Something to readChanging jobs
Back on the Career Track
A step-by-step guide to returning to work after years at home
Why it’s worth your time
Back on the Career Track lays out a step-by-step way back to work after a break of several years. Carol Fishman Cohen wrote it with Vivian Steir Rabin in 2007 for mothers who had stayed home, though its steps can fit anyone returning after caregiving, illness or time abroad. Its first two steps, deciding and rebuilding confidence, speak to the start, when the hardest part can be believing you still have something to offer.
How to return to work after a career break
The book · About 6 hours of reading · Buy or borrow
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- Start with the early steps on deciding and confidence.
The book is built on seven steps. The first two, deciding whether now is the time and rebuilding confidence by talking informally with people who won't judge you, set up the rest; the later steps can wait until you reach them.
- Write to two people from your past.
Pick two former colleagues or classmates who'd be glad to hear from you. Tell them you're getting ready to return and what kind of work you're aiming for, and ask one easy question about catching up on the field.
You“I'm getting ready to go back to work after some years away, and you came to mind. I'm catching up on the field: who's worth following now, and is there anything you'd read first?”
Good moments for this: when you first start thinking about going backa few months before you plan to applyafter a stretch of applications with no replies
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
Cohen and Rabin suggest breaking your old jobs and volunteer work into their parts and building on the ones you enjoyed most and did best. Returning to the exact role you left is one option among several, and the time away can be a rare chance to choose again.
What might make this harder
Treat catching up as part of the search: read what people in the field read now, take one short course, and go to one industry event. In Cohen and Rabin's sequence, updating your skills comes just before networking and marketing yourself.
Questions people ask
What is Back on the Career Track about?
It's a 2007 guide by Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir Rabin for people returning to work after several years away, written for mothers who stayed home with their children. It sets out a seven-step program, from deciding whether to return to handling the first months back on the job.
What are the 7 steps to relaunch success?
As Cohen lists them on iRelaunch's site: decide whether to relaunch, learn confidence, assess your career options, update your professional and job search skills, network and market yourself, channel family support, and handle the job or find another one.
How do I explain a gap in my resume after a career break?
Name the break in a line, then spend the rest of the space on what you did before it and what you want to do next. If you apply to a returnship, iRelaunch advises making the break visible, since that's what makes you eligible. On LinkedIn, a career break can go in your experience section as its own entry, with a type such as caregiving.
What it says, and how it holds up
Cohen and Rabin call it relaunching, and they treat it as a job search with its own order of operations. Before the résumé comes a decision about whether now is the right time, and then confidence, built by talking informally with classmates and old colleagues until the story of where you've been comes easily. Their sequence puts the conversations before the applications. The later steps cover sharpening your skills, networking, getting your household on board and asking for early, frequent reviews once you're back, since neither you nor your employer can predict how fast you'll ramp up.
Cohen writes from experience. She went back to work at Bain Capital after an eleven-year break, a return Harvard Business School later wrote up as a case study, and she went on to co-found iRelaunch, which runs return-to-work conferences and works with employers on programs for returners. Its current advice echoes the book in useful ways: people from your past tend to remember you as you were, before any confidence you've lost since, and asking them for pointers on catching up is easier to answer than asking for a job.
If your time away was a leave of a few months, this is more program than you need. Cohen herself separates short leaves of six months or less from the multi-year breaks the book is built for; after a short leave, a plain conversation with your employer about how you'll ramp back up tends to cover it.
The book is from 2007, and parts of it show the date; its advice to get a business card is one. Hiring has also become more automated since. That shift can make the book's people-first route more valuable. In Hidden Workers: Untapped Talent, a 2021 study from Harvard Business School and Accenture, almost half of the employers surveyed said their systems automatically screened out résumés with a gap of more than six months. Warm introductions and returnships are two of the few routes that reach a person before a filter does.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.