You chose to be a stay-at-home mom for good reasons. But no matter the reason, you developed something unique while raising your children—your mom skills.
Being a mom takes patience, resilience, strategy, the ability to negotiate, and many more skills few give mothers credit for. Now that you are ready to re-enter the workforce, your mom skills can beef up your resume and increase your professional value.
Here are some valuable stay-at-home mom job skills you can mention as you create your resume and cover letter to apply for that new job.
Problem Solving Skills
In any business or industry, obstacles and problems occur daily. Leaders want employees who can develop solutions, especially with tasks that do not necessarily need prior approval. Problem-solving is a skill many businesses consider a valuable asset—and one that, as a mother, you develop pretty quickly.
We begin developing problem-solving as a skill in elementary school, but moms take problem-solving to an advanced level. Your problem-solving skills are one of the first transferable skills tested when raising a child, especially as they encounter new challenges and situations. Stay-at-home parents quickly find solutions to the issues they face.
Parents anticipate problems, physically and mentally preparing one or more solutions to resolve each situation. In terms of work experience, these problem-solving skills help mom-as-an-employee foresee possible roadblocks and prepare for almost any challenge.
Time Management Skills
You can make any type of schedule and a to-do list color-coded, marked off with stickers, digitized and synced to your phone, but sometimes, you can’t manage to check everything off of the list. Why? Because no matter what schedule you have, your children can (and sometimes are) on their own schedule.
When you factor in managing household tasks such as lunches, snacks, cleaning, playdates, and other responsibilities of being a stay-at-home parent, you quickly learn the importance of time management. You become the master of preparing lunches in under fifteen minutes, running errands within an hour, and much more.
You’ve mastered completing different tasks for deadlines, ensuring that everyone gets what they need while effectively managing everything. These examples demonstrate both time management and project management skills—high-demand skills many full-time employees with years of experience must take time to cultivate.
Business objectives and projects can change quickly, and employers seek out employees who can adapt and manage the workload in a realistic amount of time. Thanks to this stay-at-home mom transferable skill, you know how to complete work tasks efficiently while intentional with your time.
Communication Skills
Communication is key to any relationship you foster in your personal and professional life. As moms, we learn to listen to everything our kids say, read between the lines of what they say and don’t say, and somehow come up with creative, intentional responses.
Learning to effectively communicate with your children while showing them the importance of being a clear communicator—verbally and non-verbally—is vital for parents. Returning to the workforce with those communication skills is valuable.
Employers want to hire employees who can confidently represent the company and communicate their message and values. In fact, 64% of businesses say that communicating their values and purpose is essential for employers.
Leveraging this skill is especially important for moms. It can help you network and connect with other professionals, building relationships that can benefit your long-term career journey. Add this mom skill to your resume.
Creative Skills
Creativity is a vital skill for both life and the job search. Parents understand that we have to be creative in our approach to entertaining and educating our children—and, sometimes, you need that creativity at a moment’s notice.
The same outside-of-the-box thinking and creativity you use when planning activities or tasks for your children is the same skill that will help you thrive when you reenter the workforce. Creativity as a job skill can help you adopt a different perspective on workplace projects and encourage your team members to do the same.
From thinking of new strategies to complete workplace projects to developing a better system to relay information, applying your creativity to a job will excite employers.
Leadership and Mentoring Skills
Becoming a mom means becoming a leader, mentor, supporter, and more to your children. Your tiny human depends on you for guidance through this crazy thing called life. Children are sponges that mimic what you do and say until they begin to form unique habits of their own.
That’s why you always try to show up being the best version of yourself— a reliable guide or mentor that helps your children through life. The leadership and mentoring skills you develop as a mother will always translate well into your professional life.
Leading a team in the workplace isn’t just a role. It’s a responsibility, a commitment that you make to help your team succeed and thrive. Team members follow leaders who don’t just talk but take action—just like you strive to do for your children.
Being a stay-at-home mom is an important job that requires almost all the skills you need for a flawless professional career. When you contemplate returning to work or how to write a resume summing up your work history, include these mom skills to quantify your professional value and make you an all-star job candidate.
It’s about more than jobs. We’re making progress.
The Mom Projects connects skilled, diverse talent with family-friendly employers that respect work-life integration and provide career support and connection to our community of talented moms and allies. 
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