Maternity leave has a way of making a job look different. A few months in, with the inbox silent and the old routines gone, plenty of people on maternity, paternity or shared parental leave realise they do not want to go back to that desk. You are still employed, your contract is still running, and you are about to search anyway.
Search during leave, or go back first
Searching during leave gives you something employed job seekers rarely have: no manager wondering why you have a dentist appointment every Tuesday. Your notice period, where one applies, may run while you are still away, so a new employer waits less.
The cost is that you do it tired, with childcare that may not exist yet. You also resign without having tested what the return would have looked like.
Returning first buys information. You see whether the role you left is still the role you come back to, whether flexible hours are real or just a line in the handbook, and whether the feeling you had on leave survives contact with the actual job. Some people go back and find the problem was exhaustion, not the employer.
The price here is time and a messier exit. Leaving three months after your team reorganised around your return lands harder than leaving from a distance.
My view: if the reason you want out existed before the leave (the manager, the pay, the commute, the ceiling), search during leave. Going back will not fix any of those. If the reason appeared during leave, go back for a while if you can afford to, because you are judging a job you have not seen for months.
Decide which route you are on before you send the first application. Drifting between the two is how people end up interviewing in week two of their return, with no childcare cover and no clear story.
Interviewing around energy and childcare
Hiring processes are built for people with predictable days. Yours are not predictable right now, and it is better to plan around that than to be caught by it.
Pick your interview windows before recruiters ask. If the one reliable stretch in your day is late morning, or the only cover you have is a partner who is home on Fridays, offer those slots first and without apology. "I can do Thursday or Friday between ten and one" sounds organised. "I'm not sure, it depends" sounds like a problem, even when the facts are identical.
Keep the pipeline small. Three processes you can prepare for properly beat ten that leave you rescheduling, and a fever does not consult your calendar.
On video, if nobody else can be home for that hour, say so in one sentence at the start and move on. Most interviewers have had a child or a dog walk into a call by now.
What to say about availability and the leave itself
You do not owe anyone an account of your family situation, and in many countries employers are restricted in what they may ask about it. That varies, so treat it as a general principle and not as a guarantee where you live.
The practical question is whether mentioning the leave helps you. Usually a short, factual mention does, because your availability looks odd without it. You can interview on a weekday at eleven, you have an end date for something, and your notice situation is unusual. A recruiter who cannot make sense of those facts will invent an explanation.
Something like this works on a first call:
"I'm currently on parental leave from my role at a logistics firm, due back in March. I've used the time to think about what I want next, and this role is close to it. I could start in early April, notice included."
Three sentences, no apology, and it ends on a date. Then change the subject. Do not volunteer childcare arrangements to prove you are serious; nobody asks other candidates how their household runs.
Saying nothing until an offer is a defensible choice too, as long as the dates on your CV and profile do not contradict what comes out later. A separate article here covers parental leave on the CV itself.
On start date, give one date you can actually keep. Work backwards from your notice period, the day childcare really begins (settling-in days included), and any condition attached to your leave pay. Your earliest possible date and your sensible date are further apart than for most candidates, so quote the sensible one.
References when you have been away for months
People forget this until an offer arrives. Your current manager has not worked with you for months, may have moved teams, and should not learn that you are leaving from a reference request.
So line up referees who do not depend on your current employer knowing:
- A former manager who has since left the company and can speak about recent work.
- Your manager from the job before this one.
- A client, supplier or senior colleague from another department who saw your work closely.
Message them now, not at offer stage, and remind them what you worked on together. The details have faded for them as much as for you.
When an employer insists on a reference from your current company, ask whether it can be taken after the offer is signed and made conditional on it.
Before interviews, reread your last performance review and the handover notes you wrote before leaving; they are the best record of what you were doing and how well. If your LinkedIn profile is more current than your CV, a tool like Postulit can turn it into a CV draft in minutes, which saves one of the few quiet hours you get.
What leaving can cost you
Read your contract, your employer's family leave policy and the rules in your country before you resign, not after. None of this is legal advice, and the details differ a great deal between countries, sectors and individual contracts.
The points worth checking:
- Repayment clauses. Some employers pay more than the legal minimum during leave on condition that you come back for a set period. Leave earlier and they may ask for part of it back. Pay that comes from the state is often treated differently, but confirm that for your case.
- Notice. Being on leave does not usually cancel your notice period. Whether it can run during leave, and what you are paid for it, depends on your contract and local law.
- Holiday, bonuses and benefits. Holiday often keeps building up during leave and is settled at the end. Bonus schemes can have "must be employed on" dates, and health cover or pension contributions may stop on your last day.
- Protection you give up. In many countries people on or returning from parental leave have specific protection against dismissal. A new job usually starts with a probation period in which protection is thinner.
That last point is a risk to weigh, not a reason to stay. And if a repayment clause exists, put a figure on it. It may be small enough to ignore, or a new employer may agree to cover it if you ask. People rarely ask.
Resigning from leave without burning the bridge
Resigning while away feels worse than it is. Employers know some people do not come back, and many quietly plan for it.
Tell your manager before HR, by phone or video, and send the written notice the same day. Keep the reason short and forward-looking. You are resigning from a job, not explaining your family.
Give as much notice as you reasonably can. The person covering your role and the manager planning your return both gain from every extra week, and that is the gesture people remember. Offer a handover call or a short document on anything only you know, then tidy the loose ends: equipment to return, a personal email address for final payslips, and agreement on a future reference.
One thing to do this week, whichever route you choose: write down the date your leave ends, the length of your notice period and the first day you have childcare. The gap between those three dates is your search calendar, and everything else here fits inside it.