‘Preparing for your return to work’ with Hellen Muthoni Vostatkova

Hellen Muthoni Vostatkova is an experienced IT professional having worked across tech and change management programmes in Kenya, Southern Sudan, Germany and now the UK.In 2010 Hellen decided to further her education and relocated to Germany to study for a Masters in Distributed Systems Engineering. During this time she also pursued a passion for cloud computing and worked part time on some projects to build her experience in this area.  She took a career break in 2012 to raise her son, during which time she completed her Masters, and the family relocated to London in 2016. Once she’d made the decision to return to work in 2018, Hellen found finding work difficult. She applied for a few roles but got nowhere and found the experience demoralising.  As well as helping her husband establish his business at this time, she decided to increase her chances of returning to work by brushing up on her tech skills and building her transferable skills through volunteering. In 2021 she secured a place on the FDM returner programme and has continued to work as an IT consultant with FDM ever since.In our conversation, Hellen shares how she prepared practically for her return to work, getting ahead on family activities at the weekend and not overcommitting herself outside of work to help give her space to settle into her new role.  “There’s always new challenges, especially in the workplace and also at home as well….it’s just trying to make that balance and to just keep going with the flow and adapting, making the best of the situation”.This is our last episode of 2022 – join us again on Wednesday 18 January for our next episode in this series.Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3v9INYzFollow for free on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30rZZL6For advice, support, opportunities, and connection, see our Women Returners website: https://bit.ly/3eAhKQHFor details on the FDM returner programme, see here

Om Podcasten

Is it possible to return to a fulfilling, challenging, successful career after a long career break? After listening to these stories we want your answer to be a resounding yes! On our Career Returners podcast, you’ll hear from a diverse range of people who are successfully back at work after taking long career breaks for childcare, eldercare, health or other reasons. They’re sharing the ups-and-downs of their return-to-work journeys – the challenges, the rewards and the learnings. After each story, we’ll chat over some of the key themes that emerged and share some of our top return to work tips. The Career Returners podcast is brought to you by Career Returners, the return to work specialists. We work with employers and career returners to enable professionals to return to satisfying and fulfilling work after career breaks of 2, 5 or 15+ years. Over the years we’ve coached thousands of career returners, and we’re excited now to share some of their inspirational stories with you. After listening to this episode, do head along to careerreturners.com where you’ll find lots of advice, over 100 success stories, and a range of return to work opportunities for people on career break wanting to get back to work. While you're there, do sign up to our free Network and also our Facebook group for extra support and connection. Website: careerreturners.com Facebook: facebook.com/careerreturnersnetwork/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/careerreturners/ X: https://x.com/careerreturners