyone in the old job is remote. it's a chance I'm prepared to take.

I just had another call from the agency who doesn't know I am on mat leave regarding another role. I'm finding it hard to believe it is just coincidence when the 2 agencies who know I am on mat leave have not spoken to me for 2 weeks, yet I've had daily calls from the ones who don't - they are fishing in the same waters so how can it be that to two agencies I'm hot stuff but the other two don't want to know me at all??? even I did not think it would make this much difference! but the results of my little experiment are clear to see.