Srividya upskilled to restart career after 6 years

In June this year,

Srividya Subramanian

returned to the workforce after being a fulltime mother for over six years. Despite the break, she says, her time out of the workforce was anything but ‘time-off’. On LinkedIn, she has opted for the recently-introduced title stay-at home parent, and has listed multitasking, budgeting and time management as some of the skills she picked up on this ‘job’. “These are highly transferable skills that are often undervalued by parents and employers alike,” she says.

Srividya decided to quit her job during her pregnancy in 2014, when a huge promotion was around the corner. She had every intention to return after a couple of years, but ended up stretching it much longer. “I wanted to spend as much time as I could with my family,” she says. Around two years ago, armed with a Master’s in software engineering and almost nine years of experience at Infosys, she started a job search in hopes of restarting her career. But she found it difficult to market herself, as six years at home is a tough sell to most employers. “And as the industry had drastically changed over the years, I realised my skills were outdated and I started doubting myself,” she says.

She had almost given up when the pandemic hit in early 2020 and remote work, which she was previously denied by many companies, became the norm. She b e c a m e hopeful again. Around December, a friend introduced her to

VMinclusion Taara

, an upskilling and return-to-work initiative by tech firm

VMware

in association with Women Who Code. She registered for the programme and finished two of the three certification levels by April this year. “Because the course was completely remote and self-paced, I found it easy to finish. And the 30-day deadline for each level helped me stick to a schedule,” she says. “It was like being in college all over again,” she laughs. “I chalked out a plan to prioritise the course while also taking care of the household and spending time with my son.” In June, she joined the Chennai team of a tech company as a lead BI (business intelligence) solutions developer and has been working remotely from Bengaluru. She hopes to finish the third level of the course soon.

“Upskilling has not only helped me learn new technologies and brush up my skills in areas like cloud and virtualisation, but has also instilled in me the confidence to market myself without feeling any guilt about the break. And the certification helped build credibility, giving potential employers the impression that I’m determined to start again,” she adds.