Delhiites seek to regain their Self-worth and re-engage their Skills and Experience along with regaining their Financial Independence, says a JobsForHer Report

JobsForHer, an online connecting portal for women on a career break, hosted their annual flagship event, RestartHer 2018, India’s Largest Conference and Career Fair for women returnees in Delhi on Saturday, 8th September, 2018. The Delhi edition, the second of the tri-city event, saw participation from 2,500+ women returnees, from Delhi NCR (Gurgaon, Noida, Faridabad, Ghaziabad) and from nearby cities like Chandigarh, Meerut, Dehradun, Jaipur and Kanpur, along with a wide variety of corporates, speakers, mentors, influencers as well as career experts.

RestartHer, a unique, day-long intensive career re-entry event, gave women in Delhi the necessary tools, confidence and connections to help them return to work. The day’s agenda included a power-packed Conference and a Career Fair with inspiring panel discussions, carefully curated workshops and meticulous mentoring sessions to aid women returnees to restart and advance their career trajectories.

Several large corporates, SME’s and startups set up booths at the Career Fair to offer participants an opportunity to relaunch their careers. There were companies recruiting women across industries ranging from banking, tech, FMCG, operations, healthcare, education, etc, in functional areas ranging from marketing, sales, software development, HR, and writing, across experience levels ranging from 2-20 years and in job types from full-time, part-time, work-from-home, freelance as well as returnee programs.

Neha Bagaria, Founder and CEO, JobsForHer, said, “RestartHer aimed to understand the aspirations and hurdles women faced while returning to work, the challenges faced by employers to re-integrate them, and the interpersonal dynamics that women faced at home and at work, due to various social norms. It helped them find the necessary tools to enable them to restart their careers and achieve their potential.”

JobsForHer conducted a series of online surveys on what women in India were looking for while restarting their careers and in the survey, What is The Primary Motive For Restarting Your Career? it was found that women in Delhi wanted to regain their self worth (32%) and re-engage their skills and experience (31%) as well as financial independence (29%) and 7% wanted to be good role models for their children.

50% of Delhiites responded that they were looking at flexibility in timing and location, in the survey on What Can Companies Do To Enable Your Restart? 29% were looking to be reskilled, 12% asked that recruiters be sensitized to women returnees and 9% wanted to be paired up with buddies. 

Ritu Bhati, Managing Director, Human Resources, Accenture Operations in India and Sri Lanka, said, “Accenture offers flexible options for both men and women to help them balance their work-life. Besides that, we do have a lot of learning programs, mentoring programs, that help women returnees hone their skills to take on challenges to advance in their leadership roles. Accenture is committed to bringing more women back into the workforce as they bring renewed energy, experience, and a whole lot of unique skill sets like multitasking and patience which are invaluable in today’s workforce.”

Participating in RestartHer was a way for companies to not only recruit but also get involved in reskilling, inspiring and mentoring women returnees.  They educated women on their family-friendly and flexible work arrangements as well as specialized returnee programs. The reskilling workshops guided women on ways to navigate changes in the industry through various interventions in soft skills such as confidence-building as well as hard skills such as data analytics.
58% of the women saw mentoring as crucial to their restart, in the the survey on How Important is Mentoring To You and in the last survey on What Would Make You Decline A Job Offer, the recorded results were lack of flexibility (36%), travel time (29%) pay cut (22%) and lowered responsibility(13%).

RestartHer, was curated to strengthen the existing eco-system and accelerate the integration of women back into the workforce. Women left with a customized return-to-work plan, connections with employers interested in hiring returnees, knowledge of top strategies for their return to work and a network of peers seeking to re-enter the workforce. This brought a lot more optimism, confidence and energy to their job hunt.