Cover five things and you have a usable first session: the signed agreement and payment terms, an honest account of what the ten years contained, an inventory of unpaid work that can be evidenced, the constraints that will shape every target you build, and a financial deadline. Then set one milestone before she hangs up. Everything else can wait for session two.
What the intake is not is a therapy hour. A woman coming back after a decade often arrives with a lot she has never said out loud to a professional, and it is easy to spend ninety minutes on the emotional weight of the break and end with no plan. The structure below is designed to hold the emotional content without letting it consume the session, because the fastest confidence intervention available to you is a concrete first week.
Budget seventy five to ninety minutes. Sixty is too short for a ten year gap.
Before the call: intake form, agreement, and what you never ask in writing
Three documents go out before the session, not during it.
The coaching agreement. Scope, session count, price, payment schedule, cancellation and rescheduling terms, confidentiality, and an explicit statement that you are not providing legal, medical or financial advice. If you hold an ICF credential, your ethics obligations belong here in plain language. Signed before the call, not after.
The intake form. Work history with dates, education, licenses and certifications with expiration dates, geography, target function, and a short free text field for what she wants from the engagement.
A document request. Current resume in whatever state it exists, her LinkedIn URL, and two job postings that appeal to her. Those two postings tell you more about her self assessment than any question you can ask.
What does not go on the form
Keep these off any written intake, even though you may discuss some of them in the session if she raises them. Written records are discoverable and can be requested, and you have no business creating a file of protected characteristics.
- Age or date of birth. Graduation years already invite inference, so ask for degrees without dates.
- Marital status, number and ages of children, pregnancy or plans for it.
- Disability, diagnosis, medication or treatment history.
- Immigration status beyond a single yes or no on whether she is authorized to work in the United States.
- Race, religion, national origin.
- Arrest or conviction history. Many jurisdictions restrict when this can be asked at all, and it is not yours to collect.
If she volunteers any of it verbally, listen, use it to coach, and do not write it into a system another party could subpoena.
Keep reading: How does a corporate returnship cohort actually run from application to a conversion offer?
Mapping the gap honestly, including caregiving, health and relocation
You need a truthful internal timeline, because you cannot build a credible public account of the gap without knowing what actually filled it. Ask openly, then translate.
Work backward from today in blocks and label each one: caregiving for children, caregiving for a parent, her own health, a spouse's relocation, a business she started that did not work, a period of genuine rest. Most ten year gaps contain three or four distinct phases, not one undifferentiated absence, and that structure alone reduces how monolithic the gap feels to her.
Then separate the private record from the public one. She owes an employer no medical detail whatsoever, and no account of her family arrangements. What she does owe is a coherent, unembarrassed sentence. "I stepped out to care for my mother through her illness, I kept my CPA license active, and I have been consulting part time since last spring" is a complete answer. It closes the topic and it is true.
Note the license question specifically. Lapsed credentials are the single most common recoverable problem in a ten year gap, and reinstatement rules vary sharply by state and by profession. Find out in session one whether anything lapsed, because reinstatement can take months and it belongs at the front of the plan, not the middle.
Surfacing unpaid work that counts as evidence: boards, volunteering, freelance
Clients systematically under report this. Ask specific questions, not "did you do anything during the break," which reliably returns "not really" from a woman who ran a school budget of two hundred thousand dollars.
Work through the list out loud:
- Any board or committee seat: school, nonprofit, congregation, homeowners association, co-op, sports league.
- Treasurer, fundraising or budget responsibility of any size. Ask for the dollar figure. It is usually larger than she expects.
- Event or program management: headcount, budget, vendors, volunteers supervised.
- Freelance or contract work, including anything invoiced through a spouse's business or paid in cash.
- A family business, farm or practice she supported without being on payroll.
- Coursework, certificates, professional association membership, conferences attended.
- Software she learned to use for any of the above.
For each item captured, record three data points: what she was accountable for, the scale in numbers, and who could confirm it. That third field matters. An unpaid role with a named person willing to speak to it functions as a reference, and a returning candidate with two credible references from the gap period is in a materially different position from one with none.
Keep reading: Are returnship programs still growing, and what does that mean for my coaching pipeline?
Constraints on the table: hours, commute, licensing, clearance, relocation
Name these in session one, out loud, and write them into the plan. A target list built without them wastes weeks.
| Constraint | Ask this | Why it changes the target list |
|---|---|---|
| Hours | Which hours are genuinely uncovered, in a normal week and in a school break | Determines full time, part time, or a returnship structure |
| Location | Maximum door to door commute, and how many days on site | Sets the geographic radius on the employer list |
| Licensing | Anything lapsed, and the reinstatement route in this state | May add a fixed lead time before applications make sense |
| Clearance | Prior security clearance, level, and lapse date | A lapsed clearance is still an asset in federal contracting |
| Relocation | Whether a move is possible at all, and on what timeline | Decides whether remote roles are a preference or a requirement |
| Care coverage | What the backup plan is when the primary one fails | Predicts whether an early offer can actually be accepted |
The care coverage row is the one coaches skip. A client who accepts an offer she cannot staff will resign inside a quarter, and that outcome damages her more than the extra month of searching would have.
Financial runway and the deadline that shapes the whole plan
Ask directly: by what date does income need to start. Not when she would like it to, when it must.
Then work the arithmetic together, using her numbers. Take monthly household shortfall, divide available savings by it, and you have the runway in months. Suppose the shortfall is $3,200 and accessible savings are $19,000. That is roughly six months of runway. Now subtract the pipeline: a search of this kind commonly runs three to five months from first application to start date once the target list exists, and offers typically carry two to four weeks of notice before a start.
Six months of runway minus a four month search minus three weeks to start leaves under six weeks of margin. That changes the program. It means part time or contract work should be pursued in parallel rather than after, it means the target list needs to include employers who hire quickly, and it means you tell her this in session one rather than in month four.
The reverse case matters too. A client with two years of runway and no deadline needs an artificial one, because an open ended search drifts.
See how RelaunchDesk handles this for career return and relaunch coaching
Setting the first milestone before the session ends
Do not end on "I'll send you some thoughts." End on a dated, specific, small commitment that she states back to you.
Good first milestones for a ten year gap, in rough order of usefulness:
- Draft a list of fifteen employers she could name without research, by Friday.
- Confirm the status of one lapsed license or certification, with the state board's actual reinstatement requirements written down.
- Reach out to two former colleagues with no ask attached, purely to reopen contact.
- Write the three sentence gap account and read it aloud once to another person.
One of these, not four. Set the date, set the format in which she will send it to you, and put the next session on the calendar before you disconnect.
Red flags that mean referral rather than coaching
Some intakes should end in a referral, and recognizing it early protects both of you.
- Active mental health crisis or untreated illness that is the primary barrier. Coaching is not treatment. Refer to a licensed clinician and offer to resume when she is ready.
- An active legal matter with a former employer. Discrimination claims, separation agreements or non compete disputes go to an employment attorney first. Do not read her severance agreement and do not interpret it.
- Immigration status questions. Anything beyond work authorization goes to an immigration attorney.
- A financial situation requiring income within weeks. An eight week relaunch program is the wrong product. Point her to immediate placement, staffing agencies or temp work, and offer the program later.
- Someone else is paying and setting the goals. A spouse or parent driving the engagement while the client is disengaged produces no result. Address it in the room or decline.
Declining well is part of the practice. A clear, kind referral in session one costs you one engagement and earns you a reputation that returns several.
Turning the intake into a plan
The intake only pays off if what you captured becomes a visible structure the client can follow between sessions. RelaunchDesk takes the constraints, the evidence inventory and the runway deadline from session one and turns them into eight weeks of dated milestones, with the target list, applications and interview preparation logged in one place. She leaves the first call with a week one task and a map of what comes after it, which is the fastest way to convince a woman ten years out that this is a process rather than a leap.
