Midcareer women benefit from the rise of the returnship

A little effort delivers big results when firms build on-ramps for women who want to re-enter the workforce.

“This is genius. Why aren’t we doing this?”

Last winter, Harrison Street, a real estate investment management firm, had put out a call for ideas through an internal innovation program.

Jessica Leggett, vice president of investor relations, had one: Adapt the “returnship” model she’d just learned about to promote the firm’s job opportunities to midlife women seeking a way back to work after a break for caregiving. Now, nearly a year later, three women are set to start their 16-week Harrison returnships in January.

“It wasn’t an original idea,” Leggett said. “But it seemed like something we needed.”

Returnships are now common in the tech industry but have been slow to catch on with advisory and investing firms.

In 2017 and 2018, the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. ran a five-firm pilot that concluded with a report outlining the utility of reentry internships as a workforce development strategy for firms in financial planning. The key takeaway, that “re-entry internships are a pathway to attract experienced female talent into the financial planning profession and CFP certification,” has provided guidance for firms seeking to tap into this high-caliber talent pool, said Eddy Demirovic, director of talent pipeline at CFP Board’s Center for Financial Planning.

MIDLIFE RECRUITING

The industry has been mesmerized of late with buying talent via mergers and acquisitions and has had little appetite for seeking out and training midcareer professionals, said Jeff Nash, CEO of recruiting and merger and acquisition advisory firm Bridgemark Strategies. Though a few firms, like Edward Jones, have a history of recruiting midlife talent, the industry as a whole probably won’t concentrate on external recruiting until succession planning gaps become acute. Then, Nash said, “they’ll say, oh, my gosh, we have to solve for this problem,” and midlife recruiting is likely to be a top priority because “the fact pattern proves that midlife career shifters pay off faster than those who were recruited from college.“

Fidelity launched its returnship program in 2013, with 299 people participating since then. In the past two full years of the program, 93% of the participants converted to full-time or equivalent positions.

A key dynamic, said program manager Deandra Brown, is to structure the cohort for the long term so the returners have instant friends, and to integrate them into existing women’s networks. Fidelity’s program started with tech recruiting and has steadily expanded to include women with experience in finance, project management and business support.

Data engineer Garima Gupta took time off when her now 5-year-old twins arrived. She targeted Fidelity specifically because it offered an open door for women who had taken a career break. While interviewing, her now manager explained the structured support that would accelerate her transition. And Gupta said she quickly realized that the returnship would merge into advancement opportunities.

Harrison Street hitched its ambitions to the existing platform of returnship consulting and recruiting firm Path Forward; it created a landing page that outlined the program and invited women to apply and promoted it outside the typical industry recruiting channels.

It wasn’t hard and it didn’t cost much, Leggett said, to redirect some of the recruiting budget to reach midlife women and for hiring managers to orient interviews and timing with the returnship cohort.

“There are so many women in this situation, who have interests and backgrounds who can hit the ground running. These people bring a wealth of experience,” she said. “Firms need to open up the avenues they recruit from.”

[More: Financial advice is the midlife job that women want – but don’t know exists]