When I stepped back into the professional world after four years of being a stay-at-home parent and occasional woodworker, I realized I wasn’t just out of the loop—I was essentially a ghost. My old contacts had moved on, gotten promoted, or disappeared into the void of middle management at companies I’d never heard of. I felt like a relic. I remember sitting at a Blue Bottle in Palo Alto in 2022, trying to have a ‘catch-up’ coffee with an old colleague, and I actually forgot the word for ‘deliverables.’ I called them ’the things we do.’ It was humiliating. I spilled half an oat milk latte on my own notebook and realized that my old network wasn’t going to save me. It was dead.
The ‘Warm Intro’ is a total myth
Everyone tells you to start with your ‘warm’ leads. Your old bosses, your former teammates, that one guy you used to grab beers with in 2016. I think this is actually terrible advice for 90% of people coming back from a long break. Why? Because those people remember the old you. They remember the version of you that worked 60 hours a week and didn’t have a gap on their resume. When you show up after four years away, they look at you with this weird mix of pity and confusion. They don’t know where to ‘slot’ you anymore.
I wasted three months trying to revive these dead connections. I sent 42 emails to former colleagues. I tracked them in a Google Sheet I called ‘Project Lazarus.’ Out of those 42, I got nine ghosts, four ‘let’s grab coffee’ invites that never materialized, and exactly zero leads. The ‘warm’ network is often just a polite way to get ignored. It’s better to start fresh with people who don’t have a preconceived notion of who you used to be. You need a blank slate.
I might be wrong about this, but stop using LinkedIn correctly
LinkedIn is a digital wasteland of ‘humbled and honored’ posts that make me want to throw my MacBook into a lake. I hate it. I especially hate those ‘AI-powered’ networking apps like Lunchclub—I tried it for a month and it felt like speed dating for people who have absolutely nothing to say to each other. I refuse to use them. I also have an irrational hatred for Fishbowl because the UI reminds me of a hospital waiting room and the anonymity just turns everyone into a prick.
Anyway, what I did instead was start ‘cold-calling’ people on LinkedIn but in a way that felt human. I didn’t use the ‘Connect’ button with a generic message. I found people who were doing the job I wanted and I sent them a message that basically said: ‘I’ve been out of the game for four years and I’m trying to figure out if this industry is still as broken as I remember it.’ People love to complain. It worked way better than asking for a job. I got a 22% response rate on those ‘complaint’ messages compared to a 4% response rate on my ‘polite’ referrals.
Actually, let me rephrase that—it wasn’t just about complaining. It was about being a person instead of a resume. You need to be aggressive. What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently: you need to be persistent without being a creep.
The Unfair Truth: Avoid the ‘Hustlers’
This is the part where people are going to disagree with me, but if you’ve been away for a long time, do not try to network with the ‘rising stars’ or the people under 30 who are ‘crushing it.’ They don’t understand you. They see a career hiatus as a weakness or a lack of ambition. They think if you aren’t constantly ‘leveraging’—ugh, I hate that word—your time, you’re failing.
Target the bored middle managers. Find the people who have been in their roles for 7+ years and look a little tired. They are much more likely to have a 20-minute conversation with you because they aren’t trying to climb over your head to get to the next level.
I know it sounds cynical. It probably is. But these are the people who actually have the power to hire you or at least tell you which departments are currently a dumpster fire. They value experience and stability over ‘hustle.’ I’ve bought the same $14 Moleskine notebook for ten years and I swear by it; I don’t care if there are better digital tools. I like things that are reliable and a bit slow. Middle managers are the Moleskines of the corporate world.
The 30-Day Re-entry Spreadsheet
If you want to actually get results, you have to treat this like a weird science experiment. I spent four weeks doing this, and it was the only thing that worked.
- Week 1: Identify 20 companies that didn’t exist when you left the workforce. This forces you to learn new names.
- Week 2: Find one person at each of those companies who has a ‘weird’ background (liberal arts degree in tech, former teacher, etc.).
- Week 3: Send the ‘unpolished’ message. No attachments. No ‘Inquiry regarding open positions.’ Just a question about their specific path.
- Week 4: Follow up once. If they don’t reply, they’re dead to you. Move on.
Trying to restart a network is like trying to jump-start a car with a battery made of lemons. It’s messy, it’s probably not going to work the first time, and you’re going to get sticky. But eventually, you get a spark.
Stop apologizing for the gap
I spent the first six months of my ‘return’ apologizing for my hiatus. I’d start every meeting with, ‘Sorry I’m a bit rusty,’ or ‘I’ve been away, so I might be behind on the tech.’ This is a death sentence. It signals that you are a liability. I honestly think most people you used to work with secretly hope you fail so they feel better about their own daily grind. Don’t give them the satisfaction.
I stopped apologizing and started acting like my four years away gave me a perspective they didn’t have. I wasn’t ‘out of the loop’; I was ‘refreshed.’ It sounds like corporate BS, but if you say it with enough conviction, people believe it. The moment I stopped acting like a beggar was the moment people started treated me like a peer again. It’s a total lie, of course—I was terrified—but it worked.
Is networking ever not gross? I don’t know. I still feel a bit oily after a day of ‘outreach.’ But the reality is that no one is coming to find you in your woodshop. You have to go out there and be a person, spill some coffee, and send some weird emails.
Just send the email. The worst they can do is ignore you, which they’re already doing anyway.