“There are some brilliant initiatives aimed at women reentering the industry to check out”

Creative Career Conundrums is a weekly advice column from If You Could Jobs. Each week their selected panel of professionals from the creative industry answers your burning career questions to help you navigate the creative journey.

This week’s question:

I’m a very experienced female design director – my work was award winning 20 years ago. I took time at home to raise a family, by now my kids are now finishing high school and I would really love to get back into agency work and can commit to a full time role. I’ve not worked in an agency for four years and I would like to work in a boutique branding studio.

I feel my CV and folio isn’t recent enough to apply for jobs as it doesn’t have any recent agency experience or projects. I’m lacking confidence and I don’t feel relevant. How can I change that?

Katie Cadwell, co-founder of branding studio Lucky Dip and The NDA Podcast:

A senior, award-winning, female creative, with a depth of industry and life experience? I can’t think of anyone I’d want on my team more. Before anything, you need to try and shift your mindset. How can you begin to sell yourself to someone if you don’t see your own value? You need to be aware you’d be an asset to a team because of your background not despite it.

If you’re interviewing for a role and they don’t respect the gap in your CV (and the job you were doing during that time) then arguably, it’s not going to be a great place to work. Head for studios that have women in their senior leadership teams, because I hypothesise, they might be a little more understanding. Fill your LinkedIn feed with working Mums for inspiration — Design by Women wrote a brilliant article recently featuring women walking the walk.

We covered an episode on the NDA podcast where we talked about women (specifically Mums) feeling undervalued, and I think some of that is relevant here. One of the guests Rachel Allison said we don’t respect experience anymore, that everyone is craving the young, new, cool… but I think we’re seeing that shift. As AI is able to churn out trendy, flashy visuals without real substance in thinking, people are going to value lived experience more.

So, how to build up your confidence. There are some brilliant initiatives aimed at women reentering the industry to check out. The BIMA Good Return, How&How’s latest series of events, Get Even.

There are also some really simple tips I can give you to update your portfolio (without too much extra work):

1. Make sure it’s in the right format. It should be 16:9 not A4, most people are sharing Figma links or Google Slides decks rather than heavy PDFs that weigh down inboxes.
2. Check that everything is RGB and high resolution. Give the layout a spruce up. It’s a chance to flex a few new fonts, and it will do a lot for your confidence in presenting it.
3. Any mockups that are using an iPhone 6? Swap them out. Great mockups are an easy way to elevate a case study and update old work.

The industry is glad to have you back. Best of luck.

In answering your creative career conundrums we realise that some issues need expert support, so we’ve collated a list of additional resources that can support you across things that might arise at work.

If You Could is the jobs board from It’s Nice That, the place to find jobs in the creative industries.

Want to stay on top of your job search? Or keep an ear out for when your dream job arrives on our site? Click here to set up tailored job alerts arriving straight into your inbox so you never miss an opportunity. See below for the latest opportunities: