Your career break is an asset, not a hindrance, to your job application
Returning to the corporate world after a long break can be challenging at the best of times.
You might have spent the last couple of years flexing your creative muscles, running a startup, or travelling the world. Whatever your reason for leaving – and whatever your reason for coming back – it can feel like you are at a disadvantage; that the fast-paced business world has moved on, and your chances of success with it.
There exists in many organisations a bias that sadly overlooks those who have taken career breaks. At UBS, we’ve taken the opposite approach.
As a company which employs hundreds of people yearly across a range of roles and disciplines, we firmly believe that these transferable, real-world skills and experiences are what define us as a business: no applicant is ‘too old’ or has been out of the game too long. Your experience adds value to our workplace and richness to our culture, regardless of the reason for your career break.
We encourage those who have taken a career break of two years or more to apply for any job on our website, and to flag to us their time out. You will not be at a disadvantage, nor put on a temporary placement in a junior role. Rather, if we hire you, you will be enrolled in the UBS Career Comeback Programme, our award-winning permanent hire programme that combines on-the-job experience with classroom learning, mentoring, and coaching, to support you as you return to the corporate world.
While the expectation is that you will work hard, you will be supported by executive coaches and a team of dedicated programme managers, tailored to get the absolute most out of you as an individual. When you join the programme, you immediately have a network of peers – be that other returners in the same boat as you, or the members of the vast returner alumni network who can help guide your chosen direction during your first year with us.
This programme hasn’t locked down while the country has. In an unprecedented environment, where the contagion which has led to 95% of our workforce working remotely, we have continued to provide virtual coaching, virtual networking opportunities and education, and even a virtual white-glove onboarding.
For each and every applicant we tap into their personal brand: your unique contribution to our business that sets you apart from other applicants. It could be as simple as your record-collecting hobby or as complex as your PhD in astrophysics – it is these idiosyncrasies that allow us to glean an insight into the real you, and help us to better understand how you might fit into our business.
Change upon your return is a given: processes, culture, and technology are in constant evolution. We firmly believe that continuous training is the best way to get the most out of our people.
Of the 2020 cohort, we’ve so far seen applicants with backgrounds as disparate as physics and marketing, with much in between. We welcome this diversity of skills and outlook. The UBS Career Comeback Programme works not to fit you into a job, but to find a job that fits you, your interests, skills and specialisms.
So what’s stopping you?. As a business we’d be foolish not to welcome you with open arms. It is having a diversity of perspectives at UBS that challenges our own thinking and way of doing things. Your reasons for being out of work should be the asset that clinches the job, rather than a hindrance that stops you applying.
Find out more and register your interest in the programme here.